Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Rich dad, poor dad – the story that formed my views on making money

micaelwidell.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 125 posts

Re: Rich dad, poor dad – the story that formed my views on making money

#31

Post by charlesdm »

branchless wrote: post #9

How I hate people like this. "Building assets and letting them work for you". For this you can read: "be the footsoldier for the banks who have a monopoly on money creation. Ask the bank to create money for you then use this to join the land monopolists. Then let those stupid little people who are actually creating wealth rent it back from you. This way you get a stream of their labour." For assets read "property". P…

Debt is a lever, in itself it's neither good nor bad.

If I have a $10m net worth, I might want to lend someone $1m for a year on which they will pay me 5% interest per year. If that person can turn that million into one and a half million, what's the problem?

Re: Rich dad, poor dad – the story that formed my views on making money

#32

Post by liquidchicken »

I've come away from some of these types of books with some good tidbits, but have a hard time recommending them, especially to a young person. They tend to be a gateway drug into a culture of "The secret to making money is giving me some money." that I'm not comfortable with. I'd be far more comfortable recommending something data driven like "The Millionaire Next Door" (regardless of how that book is marketed) that highlights things like frugality, saving, and hard work.

Re: Rich dad, poor dad – the story that formed my views on making money

#33

Post by glossyscr »

Many years ago a CEO friend told me about this book. I was an useless office drone daydreaming the startup dream. I read the book. I was super motivated for 3-4 days but nothing happened. Nothing. After one week motivation was gone and I had been an office drone for a decade.

In hindsight: the book is great and the key message is very true. And this book is a great motivator (three days motivation is better than nothing) but in my case I needed way more to enter the dark side than reading a self-help book (which would be another long post).

Life is more complex.

Re: Rich dad, poor dad – the story that formed my views on making money

#34

Post by branchless »

charlesdm wrote: post #31
branchless wrote: post #9

How I hate people like this. "Building assets and letting them work for you". For this you can read: "be the footsoldier for the banks who have a monopoly on money creation. Ask the bank to create money for you then use this to join the land monopolists. Then let those stupid little people who are actually creating wealth rent it back from you. This way you get a stream of their labour." For assets read "property". P…

Debt is a lever, in itself it's neither good nor bad. If I have a $10m net worth, I might want to lend someone $1m for a year on which they will pay me 5% interest per year. If that person can turn that million into one and a half million, what's the problem?

The problem is when people are seeing all their labour disappear as rent / mortgage to people who are adding no value. This is happening way too much.

Re: Rich dad, poor dad – the story that formed my views on making money

#36

Post by branchless »

miseg wrote: post #28
branchless wrote: post #9

How I hate people like this. "Building assets and letting them work for you". For this you can read: "be the footsoldier for the banks who have a monopoly on money creation. Ask the bank to create money for you then use this to join the land monopolists. Then let those stupid little people who are actually creating wealth rent it back from you. This way you get a stream of their labour." For assets read "property". P…

I agree with not agreeing with his debt-based asset-building approach. But you can still follow the same path in a tech way, such as selling your own product online. As you work on it, if it's producing income, that can begin to be an asset for you.

Sure, that I have no problem with. Go forth and create wealth. Do not take land monopoly in a flawed system and force others to give you their labour.

Re: Rich dad, poor dad – the story that formed my views on making money

#37

Post by kaitai »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #10
pkorzeniewski wrote: post #5

The problem with all these "how to get rich" books is that they're full of anecdotes, quotations, fictional stories, motivational bullshit etc. which make you feel good while reading them, but as soon as you put the book back on the shelf, it's all gone. It's just a temporary boost of energy and motivation, because reading requires almost no effort and more often that not it's just another way of procrastination. Ser…

Possibly this is biased, but I'm not sure I'd ever seen this kind of financial self-help book till I saw them in the US. I flicked through a few books expecting basic info about compound interest or whatever but instead it was all "if you believe hard enough then the money will be magnetically attracted to you" and similar woo. A very strange experience.

The US: a mixture of economic fear, economic hope, and pseudo-Christian rhetoric that is stoked for gain by many.

“Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.” Ronald Wright

"17 percent of Christians surveyed said they considered themselves part of such a movement, while a full 61 percent believed that God wants people to be prosperous. And 31 percent—a far higher percentage than there are Pentecostals in America—agreed that if you give your money to God, God will bless you with more money." Time magazine, Does God want you to be rich?

Healthcare costs cause 62% of personal bankruptcies in the US; 72% of those who file for bankruptcy due to medical costs had health insurance at the time of illness. RomneyCare didn't change those figures in Massachusetts much even though everyone had health insurance, and ObamaCare has not made much of a dent there either.

What will an average person do in the face of such market forces? One (God-given) illness will wipe away everything they ever had, and just getting a better job won't in general help -- it's not a big enough pay bump. And collective political action is for socialists. So... pray!

edit in response to some downvotes: I'm not saying anything anti-religion or anti-Christian here; read carefully.

Re: Rich dad, poor dad – the story that formed my views on making money

#38

Post by hammock »

twistedanimator wrote: post #25

Hands down the best book I have read on money is Your Money or Your Life: http://amzn.com/0143115766 I'm a naturally frugal person, but the book helped me formulate new ways of thinking about money and my relationship with it. The major concept being that money is a representation of your life energy. You work X hours a day at an hourly rate of $Y. Knowing those numbers allows you to think about purchases in a new wa…

That advice seems to apply to wage slaves (hourly rate) but not entrepreneurs or salespersons (not hourly).

Many other financial books recommend developing income streams outside of selling your labor at an hourly or yearly rate, which would seem to be missing from your book.

Re: Rich dad, poor dad – the story that formed my views on making money

#39

Post by Kinnard »

charlesdm wrote: post #31
branchless wrote: post #9

How I hate people like this. "Building assets and letting them work for you". For this you can read: "be the footsoldier for the banks who have a monopoly on money creation. Ask the bank to create money for you then use this to join the land monopolists. Then let those stupid little people who are actually creating wealth rent it back from you. This way you get a stream of their labour." For assets read "property". P…

Debt is a lever, in itself it's neither good nor bad. If I have a $10m net worth, I might want to lend someone $1m for a year on which they will pay me 5% interest per year. If that person can turn that million into one and a half million, what's the problem?

Not when it's only issued by a monopoly.

Re: Rich dad, poor dad – the story that formed my views on making money

#40

Post by bitL »

breitling wrote: post #30
bitL wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

RDPD seemed to me as parasitic - the "solutions" there work only if somebody gets into trouble, like foreclosures etc. Not a "wealth creation" book, rather a misfortune-of-others exploitation one.

I don't get it - you're not causing the foreclosure, so why feel guilty about it?

Morality aside, it's not a book that would teach you how to found a new Google, rather how to exploit social structures in place assuming most people would keep their way of thinking/doing. Exaggerating, it's like when you identify how an ideal member of a religion would behave (because of archetype and social conformity pressure put on them), and then exploit what they aren't allowed to do. Imagine though if every single member of your nation followed RDPD strategy - when everybody is doing that, nobody wins.
Post reply on HN