Is your life a 'rat race'?

Over the weekend, I finally finished reading the famous financial education book, "Rich Dad Poor Dad". The book was published more than a decade ago and has sold a staggering 30 million copies.

After reading through the whole book, I felt that I hated it. I can't help but think that if I had read this book ten years earlier, I might have had a different life now.

The author of this book, Robert Kiyosaki, is a Japanese-American who started with nothing in his 20s and soon became a successful entrepreneur and investor.

The book has no difficult theories and the language is very accessible, but it is not without radical and subversive ideas that are sobering.

"Become masters of money" "The rich make money work for them, the poor work for money" "The rich acquire assets, the poor and middle class acquire liabilities" The idea that "only knowledge can solve problems and create wealth" has long been known with the book's bestseller.

The rich dad and the poor dad in the book represent the rich and the middle class/poor respectively. The differences in their attitudes towards money and wealth, their perceptions of assets and expenses, and their choices of ways to manage their finances have resulted in very different outcomes in their lives.

Kiyosaki clearly heeded his rich father's teachings and chose to become a rich man, achieving financial freedom at the age of 47 through his own financial skills and wisdom.

The book opens with a description of the "rat race" game, a very graphic and thought-provoking metaphor.

Most ordinary people are taught from an early age to study hard and get a good job when they grow up. When they enter the workforce, they work not only for their bosses, but also for the government by paying taxes, and for the banks by paying off home loans and credit card loans. They will also advise their children to study hard, get a good job and repeat their life trajectory.

They work hard all their lives and the next generation repeats the same process, like rats trapped in a cage, stomping forward daily, but always trapped.

How do you feel after reading this analogy?

Most people in the world really do live their lives according to this standard model, except that many are not aware of the fact that they are "rats in a cage". Only a few wealthy people have jumped out of the "rat race", and Kiyosaki is one of them.

The root cause of the "rat race" is the "fear and greed" of human nature. Most people want a steady paycheck, the fear of not having money drives them to work hard, and when they get paid, greed or desire makes them want all the good things they can buy with money.

So a pattern develops: get up, go to work, pay the bills, get up again, go to work again, pay the bills again ...... Their lives are then dominated by fear and greed, and even if they are given more money, they repeat the cycle with higher expenses.

The moral of the "rat race" game is that the poor and middle class let money rule their lives, control their emotions and their souls, and they refuse to know the truth. Because of fear and greed, most people spend their lives chasing wages, raises and job security, without ever asking where the path of this emotionally-driven life leads.

Seeing this, are you able to answer the following questions.

What is the purpose of your lifelong hustle and bustle? What do you work so hard for in the end? What does the future hold for you?

If you find that you have never thought about this before, or if you feel torn, miserable, confused or helpless when you do, then you need to read Kiyosaki's solutions carefully.

Kiyosaki believes that the only way to escape the "rat race" is to be proficient in money management and investing, and he therefore stresses the importance of financial education. He was disillusioned with schooling and wanted to reform the outdated education system.

Education and wisdom about money is very important, but most schools currently neglect training in money management skills, which is one of the most important skills in life.

The book states that the most dangerous advice adults can give to children is to go to school, study hard and then get a secure job. This advice is outdated and foolish. If you want your children to have a financially secure future, you can't let them play by the old rules. Most people don't grasp the laws of money movement when they are schooled, so they spend their lives working for it.

Financial literacy is actually a combination of skills and talents. The four skills of financial literacy, investment strategies, market supply and demand, and legal regulations form the foundation of financial management skills.

We all have a talent for managing money, but it remains dormant. We should awaken our financial talent by getting educated to manage our money smarter. Financial intelligence is developed through the process of solving financial problems.

To get out of the 'rat race' trap early on, we need to be financially literate, understand the laws of money movement and make money work for us.

The idea that work is the only way to make money is something that people who are financially immature have. It doesn't mean they are not smart enough, they just haven't learnt the lessons of earning money.

At this writing, Kiyosaki has actually nailed the secret of the rich: be the master of your money and make it work for you.

How do you make money work for you? The first step is to figure out the difference between assets and liabilities, and to keep buying assets. Simply put, an asset is something that puts money in your pocket; a liability is something that takes money out of your pocket.

Kiyosaki says that his entire investment philosophy is to sow "seeds" under assets, and that is his rule.

The rich are committed to investing and reducing their liabilities. Assets generate enough income to cover expenses, and the surplus income can be reinvested in assets. The asset line grows and so does the corresponding income. The result: the rich get richer!

The advice Kiyosaki gives is that the sooner you can start training yourself and your loved ones to be masters of money, the better the outcome will be. To be the master of money, you have to be smarter than money, and then money can do what you want it to do and submit to you, so that you are its master and not a slave. -- that's financial intelligence.

In fact, as the book says, every day, with every dollar, you are making the choice of whether you will be a rich man, a poor man or a middle-class man.

Your ideas determine what you can get, but if you don't act on them, the best ideas will be reduced to mere words.