What I’ve learned from Rich Dad Poor Dad’s Book? Review by Alex Al-Vatar

I finally read it! The Rich Dad Poor Dad’s book bring me some ideas which I want to share with you. Is it still useful knowledge? What is this book missing? What should you know before you buy it? I tried to put my thoughts on the paper, so welcome reading…

Why did I bought and read it? (Why should you buy and read it?)

So I bought this book for some reasons:

1. I heard a lot about it since my teenage, but never had a chance and truly needness to read it. There were a lot of people in my life who used to use some famous words from this book such as: “cash flow”, “assets and liabilities”, “passive income”… I caught these phrases too and start to use them in my life without knowing what Robert Kiyosaki wanted to say using these. Also I played few times the Cashflow game and it was fun and useful, so I always wanted to read the Rich Dad Poor Dad’s Book and I found myself in the right moment when it should actually happened.
2. Also that was a moment of my life – when I truly decide to become rich and I had a research on this topic and that book was something easy to find.
3. But my main reason was – learning English. I thought reading books in English will help me improve my reading skills, so I had to search something to read and this book seems to be interesting and easy to read, as I found.

I read the book from cover to cover and I have something to tell you about it.

What is that book about? How it is written?

I hope you know the story and what this book is about, but shortly – it’s about the financial intelligence lessons which Robert learned from both – Rich and Poor Dads. Two teenagers (Robert and his friend) wanted to become rich and tried to find their own way to make that happened. I like that kind of books, where sometimes you forget that it’s a non-fiction educational book and it makes you fully immersed into the storyline. Sometimes I felt like this child (the main character of the book) who learned his lessons, and that’s great to experience. If you read The Richest Man in Babylon by George Samuel Clason you will find some common things in feelings while reading both.

The author use simple words to explain difficult things and that’s a mark of great teacher as for me. It was easy to read even for me with my intermediate level of English. I think everybody will understand it even children or their parents, it’s a book kind for the whole family.

European and Asian citizens will understand this book differently. What’s wrong?

Before I’ll tell you what I’ve learned from Rich Dad Poor Dad’s book I have to say what the book is missing out. I read it at the moment of my life when I left my home country and started to live in Europe, Germany, so I had to notice that I wouldn’t totally figured all the lessons of the book if I was living in my home country, which is Ukraine. I think if you have no rich friends and live in such countries as Russia, Ukraine, maybe even India, where taxes for people are not so heavy and mostly citizens don’t use to think about taxes and even don’t pay them – it’s difficult to understand Robert’s lessons. That’s only my point of view, but when Robert says “Rich don’t pay taxes” and then you compare it to your life where you also don’t pay taxes because your government don’t care about you – it’s a misleading. Also in some countries you don’t have to pay taxes for your property when you own it, so it’s easy to get misunderstanding with that book.

But, as I said I was lucky to read it while living in Germany where the law works just as Robert said in his book. So it helps me to figure out how do people live and work and pay taxes in Europe. I started to understand problems that citizens of western countries have which citizens of eastern countries doesn’t have.

So if you decide to buy and read this book be careful about the law and cultural differences between European and Asian and South countries. While in Europe mostly people used to put their taxes on the first place, people from other countries don’t pay them at all.

What I’ve learned from Rich Dad Poor Dad’s book

For sure I’ve learned all the Rich Dad’s lessons, but I couldn’t say that there were a lot new to learn. I have had a self-employment experience for 10 years, some rules about how-to-make-money I already knew. On the other hand there were some thoughts I found while reading that book and it helps me to come to my own conclusions.

1. What are the assets you love? That question helped me to figure assets I like to get. Robert said that it’s vital to buy assets you love and want to take care of them. While Robert’s lovely asset is real estate I found my self interested in – author rights. I found them more cloudy and not so heavy as real estate (just to my mind). I love freedom of movement, but I can’t take my real estate with me while changing the country instead of author rights. Lets say about my books or videos I had created, I can easily copy them on my laptop and take them with me whether I want and I can sell them or monetise them through the Internet. So minding this book I decide not to focus on buying real estate, but to buy and create author rights for my asset column in financial sheet. And that’s great, each everyone of you have to find their your own right answer for that question to fit their goals.
2. Tax rate for the assets income is lower than tax rate for the earned income. I noticed that only because of the book. I asked my bank manager and tax adviser: “How much in taxes I should pay if I’ll get any income from my deposit bank account?” And they told me: “25%, but you also can fill and send a year declaration to the government tax service and make it less.” I was shocked, because the tax rate for employees in Europe is higher – from 10% to 49% + health insurance, which is also around 15% from your income. At that point I understood if you work for money you pay more in taxes, and if your assets generate your income you can pay less.
3. You always have ability to optimise your tax rate. While reading this book I also spoke with citizens in Europe about taxes, about the law, also I get consultations from the government services. I found that tax rates are different and depend on your type of income. Tax rate is different for stocks, real estate, job income, dividends, deposits, etc. So if your mind is open for a new knowledge, you can learn the law for the area you are working in, and you’ll be able to pay less in taxes. That brings us to the next Robert’s advice: “It’s cheaper to know the law”.
4. How do I apply this knowledge for my life to become rich? I keep in mind lessons from that book and try to make it a part of my life. Totally that book isn’t a practical seminar, but you are the one who can use it and adapt to your life, so do it.
5. And finally what I’ve learned is – I can read English books 🙂 That’s make me smiling, but you don’t have to read that book only because to became Rich, I have other goals to achieve. Honestly I hope learning English will help me to earn more money and reading this book in English helped me to improve my reading skills a little bit. It also helped me to feel more confident. I’m sure it will help to become rich even if not the way I or Robert was aspected 🙂

My point of view. Conclusions

Don’t spend your time for books you’re not truly interested in, but if you want to become Rich reading this book maybe will give few ideas how to change your life, what things to follow. My believe is – you become what you read and learn. When you own the knowledge about some topic someday you’ll start to think differently, and later you will act differently, and later the outcome will become different. I hope this article was also useful for you and maybe bring some ideas.