Robert Kiyosaki & Donald Trump

Q&A with Robert Kiyosaki and Donald Trump

Why We Want You to Be Rich, the New book by Robert Kiyosaki and Donald Trump.

In this Q&A session the authors share why they wrote the book and their concerns about the financial future of most people around the world.

Why join together to write a book?

Donald Trump and Robert Kiyosaki are both renowned authors and successful businessmen. What inspired them to join together for this book and what benefit do they hope that this collaboration will bring?

Donald Trump: We have similar concerns and we are in a position to address them. We have divergent backgrounds, but similar insights and shared concerns.

Robert Kiyosaki: Donald and I are both international best-selling authors. Obviously, we could have written separate books. Yet we came together out of shared concerns about the financial disparities in the world. We met on the lecture circuit, as teachers, sharing our knowledge on entrepreneurship, investing, why they became rich, and why we keep working, even though we could both afford to retire.

As we know, many rich people such as Warren Buffett keep their knowledge a secret. Both Donald and I are willing to share what we know about money.

Why write this book?

The book mentions that Trump and Kiyosaki are concerned about America getting poorer. Why is it important for them to act now and provide advice on the importance of financial education?

Donald Trump: Certain things are very clear to us, and we would hope to make people aware of them, as they will affect all of us — whether rich or poor. Those are the only choices left: rich or poor.

Robert Kiyosaki: We joined together because we are concerned about the growing gap between the rich and everyone else. We are concerned about the lack of financial education in our schools, which causes millions of people to have the entitlement mentality, expecting the government, their employers, or their families to take care of them. In many countries such as the U.S. England, France, Germany, Japan, and China, one of the bigger social problems is an aging population without adequate financial and medical resources. In the U.S alone, the off-balance sheet debt for Social Security and Medicare is approximately $74 trillion dollars, which is more than all the money in the stock and bond markets of the world combined. Not only is the U.S. indebted to countries such as China and Japan, it is indebted to its own people… making campaign promises the nation cannot afford to keep.

The Shrinking Middle Class. How will the prospect of ageing baby boomers and a dependence on the government for healthcare entitlements as well as factors such as the rising price of oil and war in the Middle East affect our society’s future wealth?

Donald Trump: The old aristocratic pattern that the U.S. originally tried to get away from – the ‘haves’ and the ‘have nots’ – seems to be coming back. The middle class is shrinking and that brings us perilously close to the hierarchy of the aristocracy. The imbalance will create a greater schism.

Robert Kiyosaki: In 1933 Adolf Hitler was elected Chancellor of Germany. One of the reasons for his rise to power was because the German middle class had their savings wiped out, due to inflation. Today millions of Americans and even the Japanese, once known as a nation of savers, have had their savings wiped out. In our book, Donald Trump and I point out that in many countries the rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer, and the middle class is shrinking like the polar ice caps.

Some of the causes of this erosion in middle class wealth are:

1. Jobs are shifting to China, India, and Eastern Europe. The middle class in these countries is growing while in other countries the middle class is shrinking. As we know, a true Democracy cannot survive without a middle class.

2. The cost of living is rising faster than earnings. In many major cities, the middle class cannot afford housing while the cost of gasoline, food, and health care continue to rise.

3. The increase in national and personal debt. To make up for a loss in earning power, many people go deeper in debt, living off of credit cards and refinancing the equity in their homes. Instead of living paycheck to paycheck, many people are living from credit card to credit card.

Financial Education

What advice does this book offer to help readers get rich and prepare for the financial challenges that they face?

Donald Trump: To be globally aware, to make a daily effort to be financially literate.

When people leave their jobs after 20 years of work with $47 in their pension fund – which has happened in this country – that alone is a red flag to ‘Pay attention.’ The person with your best interests in mind is yourself. That is a responsibility that you can no longer ignore.

Robert Kiyosaki: Today savers are losers. In 1971 the world changed when the U.S. took the dollar off the gold standard. When that happened, advice traditionally given to the middle class — ‘save money’ — became an obsolete idea. The reason it became an obsolete idea is because the U.S. could now print money faster than we could work for it or save it. In other words, the value of money is dropping in value.

Today, ‘save money’ is bad financial advice. The primary reason it is still considered good financial advice is simply because our educational system does not teach us about money. This is one example of financial education... or the lack of it. Instead of realizing the value of their money is going down, many people think the prices of their homes are going up.

Ironically, one of the ways to get rich is not by saving money but by getting into debt. Notice that in the last few years those with real estate debt made more money than those who kept their money in the bank. Yet, if you are going to use debt to get rich, you will need better and more sophisticated financial education. You need to know the difference between good debt and bad debt.

Click the "Robert Kiyosaki & Donald Trump" title link above to review their new book. "Why We Want You To Be Rich".

Have a great day learning from successful leaders who have been there, and done it.