One, it gave a nice contextual presentation of the needed change to do things. I’d owned small businesses as a child/teenager and was looking to do the same as an adult. Rich Dad taught me the difference between a rich mentality and a poor one. This also helped me see what my parents were doing correctly and incorrectly in their own businesses and make adjustments for myself.
Two, the points of Save, Invest, Tithe are broad basic steps to take. The only one that I have a variation on is Tithing because I don’t belong to any organized religion so I look at the money I give away or service I give away in volunteerism as tithing. I tithe to the planet (and its residents) in the name/idea of reciprocity and universal balance. That means that I personally determine what strikes me, what doesn’t, what interests me, where I can help and where I recognize I can’t help. I’ve recently started working with Heifer.org, Kiva and a personal money lending service—-essentially you read up on a project/person and then you give as much or as little to their pie need as possible. So if the ask is for $1000, 10 of us may do $100 or two of us $500 or any divisible variant until their loan amount is met. This is then brokered by a micro lending project in their area of the world that has proofed their business concept/need and ability to repay. Within the presentation is the repayment time frame——say 1 year on $1000 and whatever percentage I personally loaned I am credited back with each of their repayments and the middle broker acts as the guarantor (the person has established credit/collateral with the broker). I like this model because I’m helping at a comfortable level for myself, we’re crowdfunding a project and someone who needs $1000 to buy store supplies, farm animals, textile materials in bulk gets that infusion. The projects are generally very normal, nothing grandiose so it’s obvious that it’s a building loan.
Two, the points of Save, Invest, Tithe are broad basic steps to take. The only one that I have a variation on is Tithing because I don’t belong to any organized religion so I look at the money I give away or service I give away in volunteerism as tithing. I tithe to the planet (and its residents) in the name/idea of reciprocity and universal balance. That means that I personally determine what strikes me, what doesn’t, what interests me, where I can help and where I recognize I can’t help. I’ve recently started working with Heifer.org, Kiva and a personal money lending service—-essentially you read up on a project/person and then you give as much or as little to their pie need as possible. So if the ask is for $1000, 10 of us may do $100 or two of us $500 or any divisible variant until their loan amount is met. This is then brokered by a micro lending project in their area of the world that has proofed their business concept/need and ability to repay. Within the presentation is the repayment time frame——say 1 year on $1000 and whatever percentage I personally loaned I am credited back with each of their repayments and the middle broker acts as the guarantor (the person has established credit/collateral with the broker). I like this model because I’m helping at a comfortable level for myself, we’re crowdfunding a project and someone who needs $1000 to buy store supplies, farm animals, textile materials in bulk gets that infusion. The projects are generally very normal, nothing grandiose so it’s obvious that it’s a building loan.
Three, I personally have become much better at Saving and Investing having read about 35 of the RD series of books. The first year I went and did the H&R Block tax class. I still have a private firm do my taxes and I’ve done the IRS certification as well for a non profit project but my personal and business taxes are one of the highlights of my year. I’m very conscious of the differences in earned, passive and other types of income and combined with Robert Allen’s Multiple Streams of Income books, have worked my way up to about 11 streams of monthly income. That was a clear RD shift. I chose to answer this question because this month I was actually emailed about an account that multiple sales royalties were deposited into that surprised me. It’s a nice surprise when money arrives in an account for work I’ve created years ago sold in Europe and other countries.
It also broadened what Saving and Investing means to me. Tax management is a form of Savings and personal reinvestment for me. I wouldn’t have been schooled and then pointed in the direction of learning higher forms of financial management if not for RDPD. By that I mean my first employment year I was well into the 39% tax bracket, six months after undergrad. They were literally taking a small salary out of my base salary in just base Federal taxes. When coupled with State, Local, City and FICA it was a bloodbath and I was working 60–80 weeks. Within a year’s time I’d learned the profitability of my 401k, ROTH IRA, tax deductions, business deductions from a Sole Proprietorship and the control of a C Corp due to RD and shifted from well over 60% tax to less than 15%.
Pressed by Cashflow Quadrant, Guide to Investing, I embarked on learning how to invest in the stock market to a profit. I made money off of the Matrix movies because those books peaked my ears. The release of the second two films was preceded by the purchase/absorption of the video game company Infrogames, a French company I think. The release of Matrix 2 and 3 promised a huge video game connection and animation arm in video games and animated films. I had started an investment account with Sharebuilder, bought Infrogames, it’s price shot up from when I heard about it by chance on the radio in February to the end of the year. I then made enough money to qualify for a Margins account and off I went to the day trading races, even opting out of going to a job for portions of several years while I ran a business from home and invested. I understood investing better , a compliment from a trainer at an MCI training class was that a portion of training we were doing was financial and that I was good at arbitrage. I had no idea what it was, a classmate who’d been a stockbroker explained it, I went and looked it further up, coupled with RD. Then RD was like practice by playing games and I found HSX.com. The Hollywood Stock Exchange. They give you $2 million virtual buckets. In my joining span of time and now I’ve turned it, with half ass attention into nearly 700 million…but more importantly it gave me an advanced, real time education in stock exchanges which I translated into the real world and have made enough money to be slightly grumbling at several tax sessions and Obama buying GM.
I would’ve never gone that route without RDPD because I wouldn’t have had the breadcrumbs Kiyosaki littered of if you want more, to do better, to control more of your life and financial future this is what you must not only know in content, but how you must shift your mental contextual framework. I’ve been to one of his seminars here in NY. It was pretty good. He autographed several of my books and I learned about catfishing from AOL (someone was pretending to be him online a few days before the seminar and mentioned something that I brought up to him in person that he cleared up as not him).
Fourth, professionally I’ve used Cashflow 101 for over a decade with students, particularly adult students who have math and under-resource/poverty issues. I harangued an Executive Director at a non profit I volunteered and then worked at years ago to purchase that instead of a PlayStation for my youth group. The majority of them were over 18, half graduates of high school and college, two thirds from generational poverty. I taught the RD concepts and context changes for months, bought several Monopoly sets and we altered them to create an advanced game so that by the time we got Cashflow 101 they were well versed in advanced financial terms and thinking. From there I was able to get Citibank to come in an provide free checking and savings accounts and most importantly financial management and home buying classes. From there, Abyssinian Development Corporation, an arm/branch of the famous church, provides First Time Home Buyers classes for $35 for four sessions where banks, loan officers, appraisers, contractors explain to a class all the ins and outs and then the counselors work with the students for as long as it takes to purchase a home, providing them with a substantial down-payment and helping with credit prep and clean up. Not only have several of my students taken advantage of this to purchasing properties but in a casual conversation with family, I mentioned it, they looked it up in their state and met the requirements to receive a $7,000 grant on the spot for a house they were in the process of buying.
Because of the successful outcomes of so many students in that first youth program I got a nice reputation was able to parlay that to double my salary at another nonprofit and then move into my Columbia phase of work. I take credit for being able to teach it but to have such a concise, accessible group of materials for multiple educational levels in adults was invaluable. As a funny aside, I was walking one summer evening with a friend from one part of Manhattan to another, about 50 blocks just talking. A young lady comes up to me and begins this huge heartfelt thanks of me for teaching her in a Columbia class that she’d had to drop out of. She had a baby and had to work more. She goes on about her father seeing me on my TV show and her having a list of the books I mentioned in class they should pick up. RDPD was on the list, she got it and was back in school. I honestly slightly remembered her because I teach multiple classes and there can be 50+ students per class. But I was struck by how she’d picked up that book and it changed her context of what she could learn to do even when she felt she was behind the eight ball.
I’m currently multiple property shopping now in several states to build up my real estate portfolio with the proceeds from my other businesses/streams of income. I don’t see a personal home as an asset so I think properties I own could help others and they can pay off the mortgage and I can parlay the equity to providing for my great-grandchildren.
It’s been a careful, slow, patient road from 20 years ago of the basics of Save, Invest and Tithe and using the RD work to get to an advanced level and to dig deeper into what the iterations of those terms could be. The whole series is a cornerstone of my financial library and has accelerated me personally in business and professionally.
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