Page 14 ‹ The Epoch Times ‹ People November 4 – 10, 2005

On a Mission to Teach the World Financial Freedom

And just who was Robert Kiyosaki’s “Rich Dad”?
By MATT GNAIZDA &
KEAN WONG
Epoch Times New York Staff
He grew up with one “rich dad”
and one “poor dad.” Now his story
inspires tens of millions around the
world to escape the “rat race” and at-
tain financial freedom.
“If you’re poor, you’re enslaved,”
said Robert Kiyosaki, author of “Rich
Dad Poor Dad” and other books
about personal finance and business
in an interview on October 23 with
The Epoch Times. Kiyosaki spoke
to a cheering crowd of over ten thou-
sand earlier that day at the Learning
Annex’s Real Estate Wealth Expo in
New York City.
While Kiyosaki is a successful in-
vestor and entrepreneur, he does not
consider that his true success. His
true success has been inspiring mil-
lions of others to follow his path.
Growing up as a fourth-generation
Japanese-American, Robert Kiyo-
saki’s father had a Ph.D. and was a
high-ranking government official on
the Board of Education in Hawaii, yet
always struggled with money—this
was his “poor dad.” Kiyosaki’s best
friend’s father—his “rich dad”—nev-
er finished the eighth grade, yet went
from almost nothing to being one of
the richest men in Hawaii.
Very little, if anything, has been
written about who Kiyosaki’s “rich
dad” really was. Interestingly, and
perhaps for the first time ever, Kiyo-
saki revealed that his “rich dad” was
in fact of Chinese descent. “In Hawaii,
the Japanese went into academia and
government, while the Chinese went
into business and real estate,” said
Kiyosaki.
But in the early days it was a strug-
gle for Kiyosaki to reject his biologi-
cal father’s ideas about money—that
a person should graduate from a good
college, get a well-paying job and
work hard until retirement—and in-
stead accept his best friend’s father’s
view that a person should learn to
make money work for them. But it
made all the difference. “I’m a reb-
el,” admits Kiyosaki.
After graduating from the U.S. Mer-
chant Marine Academy in New York,
Kiyosaki went to Vietnam where he
was a helicopter gunship pilot in the
Marine Corp. After the war and a stint
as a Xerox salesperson, he quit his job
and started his first company selling
nylon and Velcro wallets designed
for surfers. (As a native Hawaiian,
he was a surfer himself.) Since then,
he has started several companies and
made many successful investments
in real estate and more recently in
commodities. Besides advice from
his “rich dad,” he credits real estate
and personal development courses he
took in the mid-’70s as giving him the
knowledge and motivation to kick-
start his journey along the road to fi-
nancial freedom.
Kiyosaki has now published a se-
ries of ten books, including “Rich
Dad Poor Dad,” which has sold over
20 million copies in 44 languages and
80 countries. Surprisingly, his books
have sold especially well in China,
where he said that of the government’s
20 recommended foreign books, two
are his. Kiyosaki, however, is not so
surprised that his books have done so
well in the quasi-communist nation.
He mused, “There’s no such thing as
a communist. All Chinese are capi-
talist.”
Kiyosaki believes that “the Unit-
ed States and England are actually
communist countries, too.” He riles
against the U.S.’s use of heavy taxa-
tion to support burdensome social
welfare programs, including Social
Security. “There will be millions of
Americans who will never be able to
retire” because it is inadequate, he
says.
A major theme throughout Kiyosa-
ki’s teachings is the truth about mon-
ey. Most currencies around the world
are “fiat money,” that is, paper money
not backed by fixed assets such as
gold or silver as in the past. With the
U.S. dollar devaluing over the years
under this system, the simple strategy
of saving money is no longer suffi-
cient. In today’s world, Kiyosaki ad-
vocates first learning how to save and
ridding ourselves of credit card debt.
The next crucial step is to learn how
to invest wisely given the credit sys-
tem and the current economic trends.
In his books and lectures, Kiyosaki
explains how banks make billions of
dollars by being allowed to effective-
ly print money from “thin air” using
a system known as fractional-reserve
banking and then lend it out at inter-
est. For example a bank might need to
have only $10,000 in reserve to lend
out $100,000 for a mortgage in which
they get back $250,000 in interest
and principle over the duration of a
30-year mortgage. This process is one
example of how banks make money
work for them, and Kiyosaki tries to
show individuals how to use this prin-
ciple in their life.
Nonetheless, the banking system
that keeps the majority of people in
the “rat race”—working hard for
money—can also be one of the keys
to financial freedom. For many ordi-
nary people, discovering how to prop-
erly use finance to invest in real estate
with the masses.
What he teaches in his books and
worldwide lectures has historically
never been taught even in top uni-
versities, which emphasize academic
IQ over what Kiyosaki calls “finan-
cial IQ.” In this Fall 2005 semester,
however, over a dozen colleges are
for the first time adapting the “Rich
Dad CASHFLOW Personal Financial
Course,” a new curriculum based on
Kiyosaki’s teachings.
Another major theme through-
out Kiyosaki’s lectures and books
is change. In this rapidly-evolving
world, those who don’t change them-
selves and keep growing and learning
will be left behind and be enslaved
by the system, he says. For example,
since the Telecommunications Act of
1996, it has become much easier for
companies to contract out profession-
als in developing countries, where
they can find employees with the
same skill set at much lower cost than
in the U.S.
Thus, workers today need to con-
stantly change themselves and build
their knowledge to adapt to the re-
quirements of the modern world. The
days of life-long careers are no more.
The Internet and telecommunications
technologies have destroyed millions
of jobs from old industries. At the
same time, these technologies allow
entrepreneurs and home-based busi-
ness owners to compete effectively
with large corporations, providing the
opportunity for people to fully utilize
their talents as well as retire much
sooner. For example, a July 2005
study by ACNielsen International
Research revealed that over 724,000
Americans rely on their eBay busi-
nesses for their primary or secondary
income.
And it’s not about capitalism with-
out a conscience, either. Kiyosaki
strongly believes that business prac-
tices should be conducted not just le-
gally but ethically and morally. While
he admires others who have their own
“crosses to bear” (his sister is a nun
who follows the Dalai Lama), the way
Kiyosaki fights the battle for freedom
is not by getting involved with poli-

EZ Consulting Company can mean the difference between re-

tiring poor and retiring financially
independent. In fact, the majority of
Professional translation services new millionaires became so through
investing in real estate. For genera-
English —> <— Chinese tions, these “secrets of the rich” were
kept within the confines of a select
circle of wealthy investment banking
All Ivy-League graduate staff clients. Today, people like Kiyosaki
and others are sharing these secrets
Experienced with notarized Kirk Wang/The Epoch Times
tics but by educating people to free
themselves financially. It takes not
only doing things differently, but also
thinking differently. He said, “Free-
dom has nothing to do with govern-
ment. It has to do with how people
think.”
Robert Kiyosaki’s website can be
found at www.richdad.com.

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