Brian Lee
Jun 30, 2025
Rich Dad, Poor Dad (Amazon)1 is an excellent introduction to personal finance. The writing is accessible, and the core concepts—particularly around assets and liabilities—are foundational.
Kiyosaki describes the 9-to-5 struggle as the “rat race”: we work hard chasing promotions and raises, but then inflate our lifestyle—buying larger houses, newer cars, more expensive clothes. This cycle rarely ends until we stop trading time for money and instead begin living off of investment income generated by assets.
This book helped me clearly understand the distinction between assets2 and liabilities3. Once that clicks, it becomes easier to see how debt—when used correctly—can help you acquire assets and accelerate your path to financial freedom.
Kiyosaki also designed a free online game4 called Cashflow Classic to help you practice the ideas from the book. This was my first introduction to building assets with debt. I highly recommend playing it until you consistently find winning strategies. Unfortunately, the game isn’t mobile friendly, and I recommend using a desktop computer to play the game.
Once you learn a winning strategy, try building $1 billion in
assets before exiting the rat race. To do this, you’ll need to
master borrowing large sums to keep growing your assets. It’s
surprisingly fun. My friend, Tim, recommended the book in my late
20s, but I didn’t read it until my late 30s—losing nearly a
decade of financial insight!↩︎ Assets generate money.↩︎ Liabilities cost money.↩︎ You need to “sign up” with a name and email to
play the game. Either filter out his marketing emails, or use a
temporary email from a free service like Gmail.↩︎