CASHFLOW, the board game
Two tracks: the Rat Race and the Fast Track. You play your own income statement until the asset column carries you out of the first one.
- Classic, for adults
- CASHFLOW for Kids
Money works for you, or you work for money.
Rich Dad Poor Dad has carried that one sentence around the world for more than twenty-five years. This is the book's argument in one place: the two fathers, the four boxes, the six lessons, and the ten steps for getting started.
- Two fathers
- Two ledgersThe same boy, opposite lessons about money
- The rule
- Buy assetsKnow the difference, then act on it
- Six lessons
- One habitMake your money work, not your hours
- Ten steps
- Start todayThe book's own list for beginning
Two fathers, the same street, opposite lessons.
One had a stack of degrees and a steady salary. The other left school at thirteen to run the family business. Both talked to the same boy about money, and they disagreed on almost everything. The book is what he heard.
Poor dad
A teacher. Educated, salaried, secure, and always short at the end of the month.
Rich dad
Eighth-grade education, a chain of small businesses, and time he did not sell by the hour.
I can't afford it.
How can I afford it?
One sentence closes the question, the other opens it
Love of money is the root of all evil.
Lack of money is the root of all evil.
The book's sharpest disagreement, in one line
Study hard so you can find a good company to work for.
Study hard so you can find a good company to buy.
Who the education is for
Our house is our biggest investment.
My house is a liability.
The sentence that made the book famous
The reason I'm not rich is that I have you children.
The reason I must be rich is that I have you children.
Same fact, opposite direction of pressure
The same four boxes, three completely different pictures.
Every household in the book has one income statement: money arriving, money leaving, things you own that pay you, and things you own that cost you. Only the arrows change. Choose a household and watch where the money goes.
Income
$0
each month
Expenses
$0
each month
Assets
$0
things that pay you
Liabilities
$0
things that cost you
- Monthly income
- $0
- Asset column
- $0
- Living costs
- $0
- Liabilities
- $0
- Income from assets
- $0
- Days without working
- —
Money arrives and leaves in the same month.
Example figures, chosen to show the shape of each diagram.
Six lessons, and only the first one is about working harder.
Each lesson is short, and each one removes a belief. Together they describe a single habit: put money into the column that pays you, before the month takes it.
-
Lesson 01
The rich don't work for money
Fear and desire run the wage earner's life: fear of not paying the bills, desire for the thing the money buys. The book sends the boy to a shop to work for ten cents an hour, and then for nothing at all, to make the trap visible. The lesson is not to refuse work. It is to stop believing a wage is the only thing work can produce.
Money and emotion -
Lesson 02
Why teach financial literacy?
An asset puts money in your pocket. A liability takes money out. Rule one is to know the difference, and rule two is to buy assets. Most people buy liabilities and file them under assets.
Assets vs liabilities -
Lesson 03
Mind your own business
Keep the day job, and build your asset column beside it. Your profession pays the bills; your business is the column you own. The book's favourite example is a fast-food founder whose real estate, not his hamburgers, made him rich.
Ownership -
Lesson 04
The history of taxes and the power of corporations
An employee earns, is taxed, and spends what is left. A corporation earns, spends, and is taxed on the remainder. Knowing the rules of the game you are playing is not cheating; it is the difference between a wage and a structure.
Tax and structure -
Lesson 05
The rich invent money
Opportunities are made, not found. Two people look at the same street and one sees a deal, because financial intelligence is a skill that can be trained. The book's own examples are small, boring and repeated.
Opportunity -
Lesson 06
Work to learn, don't work for money
Learn sales, marketing, writing and leadership before you learn a bigger salary. A skill you can carry into anything you build is worth more than a small raise in a job you cannot leave.
Skills you keep
How long could you go without working?
The book borrows its definition of wealth from Buckminster Fuller: wealth is how many days forward you can survive. Not your salary, not your car, not the value of the house you live in, only how long the money you own can pay for your life.
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It is not how much money you make. It is how much you keep, how hard it works for you, and how many generations you keep it for. The argument of Rich Dad Poor Dad, in one sentence
The book, and the voice that told it
Robert Kiyosaki grew up with two men he called father. The book he wrote about them first appeared in 1997, and its Arabic edition was published by Jarir Bookstore in 2017. It is part memoir, part argument, and it is deliberately repetitive: one diagram, repeated until it changes how you file the money in your own life.
- Structure: nine lessons, five obstacles, ten steps
- One diagram: income, expenses, assets, liabilities
- One instruction: buy assets, then keep learning
Where the book leads next.
The ideas do not stop at the last page. There is a board game built to make the diagram physical, a coaching programme, and a shelf of books that take one lesson each and stretch it out.
Coaching and community
For readers who want a person, not a page: structured coaching, an investor community, and events for women building their own asset columns.
- Coaching programmes
- Rich Woman community
The shelf that followed
Eighteen more titles, each one taking a single argument from the first book and following it: the quadrant, the guide to investing, retire young, rich kid smart kid.
- The full list, with what each one adds