I read the book ”Rich Dad Poor Dad” by Robert Kiyosaki. The book was written in english, so this essay is going to be written in english also. This is my first time writing a proper essay in english, if we don’t count the high school’s final exams. I’m excited to figure how this works out. So let’s start.

To be honest, I read this book couple years ago, and it has influenced me and my life eversince so much that I decided to write essay about this book. After reading this book I was so hyped to acknowledge that I can become financially independent by mastering financial education instead of the mainstream education teached in schools worldwide. I have always been quite thoughtful with money. That’s thanks to my parents and how they’ve raised me. My parents have always made a quite good living, but they’ve always been thoughtful about their consumer behavior and been saving always. What is sad though, they have never been inspired to properly put their money/savings in to work.

This book teached me the importance of putting your money to work for you. That way, some day, you don’t have to work so hard because your money works behalf of you 24/7. I like that idea. Even though it may sound sad or harsh, this world is run by money. We spend big part of our lifes thinking, worrying and doing things just to gain money. With only money we can put roof on top of our heads, food on our table and get clothes to wear. These things are essential for people to survive. For that matter we need to get educated, get a good job and earn the money we so much crave to survive. To make that process possible we sacrifice whole lot of time of our lives doing jobs that we don’t like. Just to make money. Just to eat. Just to be alive.

After reading this book I was really excited and confused at the same time. I was in my final year of high school. That meant that I have been educated by government from 7 years old to 18 years old, 11 years, but not a once I was taught about financial literacy. How to manage money, how to keep it and how to make it work for you. I was so confused. I thought that I had learned more useful information to my life from this single book than from the 11 years of formal education. Sounds crazy but sadly its true. Basically that was the one thing that made me passionate about self development. I became studying independently about things I wanted to learn about because I could not trust the formal education system anymore.

After the high school ended I thought for couple of years that I would not ever again trust the formal education system. Then I found Proakatemia, and after one year of studying in Proakatemia, I think it has a great potential in the field of modern education.

In the book Robert Kiyosaki talks about his rich dad and his poor dad. The rich dad is his best friend’s father and the poor dad is his biological father. His rich dad is a entrepreneur who works for himself and acknowledges the principles of money and respects the financial literacy. The rich dad has’nt a high formal education, but he has mastered the financial education. The poor dad has a high formal education and he works for the government. The poor dad makes actually makes a quite good living out of his job but he does’nt know how to handle the money properly. So the poor dad will always be controlled by money and not the other way around.

I got couple main keypoints from the book and I’m going to open them to you in this essay.

Don’t ever work for money

The rich dad’s first teaching to little Robert Kiyosaki was that he should’nt ever work for money. That does not mean that Robert should not work in a job that pays a financial compensation. But if the only reason to work is to earn money, you should quit. The rich dad made agreement with young Kiyosaki that he would teach him financial literacy, but that would mean that the young Robert would need to work for the rich dad for no financial compensation.

Even though Robert didn’t earn a dime from the time working for his rich dad, he gained something that is way more valuable than the money. He learned the money mindset, which is invaluable. From the time on, Robert would work in a various places. From those places he would earn money, but also learn something that he was eager to learn. Main motivation to work should be to learn, not to earn, teaches the rich dad.

Why rich keep getting richer and poor keep getting more poor?

Everybody must have heard the saying; ”The rich keep getting richer and the poor keep getting more poor”. Until reading this book I thought it was a joke, but this book opened my eyes. There lies a truth behind that saying. The reasoning behind that is simple, and here it goes. The main factor in influencing that if you are getting richer or poorer is that where you spend your money. The reason why rich people keep getting richer, is because the rich spend money to acquire assets. What is an asset? An asset is an investment, that will produce more money. An asset can produce money in the terms of cashflow or in the terms of increasing financial value. Examples of assets are stocks, businesses, real estate or resources such as gold, oil or energy. Rich keep spending money to gain those assets. When rich gain those assets, the assets produce them increasingly more money which lead to them having more money available to buy more of money and value producing assets.

So why poor people keep getting more poor?

The reason is that poor people keep buying liabilities that they think are assets. Liability is a thing that keeps costing you more money than it produces. Poor people keep upgrading to bigger houses for themselfs, which cost more to maintain and to acquire than the previous one. The bigger house does not produce more income, but instead it costs you more. Other good example is a car. Poor people keep buying new cars with a loans. What they don’t realize is that the value and the maintenance costs are rapidly increasing, whilst you are losing money so much money.

So If you want to get rich and financially independent, keep buying assets that produce value, and start working to learn, not to earn. Thank you.