Wisdom of Rich Dad

What is your greatest asset? Most people think it is their house. They are wrong. Bank account? Wrong again. For the vast majority of people, the greatest asset they have is the ability to generate income. Think about that for a moment… How does the mortgage for the house get paid? How does that bank account get filled? How do you repay debt, fund retirement and investment accounts, or pay for food, shelter, clothing and other life essentials?Unless you are independently wealthy, you work to create this income.

Yes, there are people have reached the crossover point with their investment portfolio (the point at which their investments consistently earn more than they do at their day job). But many people who reach that point still need to work to maintain their current standard of living because they may have debts or other obligations to pay. They may also outlive their money if they quit working too soon.

A little about net worth

Your net worth has a different meaning depending on where you live, your stage of life, how you determine your net worth, the type of assets that comprise your net worth (income generating assets, retirement funds, half a million acres of barren wasteland in the desert), etc. Knowing your net worth can be good if used as a checkpoint, or a motivational tool, but net worth cannot calculate your financial future, nor does it measure your great financial asset – the ability to generate income.

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~ Kim Kiyosak i~

Are we training our kids today to be quitters? Are we teaching them when a tough problem arises or when things don’t go as planned, to simply quit?

How often in your life would you like a “do-over”? “Wow, I really screwed up on that, I think I’ll take a do-over and start again.” Wouldn’t that be handy?

Enter the “reset button”. Many of the video games you and your kids are playing come equipped with a reset button. When you’re about to lose, can’t figure out how to get to the next level, or the solution to the puzzle takes too much brain power, what do you do? You hit the reset button – you quit and start again. The reset button makes quitting easy… over and over and over.

Are we programming our kids to accept quitting as an acceptable answer to life’s problems?

“Children who learn to bounce back and not let setbacks get them down have gained a valuable skill for life,” says Michele Borba, psychologist and author of the Today.com article, “How Not to Raise a Quitter. “If our children are to succeed in this competitive world, they must learn to hang in there and not quit.”

We all know there is no reset button in real life, so what happens when life kicks you in the butt? We all have different coping mechanisms, ways to handle adversity, stress and challenges. Quitting is not a way to cope. It is a way to avoid and run away from your problems. It’s a way to not be accountable for your life. And it’s not the way to obtain financial freedom.

It’s handling the pressures, the difficulties and the setbacks that make you who you are.

Triumphing against bad odds is invaluable. Overcoming great obstacles makes you stronger and smarter. How one handles adversity determines a person’s level of success in life.

Do you take it on, create new solutions and face your fears… or do you reach for the reset button

Constance Atkinson, a 20-year veteran of couponing, estimates that she saves more than $1,000 per year by scouring the newspaper for deals.

Atkinson, a Brooklyn resident, and other bargain-seeking consumers fueled a 63-percent surge in coupon redemption last year, according to new data from Coupons.org.

But the changing face of the coupon user may surprise you.

Households with incomes of $100,000 or more are twice as likely to coupon as those who earn less than $35,000. College-degree holders are also twice as likely to use coupons as those who did not graduate from high school.

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~Kim Kiyosaki~

I’m working out at my gym last week and I notice one of the trainers, Mark, talking to a police officer dressed in full uniform, gun and all. I asked him if she was going to train with him. He shook his head in frustration and said, “She’s been coming in and talking to me for months. She wants to lose about thirty pounds, but she’s just not willing to do what she needs to do to lose the weight.”

Then he laughed and added, “I guess as long as she has her gun and her Taser she doesn’t need to be too fit or too fast.” I asked Mark, “Why do you think she won’t commit to train with you?” “I don’t know.” was all he said.

About a half hour later, Mark came up to me in the middle of my crunches and said, “I think the main reason why people don’t commit to exercise is that they don’t want to be uncomfortable. They don’t want to work hard. They don’t want to push themselves.” Then he made a statement that I think is the key to success in anything you take on. He said,

“You have to be comfortable with being uncomfortable.”

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I know I’ve been quoting finance guru Dave Ramsey a lot lately, but I can’t stop thinking about something he said:

“Live like no one else, so later you can live like no one else.”

What does he mean?

Many people look at mega-successful CEO’s and celebrities and utter those confounded words, “They’re so lucky.”

Most successful people aren’t lucky. They’ve lived like no one else, so that they can live like no one else.

Multimillionaire Robert Kiyosaki was homeless, living out of his car, while he built his first company.

Singer Katy Perry dropped out of high school after her freshmen year to pursue music full-time.

Bestselling author John Grisham gave up his legal career to become a full-time writer. Twenty-eight publishers rejected him before an unknown company agreed to give his first book a small print run.

Actress Jennifer Aniston worked as a telemarketer and waitress while she auditioned for acting roles in New York and L.A.

Designer Vera Wang gave up a promising figure skating career to work in the fashion industry.

Former Philadelphia Eagles and Pittsburg Steelers player Jeremy Bloom sacrificed his football career to become a World Champion skier.

Most tech entrepreneurs spent their teenage years glued to a computer, never knowing if their idea would pan out.

What do these stories have in common? These athletes, designers, actors, writers and entrepreneurs lived in a way that most people wouldn’t. They embraced huge levels of risk and sacrifice.

None of them were guaranteed success. Heck, half of them weren’t even guaranteed a paycheck or health insurance. But they went for it anyway.

Your story doesn’t need to be as dramatic as theirs. “Live like no one else” could be as simple as pledging to live a debt-free life.

I sometimes watch people carry Michael Kors handbags, drive Lexus cars, and live in $1,500-per-month one-bedroom luxury apartments, and I wonder: “What am I doing wrong? How do they have so much money?”

Then I realize: the majority of people – 70 percent of Americans, according to U.S. News – are in consumer debt.

Being part of the 30 percent that chooses not to pay for luxuries through consumer debt is – by itself – living like no one else.

If you live like no one else now, you’ll really be able to live like no one else in the future. You’ll have saved enough to quit your job and support yourself for a year while you try a new career. You’ll have enough to pay in cash for your dream car, or to travel the world.

And when that happens, people will probably say: “You’re so lucky.”

We learn that fear is bad, and happiness is good. We run away from fear and toward happiness. But what is fear, if not a few sensations in the body coupled with a few thoughts?

We are the creators of our own fear, yet we believe we are the fear. We put up filters that we see the world through, and we get these filters from our experiences in life. We form meaning from them, and we approach the world through them.

If someone had bad experiences in life, they will see the world as bad, unless they choose not to. Easier said than done. You are not your fear is the message I want you to get from this article.

Welcome
When fear arises, simply welcome it. Most people try to push it away, they resist fear, and they want to get rid of it. This causes friction and it makes it worse. I bet you’ve tried this. How has it been working out so far? Not so well, right?

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