Chapter 7

Choosing Your Battle and Battlefield

The Cashflow Quadrant is the centerpiece of this chapter as everything revolved around it. Just a reminder on what the Cashflow Quadrant is, it is essentially Robert Kiyosaki’s way in identifying the four different lifestyles in earning a living. Here is the screenshot from before:

E – Stands for employee
S – Stands for small-business person, self-employed or specialist
B – Stands for big-business owners such as Donald Trump
I – Stands for Investors.

This time, the main emphasis was how you can get rich by choosing any of the four paths and that it comes down to which way is best suited for yourself. A point was brought up on how some people value security while others value freedom. Basically, a person working at a job wants something stable and consistent which also means less freedom. A person who wants to be an entrepreneur will have more freedom, but will have to endure the frequent roller coaster lifestyle in running a business. Kiyosaki then talks about how money is important to him as it buys freedom and gave an example how with a lot of money he has a choice of whether or not to stand in a line up at an airport or to take a private jet.

Donald Trump used himself as an example on how he could have simply worked for his dad’s business and become successful, but that would have left him unfulfilled as he didn’t want just a comfortable life, but rather an exciting one. He then used a saying about how people write their own path in life which I have heard elsewhere before. It goes along the lines of something like “We are all in charge of writing our own movie, and that movie is our life.”

I felt that this chapter was a bit incomplete as it continually referenced some of the author’s other books such as Rich Dad Poor Dad. Although I haven’t read it before, it seemed like the information provided here was simply some snippets from that book and so this encourages you to buy that book to get the full details. I guess it is smart marketing, but I’m sure some people would feel a little cheated.