Author of Cash Flow Quadrant, Robert Kiyosaki, gave a practical insight on how Rich Dad guided Mike and him to become financially free. According to the prolific writer, Rich Dad would always say to Mike and him, “Money is a Drug.”
The main reason he refused to pay them while they were working for him was because he never wanted them to become addicted to working for money. “If you become addicted to money,” said Rich Dad, “it’s hard to break that addiction.”
According to Kiyosaki, when he was called from California as a grown man to ask for money from Rich Dad, he was not about to break a pattern he had started with Mike and him when they were 9 years old. He did not give them money as kids, and he was not about to start then. Instead, he continued to be tough and guide them away from the addiction of working for money.
He called money drug because he had observed people who were happy when they had money, and upset or moody when they did not. Just as heroin addicts get high when they inject the drug, they also get moody and violent when they don’t have it.
“Be careful of money’s addictive power”, he often said. “Once you get used to receiving it, that addiction keeps you attached to the way you got it”.
Put another way, if you receive money as an employee, then you tends to get accustomed to that way of acquiring it. If you get used to generating money by being self-employed, it is often difficult to break the attachment to earning money in that way.
“The hardest part about moving from the left side to the right side is the attachment you have to the way you have been earning money,” said Rich Dad. “It’s more than breaking a habit; it’s breaking an addiction.”
That is why he stressed to Mike and him to never work for money. He insisted they learn to create their own systems as a way of acquiring money.
