This is a great article by Alex Anderson on the writings of the inspirational Robert Kiyosaki, author of  The Rich Dad series.   Alex’s synopsis will save you time and effort and breaks things down to their most basic parts..  You're sure to learn a lot, making for an enjoyable and very informative read!  Thanks Alexandria!

 

About the Author: Alexandria P. Anderson is a Minnesota Real Estate Agent who helps people to find and purchase Minnesota Townhomes  and other properties in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul.

 


Robert Kiyosaki, author of the Rich Dad book series, has money and he doesn't agree. "Anyone who says money isn't important obviously has not been without it long," he says in his book "Cash Flow Quadrant."

Kiyosaki should know-- he's been on both sides of the financial fence. In the '80s, he was so down-and-out that he spent a few weeks living in a car, before moving on to the basement of a friend, in which he lived for almost a year. He and his wife didn't have steady work, only odd jobs here and there, as they were looking for riches, not security.

After 4 more years they did become rich - millionaires, in fact.

Money is definitely a crucial thing, but it's not important simply for its own sake. This is what many people fail to consider when rushing into high-paying jobs; although these careers will make you money, are they really worth the stress, and the pain being separated from your loved ones for extended periods of time. Yes, money is important, but only to the extent that it lets you live the life you really want to live.

One thing a job will never give you is extra time with loved ones. In fact, it will take away as much of that precious time as you allow it to.

Life as an employee is, in most cases, a dead end-- if you're spending all your time and energy working for a paycheck, you'll never have time to pursue what you truly desire. You've purchased financial security with your time, but all this security really assures you is that you will have more work to do, day in and day out. If you want to break out of this cycle, take the true road to riches: investing.

Robert Kiyosaki had to reach this conclusion himself, years ago; in one of his books, he wrote, "Money is important, but I did not want to spend my life working for it." As luck would have it, Kiyosaki's "Rich Dad" knew plenty about this dilemma and its true solution.

He knew that there was a way to be a responsible provider for his family without spending most of his waking life working. He knew the secret was become an investor.

It's a simple principle; as an employee, you're working for money, but an investor, money works for you. All you have to do to start out is take some of the money you've made as an employer and move it into real estate. This is all it takes to start paving the way to a bright financial future, in which your wealth is constantly growing without you having to lift a finger, leaving you free to live life and spend time with loved ones.

That is how you can have your cake and eat it too; because the money you make no longer represents hours of your life spent away in pursuit of a living, you can take those hours and reinvest them in spending actual time with your family, in pursuing hobbies, hanging out with friends. In short, you can reinvest them in your life. 

 
One thing a job will never give you is extra time with loved ones. In fact, it will take away as much of that precious time as you allow it to.

Life as an employee is, in most cases, a dead end-- if you're spending all your time and energy working for a paycheck, you'll never have time to pursue what you truly desire. You've purchased financial security with your time, but all this security really assures you is that you will have more work to do, day in and day out. If you want to break out of this cycle, take the true road to riches: investing.

Robert Kiyosaki had to reach this conclusion himself, years ago; in one of his books, he wrote, "Money is important, but I did not want to spend my life working for it." As luck would have it, Kiyosaki's "Rich Dad" knew plenty about this dilemma and its true solution.

He knew that there was a way to be a responsible provider for his family without spending most of his waking life working. He knew the secret was become an investor.

 

Those who aspire toward riches should know that, in order to achieve their goals, they will need to abandon much of the conventional wisdom passed on to them by parents, teachers, and others. You may, however, already be on the right track- that is, if you were lucky enough to have a role model who knew what it really takes to become rich.

In the words of real estate guru and author of the bestselling "Rich Dad" book series Robert Kiyosaki, "It doesn't take money to make money. I often hear people say it takes money to make money. I disagree. We had no money when we started and we were also in debt. It also doesn't take a formal education."

Kiyosaki proceeded to cite the case of Bill Gates: the Microsoft mogul never actually graduated from college, but did that keep him from making his fortune? No way! Diplomas are nice, but they don't reliably add up to more money.

Robert Kiyosaki claims that to become wealthy, you simply need to be a quick learner, with enthusiasm about reaching your goals. The other part of the puzzle is to know where you're at right now in relation to money, and how you will have to change your attitude about money to prosper in the future. This is where Kiyosaki's Cash Flow Quadrant comes in.

Kiyosaki's "Rich Dad," actually his childhood best friend's father, is the one who introduced him to the Cash Flow Quadrant, a handy diagram that visually illustrates the ways in which individuals with different personalities relate to money. It consists of a square split into four quadrants, labeled 'E' (Employee), 'S' (Self-employed), 'B' (Business), and 'I' (Investor). If your aim is to become rich, you're going to have to set your sights on the 'B' and 'I' quadrants of the diagram.

When Kiyosaki says you need to be willing to learn quickly, he doesn't mean go back to school to improve your job skills. He means you should learn about investing, preferably investing in real estate. The rich dad on whom he based his books was a real estate investor. You can get rich investing in real estate because everything else depends on it. At the beginning of his book Cash Flow Quadrant, he pointed out how so many of Hawaii's businesses were sitting atop real estate that his rich dad owned.

But he doesn't just mean you have to learn the nuts and bolts of investing. You do have to learn about those things, at least to the point that you are able to intelligently choose a professional to help you with your investments. But more importantly than that, you have to learn how to think like an investor, and possibly a bit like a business person too.

That is a far cry from thinking like a Self-employed person. According to Kiyosaki, a self-employed person is someone who owns a job, not a business. You don't own a true business, he said, unless you can leave it for a year and return to find it still making money for you. Businesspeople, he said, know better than to try to do everything themselves. In order to save time and money, they hire people to do the things they can't do or don't have time to do. That's why hiring a qualified real estate professional to guide you in your decisions can be a good investment in and of itself.

However you decide to do it, learning the nuts and bolts of real estate investing yourself or by hiring a qualified person to advise you, it is definitely time for you to move to the I quadrant; that is, if being rich is something you'd like to consider.

 

Taxes are a necessary evil in our society, and for many it seems natural to grouse about having to pay a large percentage of our earnings to the government while those who have more money seem to be bearing less of the burden than they ought. It's certainly disheartening that it works this way - as the fortunate shirk their obligations through legal loopholes, the rest have to pick up their slack. It's frustrating and unfair, and there's no question that many of the complaints against the upper class are quite legitimate.

Well, the fact is, no amount of grumbling and complaining is going to make the powers that be suddenly make things fair for you. This is because of the Golden Rule: "He who has the gold, makes the rules." Chances are, they are going to make the rules in their favor. They're going to keep all the good tax breaks to themselves. They are going to tell you there just isn't enough money to go around, even as you watch so many people drive around in so many expensive cars and eat in so many posh restaurants. Even politicians who promise tax breaks to the downtrodden masses - even the ones who are sincere in their desire to help the average working stiff - are limited in their ability to affect the system.

That's why you are going to have to take action. Don't be one of the downtrodden masses. If you want more money, you are going to have to go get it yourself. And yes, you too can get more money in the form of tax breaks.

In his Rich Dad book series, Robert Kiyosaki advocates figuring out what the rich do to be rich, and do that. Except that you don't have to figure it out. He didn't even have to figure it out, because he had a rich "dad" to tell him the secret of the rich: investing. Especially in real estate.

Kiyosaki's book "Cash Flow Quadrant," is centered around the titular diagram, which consists of a square split into four quarters labeled 'E' (employee), 'S' (self-employed), 'I' (investing) 'B' (business). These four categories not only describe the four ways in which individuals make their money, but also provides insight into how an individual's personality factors into the way in which they think about money.

In Robert Kiyosaki's opinion, the most money is in the business and investment quadrants, largely because these quadrants allow individuals to take advantage of more tax breaks.

It's best to take an "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em," attitude towards the wealthy - there's no way you're ever going to beat them, so the next best thing is to become one of them. Know also that the rich aren't simply lucky; if you follow the examples set by rich people, you can become one of them, and you can get the tax breaks that they are able to get.

This is how you become rich: put money into investments and let that money multiply as you sit back and watch. You can, of course, continue working as an employee while your investments make you money, but Kiyosaki believes that the more profitable path is to venture into the 'B' quadrant and formulate a business model that will help you to create wealth with minimum effort on your part. The most important thing, though, is that you do invest.

So, invest - invest in apartments, condos, vacation homes, whatever suits your fancy. This is the true, time-tested road to wealth.

About the Author: Alexandria P. Anderson is an Edina real estate agent that helps people to find and purchase Edina homes and properties in the Twin Cities of Minnesota.