Real Estate Investor Magazine South Africa Real Estate Investor Magazine - July 2017 | Page 11
Real Estate Investing
Kiyosaki’s Way
R
Best Advice In the Current Economic Climate
obert Kiyosaki is an American businessman,
entrepreneur and author well known in
South Africa. If you mention his name, you
immediately associate it with the number one best-
selling and most read personal finance book of all
time, called ‘Rich Dad Poor Dad’. Kiyosaki is also
the founder of the ‘Rich Dad’ company, which is a
private financial education company that provides
personal finance and business education to people
through seminars, books, videos and educational
games. He created the ‘Cash f low’ board game
and has authored around 26 books in the ‘Rich
Dad’ series translated into 51 languages, available
in 109 countries with over 27 million copies sold
worldwide. Kiyosaki told REIM recently that he
has personally implemented, invested and done all
the things he writes about in all of his books and
is not writing or speaking as an academic as most
authors do.
A lot has been written and spoken about this
financial guru, both good and bad, and like any
detractor he challenges the norms. What you can’t
challenge him on is his powerful, practical message
on financial education. He has been telling people
to invest in themselves and their own knowledge
first. He is a great motivator, impacting everyday
people to change their mindset, financial habits
and their financial independence. Many of his
perspectives on building wealth f ly in the face
of conventional wisdom. He is critical of the
traditional education systems that have been
teaching us antiquated and outdated financial
advice, which has been benefitting governments
and institutions for years.
Most financial advice, he says, is bad advice.
Advice such as, save money, get out of debt, and
invest in a portfolio of well-diversified mutual
funds are not the way to go if you want long-term
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financial success. Investments that have always
worked well for him include real estate, leveraging
debt, gold, silver, oil and he is now a big proponent
of using crypto currency to your advantage as a
new asset class for financial success.
He says people should not live below their
means only by reducing their spending, but it is
important to spend less than what you earn, but
at the same time as you raise your earning power.
People need to stop working for money and start
acquiring assets.
Kiyosaki is back in South Africa hosting multiple
events spreading his message of preparing yourself
for the next financial crash. Over the years, the
financial icon has made hard-hitting statements
about topical political and economic issues here in
South Africa. We share some of his more recent
thoughts and principles, explain how they relate
to our current economic climate, and how we can
use it to improve our personal financial situation.
ABOUT ROBERT KIYOSAKI
Age: 70 years old
Occupation: Businessman, author and investor
Married: Kim Kiyosaki
Qualifications: Bsc. Degree (USMMA);
MBA University of Hawaii
Residence: Phoenix, Arizona, USA
Estimated wealth: $80 million
Kiyosaki’s Business interests
Kiyosaki operates various business ventures
and investments. Many are concentrated in the
information technology (mobile apps and internet),
publishing, retail, education, mining, energy, financial
market, and real estate industries. Kiyosaki has been
in the oil business since the late 1990s. He owns a
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