U.S. News offers some great money management advice in a recent article called 8 Questions for the Constantly Broke. Advice about money fits generally into three categories: practical, philosophical and spiritual. Most articles like this one focus on the practical without addressing the other two.
Practical Practical financial advice focuses on one question: how can I live within my means? Most, including the U.S. News article, recommend things like skipping daily latte's, buying used cars instead of new and reminding us that we're earning now not just for now but also for future rainy days and retirement. They preach that we should not be stupid with our money, in other words.
Kiyosaki isn't opposed to living within one's means. But he believes that if we want that nice car, that's fine--just find a way to pay for it first. Don't subordinate your desires to your current income. Rather, allow that desire to spur your thinking and your efforts toward different money-making avenues that will produce the income necessary to purchase that nice car.
Spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle directs our attention to our inner state as the determining factor of our outer circumstances. If you have inner peace, he teaches, peace will surround you; abundance within, so without.
Philosophical But what if you really love that new car smell? That's where philosophy comes in. What should your financial goals be? Maybe scrimping and saving don't fit in with the way we want to live.
An excellent source of financial philosophy is Robert Kiyosaki's Rich Dad Poor Dad
series. The eponymous original along with Cashflow Quadrant
and Rich Dad's Guide to Investing
form the backbone of this, the best selling financial series ever.
series. The eponymous original along with Cashflow Quadrant and Rich Dad's Guide to Investingform the backbone of this, the best selling financial series ever.
Kiyosaki isn't opposed to living within one's means. But he believes that if we want that nice car, that's fine--just find a way to pay for it first. Don't subordinate your desires to your current income. Rather, allow that desire to spur your thinking and your efforts toward different money-making avenues that will produce the income necessary to purchase that nice car.Kiyosaki's philosophy can be summed up with a line from his most recent addition to the series, Rich Dad's Conspiracy of the Rich: The 8 New Rules of Money
: "By educating yourself about money and how it works, you unlock the potential within yourself to break free from the mentality of scarcity and see the abundance all around you." (p. 30)
: "By educating yourself about money and how it works, you unlock the potential within yourself to break free from the mentality of scarcity and see the abundance all around you." (p. 30)Spiritual There is a definite positive spirit to Kiyosaki's approach to money, but other authors go further in examining the spiritual foundations of wealth creation.
Books like The Secret and Creative Visualization tout the benefits of a positive faith in the desire and ability of the universe to bring into being our hopes and dreams. The Law of Attraction, it has been called.
This view is at least as old as Jesus, who said, "Whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours."
The importance of this frame of mind to any successful endeavor, including financial freedom, can't be discounted; it certainly beats the alternative.
Spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle directs our attention to our inner state as the determining factor of our outer circumstances. If you have inner peace, he teaches, peace will surround you; abundance within, so without.
"Both abundance and scarcity are inner states that manifest as your reality," he writes in A New Earth (p. 192).
You might also like: 4 Truisms of Success as Taught by Butler Coach Brad Stevens
I have read most of Rich Dad series. Will catch up on the rest of the recommended books here.
ReplyDeleteGreat! Let me know what you think once you have. Thanks for the comment!
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