RICH DAD, POOR DAD by Robert Kiyosaki

Robert Kiyosaki is a self-made millionaire who in this book shares with us his ideas about making money. If you can look past some terrible writing, childish views about tax, and many awful golfing anecdotes, it is an interesting book.

His primary point is that one does not make any serious money as an employee. The idea of getting good grades and a good job is he feels painfully old-fashioned; all it means is that the profits do not come to you but to your employer. You ought, he argues, to be your own employer.

He thus recommends owning an array of business ventures, investments, real estate, and so forth. In order to do this, he believes you should ‘pay yourself first.’ This means that you pour your income into your own projects, even when money is tight. This may mean not paying your rent, your creditors, etc etc, in a timely fashion. This idea makes me very nervous, though perhaps that supports his point: he feels most people make decisions about money based on emotion, or family history, not on reason. I do see the value of paying yourself first – it means your own projects are never allowed to be optional or to remain in the realm of theory.

Clearly, investing your own money carries risk, but as he points out: “I have never met a rich person who has never lost money. But I have met a lot of poor people who have never lost a dime.”

One thing you do not expect from a low brow financial self-help book is Freudian dama. RICH DAD, POOR DAD is an exception. It literally drips with Oedipal anxiety. The poor dad is Kiyosaki’s real father, who is a teacher on a low income and does EVERYTHING WRONG. The rich dad is a friend’s father, who is WONDERFUL. Seriously, Mr Kiyosaki, sit down with your dad at the dining room table. You don’t need to write a book to get to the bottom of your issues.