Rich Dad Company Founder Robert Kiyosaki on the True Path to Financial Freedom

By Editor January 5, 2016 07:47

By: Cindy G. Castillo

Forget everything you’ve learned so far about money.

Robert Kiyosaki is a businessman, investor, author, motivational speaker, and radio personality. But above all, he’s reinventing the way people think about saving and investing.

He is the founder of the Rich Dad Company, a private education firm that provides personal, finance, and business education to people through books, seminars and educational products all over the world. He’s also the author of over 15 books, which have combined sales of over 26 million copies.

“The mission of The Rich Dad Company is to elevate the financial well-being of humanity,” Kiyosaki explains, “[we believe] the main reason people struggle financially is because they do not learn about money in school. The result is that people learn to work for money, but never learn to have money work for them.”

Through his work, Kiyosaki stresses the importance of including entrepreneurship, business, investing, and comprehensive financial literacy in schools around the world. He believes life skills are often best learned through experience, and that there are important lessons not being taught in school.

“One of the greatest investments you can make in yourself is to get a financial education,” he said, “expand your “financial” vocabulary and learn as much as you can to better understand markets, trends, and acquiring assets. Stay focused on assets over income. That’s how you put your money to work for you. By creating or acquiring cash-flowing assets you can gain true financial freedom.”

He believes that investing in your own business and acquiring what he calls “assets” is the answer to obtaining true wealth, and the fastest way to financial freedom.

He classifies four main asset categories as a means for people to become wealthy. These include:

Businesses: Businesses that generate a monthly cash flow that doesn’t require the owner’s physical presence.

Real Estate: Owning warehouses, small family homes, apartment houses that again, generate monthly cash flow.

Paper Assets: Investments such as stocks, bonds, ETF’s, hedge funds, etc.

Commodities: Gold, silver, iron ore, or copper used to hedge government’s mismanagement printing of the nation’s currency.

Kiyosaki uses the “rich dad, poor dad” comparison to share his view that the majority of people are stuck in what he calls “the rat race” — in other words, living paycheck to paycheck and spending all of their time working to pay bills and other expenses.

Further along, he also emphasizes on the true difference between saving and investing. He believes that savings offer flexibility and a peace of mind for people in case of emergencies, whereas investments offer a plan to grow a person’s wealth.

Kiyosaki’s theories and advice about wealth are all documented in his 2000 book, “Rich Dad Poor Dad: What the Rich Teach Their Kids About Money That the Poor and Middle Class Do Not!”

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