Robert Kiyosaki is the author of the famous Rich Dad, Poor Dad book series. He is also a very successful investor in real estate.
Last weekend Kiyosaki appeared on the Foxnews program of Neil Cavuto. Cavuto and his correspondents were pushing the memo that despite a few strong hurricanes in the last years, people are still eagerly buying real estate along the Atlantic/Caribbean coast. Then Cavuto turned to his guest Kiyosaki. The interview was remarkable. I almost started to write down a transcript. But to save time, I waited for the official Foxnews transcript, which is apparently not coming… So I’m reproducing from memory.
Kiyosaki admitted outright that he is scared of the situation in real estate. He even said that he would like to sell his two beach homes in Caribbean and in Hawaii, “right now“, just because he does not like worrying about his properties. Hurricanes rarely hit Hawaii, so the worry is not only about Nature’s fury.
Kiyosaki stressed that this is not the time for amateurs to be jumping in. He said that there are already too many idiots in the market asking ridiculous prices, so that few good deals are possible. He clearly implied that the real estate bubble is big. In his words:
And then he stressed again, that this is not the time to be jumping in and going for capital gains.
On the other hand, Kiyosaki confided that he feels sexually excited when bubble busts are coming, because after them it is the best time to buy. That’s kind from Kiyosaki, since purely financially he might be more interested in making the pool of “poor dad idiots” larger. Ok sorry, Kiyosaki must be a decent man. But Cavuto seems to like that “job” of encouraging fools.
I checked the official website of Kiyosaki. He has a series of articles All Booms Bust, which confirms the same disposition towards current real estate market. Here are some snips:
Kiyosaki is not the only one capital insider who is expecting real estate bust. For example, I saw right-wing newsletters with the titles such as After Greenspan, a Major Recession, “Greatest Real Estate Investor [Tom Barrack]: Bust Warning”, and even “Restoring the American Dream” (right, Bush presidency was not great for the American Dream…)
[Crossposted at European Tribune and Daily Kos.]
All Booms Bust… can’t find the article
Sorry, there was a small error in the address. It works now.
Many of the biggest real estate players are selling their holdings. In Silicon Valley, the largest commercial landlord, Peery Arigilla, has announced that they are selling everything they own. Likewise in Canada, the Reichmann family is selling their collection of office buildings. I’ve heard of several developers in other cities who are also selling out. Surely, this is the critical signal for a top in real estate.
Although Rich Dad, Poor Dad was a very popular book, I thought that parts of it were frankly unbelievable – especially the verbatim recollection of long, philosophical conversations that he claims to remember from when he was nine years old. However, the essential point of the book is right – rich people save money to buy income producing assets, while poor people spend money on luxury items, and wealth has very little to do with income. If we play the game Rich Country, Poor Country, who is saving for tommorrow? and who is spending for today? That question sort of answers itself.
I’ve never heard of or read the book, but “poor people spend money on luxury items” is one of its “essential points”?? WTF?
Depends on your definition of “poor” and of “luxury items”, I suppose.
I haven’t read his book either, but the statement reminds me of a conversation with a student who had worked in a high powered lawyers’ office for some years. Most of their clients were very, very wealthy. Which led him to ponder why they were so wealthy and how they stayed that way and got ever wealthier.
He was telling me that they never spent serious money on anything that wouldn’t generate even more money. Franchises like McDonald’s were popular – a virtual cash cow he said.
The “non-wealthy” (not necessarily poor) on the other hand, tended to spend their money on things that made their lives better. Not having grown up wealthy, they didn’t have a clue how the “rich get richer” game is played. When they start to get ahead, they trade in their old clunker on a nice minivan to drive their kids to soccer games with. Save money for a down payment so they can quit renting and buy a house or move to a bigger house in a nicer neighborhood. And so on. It doesn’t occur to them to spend money on things that make money, but the rich are always thinking in those terms.
Now a non-clunker, reliable car is not really a “luxury” and neither is your own home or a safer neighborhood for your kids to go out and play in. And of course, the truly poor don’t even have those options. His point was “the rich are different” from you and me.
When we finally get those school loans paid off and get a raise or a better job, when we get to the place where we can actually save a little – amass some capital, so to speak, we tend to use our capital for things like buying a house we can live in, maybe some home improvements, put a little in our kid’s college fund or our own retirement account. We think of those things as “investments.”
But to the truly rich, when they look for a way to invest excess money, they are always thinking in terms of how this will make them even more money. In the sense of cash flow.
Of course, they have a lot more capital to work with. You and I are not likely to ever have enough to buy a McDonald’s. But his point was not how much capital we do or don’t have – it was that the rich look at money from a completely different perspective. We invest to make our lives better, to make our children’s future brighter. They invest with an eye on “will this get me a check in the mail every quarter?”
It explained a lot to me about that whole, “them that’s got shall get, them that’s not shall lose” thing.
Yes, and the reason why is very simple. Rich Dad, Poor Dad tries to make it look complex, and justify the difference in station as an intellectual superiority/inferiority setup. But really, the difference comes down to this:
The rich already have the basic necessities, and more than a few luxuries. Either they’ve earned fast enough to buy them and then turn to investing, or they’ve inherited them from their parents. But they don’t have to fight for a house that isn’t falling down around their ears; don’t have to skimp and save to afford a car that won’t fall apart if they step on the gas too hard; don’t have to constantly worry about their next meal. Why? Because they already have them.
The rich get richer because they have enough money to not worry about necessities.
it kind of tickled.
And I certainly don’t disagree. It’s what I’ve always believed myself. But my student added another layer to my thinking. Because the rich take for granted that the necessities of life are a given, and more luxury than most of us are used to for that matter, they have a very different attitude toward money. Money for them is a way to get more money.
Money for people like me is a way to buy things that make my life better, that makes my daughter’s life a little easier than mine was, even that makes the world a better place. It thrills me to pieces that I can afford to click on the link and type in my credit card number and give some to UNICEF for the earthquake victims – even if the amount I type in is small.
For most of my adult life, I spent the first of the month trying to decide whether to pay the electric bill or the doctor that had already waited three months for me to pay him. Not to mention the agony of trying to decide whether this sore throat really required another trip to the doctor. And I spent my childhood watching parents agonize over the same decisions.
So now I feel “rich.” Money for me is an emotional roller coaster, always. From sitting bolt upright in the middle of the night sweating anxiety – will my daughter and I be under the bridge in my old car if I don’t figure out how to handle this latest crisis? to (now) feeling actual exhilaration that every month for the past few years I sit down knowing that the damn electric bill will get paid this time. And that I have – halleluja! health insurance! – for most of my life, I didn’t.
As to the why I have a different perspective about money from someone who was born to a very wealthy family – I absolutely agree with you. Me: Money – you pay the bills with it and if you get a little extra it is for making life better, for me or for other people. Them: Money is a tool to make more money with.
What my student added to my thinking was that for the first time I saw what it must look like from their point of view. I hadn’t really looked at it that way before.
I mean, I knew that money begets more money, that simply being poor tends to keep you poor (can you say “payday loan?”), but that I was subconsciously thinking, money = better life. If you were born rich, better life comes easily, is taken for granted, is mo’ bettah (Molokai reference 🙂
What my student was trying to say was that they aren’t rich because they are smarter or anything of the kind – it’s just that they see money from an entirely different perspective than we do, and that they breathe in that perspective in from the cradle.
I remember being blown away in an economic class eons ago when my professor explained that 98% of wealth in the US comes from assets NOT income. Only a mere 2% of universal wealth in the US actually comes from people going to work 40 hours a week…
Money really does make money…
Terry Pratchett had an absolutely amazing illustration of one of his books. Watchman Sam Vimes is walking down the street and thinking about the rich and the poor. And he thinks about his boots. Worn-out things, with cardboard and string used to stretch out their life as much as possible. And he still has to buy new boots every few months. Meanwhile, a rich man can buy a pair of boots that will last him several years, if not most of his life.
Yet Vimes still spends more on boots.
And poor people like him always spend more on boots, because they never have enough money at one time to buy expensive boots. They spend too much of it on basic survival.
The rich aren’t rich because they think of money differently. They’re rich because they got lucky and were able to buy expensive boots once, and then could afford to think of money differently and get richer.
This is the fundamental falsehood of libertarianism. Getting rich is not a deterministic process. It’s not even a matter of taking advantage of opportunities. It’s a matter of getting lucky.
It is a mindset.
I had a Chinese friend who was telling me about her rich uncle that worked at Kentucky fried chicken who owned three condos downtown and a huge portfolio of stocks and sent all of his first generation children to college that … I naturally assumed that he owned the KC franchised… she corrected me and said NO that he worked on the counter boxing chicken…
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I like the thesis of your diaries, makes you pauze and wonder about ordinary questions to make daily life more livable. Often it’s a question of making ends meet, thrifty spending, not getting into heaps of debt, credit cards, interest rates on loans, medical expenses, living to a budget to make ends meet.
Just saw a report on CNNi about General Motors (GM) stocks plunge 6% today, which is massive for one of the largest U.S. corporations. Pulling down the Dow Jones, NASDAQ and European stock markets. The underlying fear is a possible filing for bankruptcy by GM due to exploding Health Insurance costs for employees and pensioners. GM wants a new agreement with the Labor Unions to defer healthcare costs to employees. The – I hate the word – globalization makes competition for manufacturing in the U.S. too difficult, although the U.S. dollar vs. the Euro has lost nearly 50% of its value during the Bush administration.
SEC subpoenas General Motors
27 October, 2005
General Motors has been subpoenaed by the US Securities and Exchange Board in order to investigate accounting practises and other matters, reports Reuters.
The subpoena relates to the transaction between the company and its component supplier Delphi a…
Will the Federal government have to jump in and spend American tax dollars to rescue GM, similar to Chrysler Corp in the nineties?
Some data on the jump in Healtcare (HC) costs for employers and employees from 2000-2004 ::
Non-insured Americans 45 million
Employee costs increased 126%
Employer HC costs increased past year 11.2%
HC cost increase past 5 years has been above 10%
I have too little knowledge of U.S. employee benefits, but this is a topic that should be diaried. How much in this is due to cost of prescription drugs, a group of corporations on the right-wing Republican side in politics. Stocks have been on the rise on the average, profits have increased in direct relation to HC cost for an average American family.
“Treason doth never prosper: what’s the reason?
For if it prosper, none dare call it treason.”
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In America, there is never “enough.” I used to think like that, now I’m old enough to not want a big house I have to take care of.
However, I do still struggle with the concept of “enough chocolate.”
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Chocolates – you should move to Belgium or its previous colony Congo or perhaps the Ivory Coast.
≈ 50 kg ≈
“Treason doth never prosper: what’s the reason?
For if it prosper, none dare call it treason.”
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