well in Rich Dad Port out I came out in 1997 I said your house is not an asset and it drove people n nuts it just went crazy on me because that's a common belief but when when you can't make your house payments you find out is the biggest liability you got and many of the times turned out to be very much more correct than you even thought right when you look at what to home prices right and Donald and I love real estate I love real estate I think it's the best thing going better
than sliced bread but if you're not smart with it it's like a loaded gun you know you can protect yourself or can kill yourself with it so real estate is to me the best vehicle but you've got to be smart with it because we're using debt and debt is a twoed sword out there so you use debt I use debt but the more debt you use actually you have to be smarter so you can use debt to get richer it can also use debt to wipe you out so that's why you know I continue on
saying we need financial education to just say to somebody get out of debt well that's not accurate you use debt don't you debt is a great thing and to be big and to be very successful debt is a very useful weapon but you have to be very careful that's correct so the other thing with when people say live below your means you don't like to live below your means do you no no and I think when you say to somebody live below your means you wipe their Spirit out it's like saying somebody if you want
to lose weight go on a starvation diet it doesn't make you healthier to starve yourself so I would rather get financially educated that's why I read read your books because I want to this is my greatest asset I want to feed my brain so that I can expand my means without getting into excessive debt or where I start to lose because debt could say is a 2-8 sword but telling somebody to live below your means is almost inhumane I never felt good doing it I wanted to strive to do better every day I want to
do better every day I like a good life like I tell the story of uh taxiing underneath your jet you know I wasn't my jet but it was a little lar jet and I look up and there's a 727 and Night taxi under it I said holy man you know it's it's big boys and their toys but nonetheless it inspired me I said okay I'm in a Lear jet now it's time to step up and it doesn't mean the jet will make me happier what makes me happier is the wanting to get better to get
smarter to do better well I have a friend who was not successful at all but was really upand coming and and he had a thing he would only fly first class I'm not saying do this because for somebody it won't work but he needed that mentally right he wanted to fly first class because mentally he wanted to think he was the best and that's it and even though he didn't have much money at the time this is years ago he would always fly I used to criticize him but it put him in a good state
of mind and he became a very very successful guy very very successful and I I've always remembered that he would never fly coach you would always fly first class even though you didn't have the means to fly so look it's complicated but whatever it takes to trade that whatever makes you feel better about yourself stronger more confident to want to do better and I think really that's the issue and we're at the stage of our lives right now we you know to ask for more is not really it but to do better to feel better
about ourselves is still important it is very important right so that's why I don't like saying live below your means and scrimp and all that because you know shopping is fun you know nice nice houses are fun at the same time you have to be very careful yes but you have to be responsible about it correct like you know when when you invited us up to your uh your little con your little duplex up here whatever they call it we walked up there and I've never seen a twostory entire floor home in New York City
and my wife Kim says you know she say I never thought F I didn't really don't live in a condo but just say Mr Trump's house will do and it is spectacular you know what I mean and it's and yet I don't need that right I don't I don't need that if I had one nice bedroom with a good television set and a nice bed and you don't really need that but it was in a building I built right and it was there for the taking so I figured I might as well do it and
what have I done instead of selling the equivalent of 12 or 13 units I kept them and by keeping them I have them I didn't sell them and that's okay and it's become you know a very valuable place so um I didn't need that I don't need it now but there's something nice about it right and that's my message is achieve it and then you can take it or leave it but if you don't achieve it then it's always something away from you so again that's why I be redundant about this living below your means
I don't think that makes your spirit happy it kills your spirit also if you don't have the financial education when somebody says your house is an asset or these mutual funds are good or the stock will go up and you don't know the difference between a good investment and a bad investment because real estate can be a bad investment stocks can be a bad investment if you don't know good investment advice from Bad investment advice then you're going to get taken this world is not kind should we say the hardest thing that I've witnessed over
the last year is seeing people that were very hardworking and very conservative that invested in the stocks and I'm not talking about flying stocks I'm talking about very solid companies and their net worth is 50% of what it was a year ago and they haven't done anything wrong right now they put their money in stock so I guess you could say that's wrong but it's really not wrong no because historically that's been okay so they went into conservative stocks and a year later they're worth 50% and all they've done is worked and that's the hardest
thing I've seen that's it's tragedy the thing that I want to say is this you can invest in gold and lose money you can invest in real estate and lose money you can lose stocks and lose money you can invest in oil and lose money you can also make a lot of money and all those things so really the reason we get together is because your financial intelligence your financial IQ makes something valuable or not value like I said you have to know a good investment from a bad investment good advice from bad advice
