Natives of Africa and Asia have used this technique to catch monkeys for thousands of years: The hunter finds a tree with a small hole in the tree trunk and places fruits or nuts inside the hole. A monkey comes along, puts their fist in the hole and grabs onto the fruit or the nuts. The monkey’s fist, now clenched and filled with the fruit or nuts, cannot be withdrawn from the hole, trapping the monkey. Rather than let go of the fruits or nuts, the monkey twists and turns, pulls and tugs, but refuses to let go.
The native returns, and at their leisure, kills or captures the monkey. Humans are similar to monkeys. Rather than cling to fruits or nuts, humans cling to job security, their possessions, and money. Due to a lack of financial education, like the trapped monkey, most people will spend their lives as wage slaves of their employers and tax slaves of the government. When the global financial crisis began in 2007, many people clung even more tightly to their jobs in the hope of not being one of those who were laid off. Millions held on tightly to their homes, even though they could not pay the mortgage.
Most cut back on their spending and saved more, even though the federal government was printing trillions of dollars, destroying the purchasing power of their savings. Workers stuffed even more money into their retirement plans, even though the stock market had crashed, wiping out their prior gains. And school enrollments boomed, as more people headed back to school, even though unemployment was soaring.
In this book you will discover how the rules of money are different in the Information Age and how to adapt to the new global rules of money. In 1972, President Nixon opened the door to China. Today, China
is a very poor country rushing to become the world’s next superpower. In the coming decade, China will continue to grow economically but will also grow more unstable as they battle inflation, position for
more world political clout, and push for an international reserve currency outside of the U.S. dollar. Additionally, the economic growth will cause trouble internally as the divide between the rich and the poor grows. Their instability will cause financial ripples, economic booms and busts that will be felt throughout the world.
I thought long and hard about sharing with you our financial success, especially during times like these. I know that millions of people have lost their jobs, their homes, and their businesses. I also know that, in most situations, it is not polite to talk about financial success. Bragging is never cool, especially about money. Yet, I decided to write about real-life investments. I want you to understand how we gained our financial education, how we use that education.
The problem was that in 1973 my dad was 54 years old, the former superintendent of education for the State of Hawaii, a former Republican candidate for lieutenant governor of Hawaii, and unemployed. My dad was unemployed because he resigned from the superintendent of education position to run on the Republican ticket against his boss, the governor, a Democrat. When Judge Samuel King and my dad lost the gubernatorial election, the governor informed my dad that the price for his lack of loyalty was to never be allowed to work in state government again. My dad, although highly educated, could not survive in the real world outside of the educational system. Knowing he could not find a paying government job, my dad took his retirement savings, bought an ice cream franchise and lost it all when his ice cream business failed.
In many ways, it was my poor dad who gave me a glimpse of the future, not for his generation, but for mine. When he recommended that I follow in his footsteps, I knew whose advice I would follow. After leaving my poor dad’s home, I drove to Waikiki to my rich dad’s office and asked for his advice.
On the heels of two bestselling memoirs and a blockbuster Scorsese movie, I spread an undiluted version across the entire world, to virtually every business and industry. From banking to brokerage to telco to the auto industry to real estate to insurance to financial planning, to plumbers to doctors to lawyers to dentists to online marketers to offline marketers—and basically everyone in between. As amazing as the results had been the *last* time around, *this* time they were even better.