Rich Dad Scam #1: Higher Education
The “school = success” scam
When I was young, my poor dad always told me the best path to success
was to go to school. He felt that was the best way to get a good job. The
problem was that my poor dad was one of the most educated people I knew,
but he was always complaining about money and how unhappy he was with
his work.
My rich dad, on the other hand, didn’t have a college degree. Yet he
was very rich and successful. Rich dad said, “School teaches you to be an
employee. If you want to be rich, don’t count on school.”
So, from a very young age, I learned that the promise of higher education
for success was one of the biggest scams around. That’s why the first Rich
Dad Scam identified is higher education.
Going to school doesn’t make you financially smart
Because I’m outspoken against the school system, I’m often accused
of being anti-education. Nothing could be further from the truth. But “go to
college” is one of those things people point at as a way of being successful
without ever stopping to think if it’s true.
The Rich Dad Scam that school will make you a success is perpetrated
everywhere and all the time. What will make you successful is not going to
school but rather financial education—learning how money works and how
to make it work for you—is what will make you successful, and, unfortunately,
you can’t get that in school.
When it comes to money, going to school won’t make you smart.

Rich Dad Scam #2: Get a Job
We see scams every day. Sometimes they are easy to see and call out,
like spam emails that promise riches in exchange for your bank information.
But some scams are a lot harder to spot. From my rich dad, I learned financial
smarts, which taught me how to spot scams—and how to not be taken in.
Unfortunately, without those financial smarts, it can be very easy to be taken
in by scams, especially the scams that the rich use to keep the poor in
their place.
To break away from those scams you usually need someone else to warn
you that you’re being duped, to tell you that you’re being taken advantage of,
and to tell you what you can do about it.
The big one: You need a job
When I was young, my poor dad always told me that I needed to go to
school so that I could get a good job. To my poor dad, getting a good job
was the most important thing in life. My poor dad worked very hard. And he
was always worried about money. Yet, he never got ahead. His job was one of
the things that actually kept him from succeeding. He toiled away working for
others, often getting raises only to keep up with the cost of living and paying a
high percentage to the government in taxes.
My rich dad, on the other hand, never had a “real” job, and he was rich
and successful. My rich dad understood that the sentiment, “Get a job,” was
a scam. Rather than get a job, he made jobs. Rather than work for someone
else, he worked for himself. Rather than pay high taxes, he used the tax code
to get rich.
How the scam works
The reason Get a Job is a Rich Dad Scam is because it makes you poorer,
especially if you have a high paying job, because you pay the most in taxes.
And guess who isn’t paying a lot of taxes? The owner of the business you
work for. The scam gets even worse when you look at it long-term. If you do
well at your job, if you claw your way up the ladder, what is your reward? A
small increase in pay and a bigger increase in taxes.

Rich Dad Scam #3: Work Hard
People often talk about a scam as a con. Con is short for confidence.
A con man can only dupe you if you put your confidence in him. When I talk
about Rich Dad Scams, the scams designed by the rich to keep you poor,
one of the hardest things to get past is that so many of us have been taught
to believe with conviction and confidence that these scams are true. And the
conning started so young that we never had a chance to think differently.
That’s the difference between thinking like my poor dad, who did what
he was told and died poor, and thinking like my rich dad, who was financially
educated and grew rich based on his knowledge of how money worked.
This chapter is about one of the biggest, most-ingrained Rich Dad Scams:
If you work hard, you will be rewarded.
Don’t work hard
My poor dad worked hard all his life. He went to school because he was
told to. He got a job because he was taught that was what you have to do. He
worked hard because that was what he was supposed to do. Yet, he struggled
financially his whole life, and often he was not happy.
When it came to working hard, my rich dad liked a story from Mark
Twain’s The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Tom runs a con job on the kids in his
neighborhood. His job is to paint a fence, and he makes it look like so much
fun that all the other kids offer to pay him to do the work.
Rich dad said, “Rather than work hard, I work smart. Smart work is getting
others to not only do but also want to do hard work for you. And smart work is
also getting money to work for you, not the other way around”
I love my work, but I’m also never far from it. Like most entrepreneurs, I’m
at it almost 24/7, but it doesn’t make me miserable—and it certainly doesn’t
feel like work. It’s more like a game that I love to play. It’s challenging. It’s fun.
It’s rewarding. If that sounds attractive to you, the first step to get there is
recognizing “work hard” for the Rich Dad Scam that it is. Stop working hard
for others and start working smart for yourself.

Rich Dad Scam #4: Live Below Your Means
Rich Dad Scams, are scams that I’ve identified that the rich perpetrate on
the poor and middle class to keep them poor.
One of the most challenging things about these scams is how ingrained
they are. If you weren’t lucky enough to have a rich dad to teach you about
them like I did, these scams probably make up your ideas and attitudes
toward money. They feel built in. Most people believe they must be true
because they’ve heard them all their life.
So it can be difficult to remember that the Rich Dad Scams I’ve identified
are lies, but it’s vital to know that they are. And this post is going to handle
one of the big ones. This scam says: In order to be rich, you have to live below
your means.
On the surface, “Live below you means,” seems to make sense, but the
only people who live below their means are poor people. The rich don’t live
below their means. Rather, they make better means.
A poor mindset
My poor dad said, “We can’t afford that.”
My rich dad said, “Rather than live below my means, I make more money
to get what I want. Rather than say, ‘I can’t afford that,’ I ask, ‘How can I
afford that?’”
“Live below your means,” is a poor mindset because it teaches you to think
too narrowly. Rather than teach you to be creative in making more money, it
teaches you to be merciless in what you spend your money on. You balance
the dollars you bring in from your job against your needs and wants. And no
one likes finding things you can live without so you can afford something else.
It’s awful.

Rich Dad Scam #5: Save Money
The Rich Dad Scams I’ve identified are, very simply, the things you are
taught about money that are wrong. They keep you from becoming rich.
They are the ideas the rich have built into society to keep you poor and them
rich. Unfortunately, they’re so driven into our minds that it can be hard to
recognize them as lies.
This chapter’s scam is Rich Dad Scam #5, “Save Money.”
Time and money changes
“If you save money, you will have money.” “Save money for a rainy day.”
“A penny saved is a penny earned.” These are common lessons parents teach
their kids about money. Unfortunately, there’s one big problem with them:
they’re lies.
The big problem with Rich Dad Scam #5, “Save Money,” is that it used to
be true. A generation or two ago, saving money paid off. You could set aside
a certain amount of money and retire on it. Your parents or your grandparents
might have done just that, and it worked. But what worked for them cannot
work for you in today’s economy. To understand this, you must understand the
history of money.

Rich Dad Scam #6: Your House is an Asset
It seems like every financial “expert” says, “Your house is your biggest
asset.” When I wrote Rich Dad Poor Dad, I said that your house was a liability.
That was like spraying water on a hornets’ nest. The so-called experts
lambasted me. At the time, the real estate market was skyrocketing. Everyone
called me a contrarian, out to sell books. Today, after one of the worst housing
crashes in US history, they aren’t laughing anymore.
This chapter is about one of the biggest Rich Dad Scams of all, “Your
house is an asset.”
Money in, money out
Your financial planner, real estate agent, and accountant all call your house
an asset. But in reality, an asset is only something that puts money in your
pocket. If you have a house that you rent out to tenants, then it’s an asset.
If you have a house, paid for or not, that you live in, then it can’t be an asset.
Instead of putting money in your pocket, it takes money out of your pocket.
That is the simple definition of a liability.
This is doubly true if you don’t own your home yet. Then it’s the bank’s
asset, and it is working for them, but it’s not earning you anything.
So what is an asset?
In business terms, assets are your pros and liabilities are your cons.
You need assets to offset your liabilities. Once you get away from the Rich
Dad Scams, it’s easier to think in those terms, to think like an entrepreneur.
But what exactly are assets?

Rich Dad Scam #7: Get Out Of Debt
As you’ve been reading this ebook, you may see some patterns in Rich
Dad Scams. Several of them go together, and they all come from the same
mindset. Saving money, living below your means, and this Rich Dad Scam,
“Getting Out of Debt,” all come from one place: Being afraid of money.
Just like all the other scams, the idea that you have to get out of debt and
stay out of debt to be successful is a lie, and it gets repeated because people
don’t have a financial education. They simply don’t really understand what
money is, how it works, and how to put it to work.
Isn’t debt bad?
The Rich Dad Scams we identify are the ways the rich stay rich and make
sure the poor stay poor. That can be counterintuitive, especially when some
of the scams, like getting out of debt and saving money, seem like they would
help you get rich. But that’s the scam.
The rich carry debt. They generally carry a lot of debt. But they have assets
that more than make up for the debt the carry. In fact, the rich not only carry
debt, they also use it to get richer. The difference between the rich and poor
when it comes to debt is understanding the difference between good debt
and bad debt.
Good debt versus bad
Bad debt is debt that makes you poorer, such as credit card debt, car
loans, and more. This is the type of debt used to buy liabilities.
Good debt is debt that makes you richer, such as a loan for investment
property or to purchase equipment for your business that will make you a
return. This is the type of debt that is used to buy assets.
An easy example of good debt is my real estate holdings. By getting a loan
from the bank, I can purchase a property with only a small percentage out of
my pocket. I then rent that property and my tenant pays the cost of the debt
while putting money in my pocket.
Business is the same as the real estate example. You have good debt that
pays for itself. The cash flow of your business covers the debt and generates
income. That income can be turned into more good debt to create more
cash flow.

Rich Dad Scam #8: Invest Diversely in the Long Term
Rich Dad Scams are the “rules” the rich want you to follow that will keep
you an employee and keep you from getting rich while they get richer.
The reason why so many people buy into these scams is because some of
them, like working harder and saving money, used to be viable. If you followed
them, there was a reward, but not anymore.
As we’ve seen in other scams like paying off debt, living within your means,
and saving your money, the Rich Dad Scams I’ve identified keep you from
truly putting your money to work. They keep you from turning your money into
more money. In other words, they keep you poor.

some really good stuff... i was burnt some few years ago when i ventured into business... but am healed now... relaunching myself again...