_Everyone wants to go to Heaven, but no one wants to die ~ Kiyosaki, Rich Dad Poor Dad
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Published in 1997, this book is the legendary book that everyone has always talked about. After a lot of recommendation from everyone and an accidental finding of Willoughby Library in Mandarin Centre (I didn’t realise that they have moved from the old location!), I managed to get a hand on The Book – the original book, the one before all the Rich Dad series came out.

To start off with, it amazed me on how light it was. It was only 207 pages in total, reasonably big printed letters too. It took me only one night to finish it all, mainly because the language used in the book is extremely easy to read. I would recommend this book for anyone, but especially people around my age (20+) who are now at the start of their money adventure. Where should we put our money once we get our steady income? Is buying a property once you can afford it a financially smart way to go? What’s the most important skill that we can train ourselves? and most importantly: Is there a way for us not to work hard until our retirement age?

If you are looking for a book that will teach you how to the playing rules of stocks or property business, this is not a book for you. The book is inspirational, it only outlines main important lessons that you will need in order to get rich. What I love about the book is that its logic is so straightforward and direct and yet it is very powerful.

As the background story, Kiyosaki has two dads, the poor dad who is academically smart and the rich dad who is financially smart (this one is actually his friend’s dad, just in case you’re wondering how he can get two instead of one). Starting from 9 yrs old, he kept on comparing the behaviour and the way the two dads think because they are opposite to one another. The poor dad worked for money, and the rich dad let money worked for him.

As I read the book, there are some points that kept on repeated such as being financially literate: able to read and understand financial statements (allowing you to identify the strengths and weaknesses of any business). However, for me, these are the points that I found interesting (some of them are direct quotes from the book):

• Most people fail to realize that in life, it’s not how much money you make, it’s how much money you keep. Doesn’t matter how high is your income, you will still go broke if your spending is even higher.
• Most people only know one solution: work hard, save and borrow. You want to be the kind of person who creates your own luck. Few people realize that luck is created, just as money is.
• We learn to walk by falling down. If we never fell down, we would never walk. The main reason most people are not rich is because they are terrified of losing. Winners are not afraid of losing. But losers are. Failure is part of the process of success. People who avoid failure also avoid success.
• Harlan Sanders, KFC’s Colonel Sanders, was turned down 1,009 times before someone said “yes” and he went on to become a multimillionaire at an age when most people are quitting. He surely doesn’t get the idea of being rejected.
• Invest in education instead of anything else. The education referred here is not education we get in school, it is more to financial education. Do not start to play with stocks unless you know the rules on how to play.

I think the best idea that he put out was it is okay to be attracted to money. The society has labeled people who does so as greedy and managed to suppress the desire to have money since we are little. It is that desire that can drive our “financial intelligent”.