The Highwire with Del Bigtree - RICH DAD POOR DAD’S KIYOSAKI ON ECONOMIC TURBULENCE

Episode Date: July 22, 2024

Entrepreneur, personal finance educator, and author of Rich Dad Poor Dad, Robert Kiyosaki, joins Del live from the Freedom Fest in Las Vegas with insights for these economic turbulent times. Get his financial expertise on everything from the positives and negatives of personal debt, crypto currency, and why the income gap continues to widen.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-highwire-with-del-bigtree--3620606/support.

At the heart of the conversation of America and politics and voting is always the biggest question, right? Economy, economy, economy. When you see headlines, you see things like this that talk about where we're at. Americans are carrying record household debt in 2024. U.S. household debt grew by $800 million from 2022 to 2023, including a 16.6% growth in credit debt. I know that you know that we all know we're in debt, baby. How are we going to get out of it? Is it a good thing?

Is it a bad thing? Well, in order to get into that conversation, how about we just bring in the master of all masters when it comes to talking about finances and debt? Of course, I'm talking about Robert Kiyosaki, the author of Rich Dad, Poor Dad. Robert Kiyosaki. The one and only Robert Kiyosaki.

Author of Rich Dad, Poor Dad, the famous book that changed, I think, so many Americans' lives. Translated into more than 50 languages and is the number one personal finance book in the history of the world. It's a book that launched a thousand careers. Rich Dad Port-Eyat, I came out in 1997 and I said, your house is not an asset. And it drove people nuts.

It just went crazy on me. It may not have to be very much more correct than you even thought. If you think the government's here to help you, I think you're badly mistaken. The middle class is not getting ahead. The rich is... The rich are increasing. Tax laws are written again. against the middle class. I learned finance on the streets

where he learned that Edwardon. Right. So it's still possible to learn. There is a lot of people are not rich. They think mistakes make you stupid. A baby cannot learn to walk unless they fall down. Can't learn to ride a bicycle until you fall off the bicycle. So I love the military because they taught us to make mistake after mistake.

I went down three times in Vietnam. If not for practicing, crashing, I wouldn't be here today. I had no money for years. Yeah, I didn't have a paycheck, but that's what I reached out. encouraged me to do is when you don't have this paycheck you get hungier, smarter, and you test of your character. That's the benefit of becoming an entrepreneur. You really find out who you are when you don't have anything. You have to go to school to be a doctoral lawyer and engineer, but you don't have to go to school to be a rich. Money has a language, but it's not

taught in school. Our education system, it has been my rant forever. Why don't we teach people about money? Why is it? We all use money, but we don't teach people about it. What most financial books say to you is live below your means, you know, don't have a cappuccino. When you say to somebody, live below your means, you wipe their spirit out. I want to strive to do better every day. I want to do better every day. I like the good life. Robert, Kiyosaki, it's really an honor to have you here on the high wire.

Can you believe it? Well, you guys are big time. We are big time. We really love it here. Wow. Got an amazing team, as you can see, making all this possible here today. So let me ask you. I mean, we have America seems to be in debt. Obviously, the country itself is in just unbelievable amounts of debt that's mirrored in our society. You know, household debt is the highest it's ever been. Is that the recipe for a disaster or are we right where we should be? I think we're at a very serious problem. Today, America's adding one trillion in debt every 90 days.

Wow. So it can't sustain. Throughout history, any time a country has done this, bad things happen. Like when the Germans did it back in 1918, Hitler came to power. Zimbabwe crashed because of too much debt. So Rome crashed, China crashed because of debt. So it's a very serious problem, which is why I started speaking out. Yeah.

What do we do about it? I mean, it seems like in America, we're so used to hearing, you know, every, it doesn't matter who is in office, whether it's a Republican or Democrat. They always blame the last one for getting us deeper in debt. These last two presidents between them, I think they're both racking up. Trump racked up about an $8 trillion debt. It looks like Biden is on course, which prior to that, I think, was every president up until Trump. That was about the amount. So literally double the debt that's ever been achieved.

Biden's doing the same thing. It's almost like they don't believe that it's big money. They don't believe it's going to have a consequence. Is there going to be a consequence? Oh, that definitely is. Like I said, historically, first thing that happens is you have currency war, then you have trade war, then you have real war. And as you can tell, the wars are building all over the world right now.

They are. But I think you asked the most important question is, what can I do? can an individual do. Yeah. Because to expect our government to do it is a waste of time. Okay? They're out of control, right? They are out of control.

It doesn't seem to no matter who's in there. So what can we do personally to prepare for it? Well, that's why I wrote Rich Dad Court at about 30-something years ago. And it was what could an individual do? You know, ask people, what does school teach you about money? Answer is nothing. Nothing. And you wonder why.

And probably even less. today than when you wrote that book, I would say. Why don't we teach kids about money? So I don't think it's a mistake, but. They do it on purpose. So the most important thing right now, there's good debt and bad debt. Okay.

Good debt makes you rich. Bad debt makes you poor. Okay. And the Treasury, the federal government, all producing is bad debt. So the individual needs to get smarter and counter our own government. Okay.

So I've been a gold bug, a silver bug, and now Bitcoin. I want any, I want money that's not within the US system. I want to see outside the system. Okay. So gold, silver, Bitcoin are outside the US system. Are you, my understanding is you're somewhat new to Bitcoin that originally, have you jumped on the Bitcoin from the beginning or is it something that's grown on you? No, I watch, you know, like everything else, like today, AI is the big thing.

I don't jump into it. I watch and observe the... observe the trends so with Bitcoin I watch you go up to 20,000 and then it dropped down to 1,000 it came back to 3 as well is it gonna is it gonna go is gonna hit six and I I bought 60 Bitcoin at 6,000 so today is trading around 60,000 so I'm in the money yeah but I don't recommend just jumping in you should study like AI today I would study it before I jumped in on okay Do you think that the fact that, you know, governments around the world are actually now starting to talk about getting into cryptocurrencies, centralized digital currencies.

Is that going to affect the crypto market and investment? Well, the problem with Bitcoin and all the cryptos, you're stepping on Superman's cake. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. Printing money is the government's game. Right. And when Bitcoin came out, they were saying, well, so the government doesn't like that. So I'm concerned about what the government might, hopefully to do nothing, but what might they do?

Like China's already outlawed Bitcoin, but they keep buying more of it anyway. Right. So something's going to happen, and I don't think it's going to be pretty because, like I said, we're printing a trillion dollars every 90 days. This is unsustainable. So when we look at then at personal finance, you said good debt and bad debt. What is the bad debt? Because, I mean, I feel like every part of my life has some form of debt around it. So what are the things that I should be, you know, staying with and the other parts I should be cleaning up?

What is my bad debt? Well, I practice what I've preached. I'm a billion to in bad, in good debt. Okay. So I borrow money to buy apartment houses. Okay. So I have all the, I have apartment house. I have, I have 1600 rental units.

Wow. Okay. And every month they send me a check. That's good debt. Okay. Bad debt is when I go out to dinner and I eat and I pay for that dinner for the next 20 years. Got it. So put it on a credit card and just having it sit there.

All the champagne and it was great time, but you pay for that good time for 20 years. What about home ownership? I see this quote, you said, is it that a home is not an asset? Is that, what are you correctly? It goes, my rich dad was my best friend's father. I grew up in Hawaii. My rich day made it very, very simple. He says, assets put money in your pocket.

And liabilities take money from your pocket. So just as simple as financial literacy. What's the definition of a word? So most people are calling assets, assets when they're really liabilities. So they buy a house? Oh, I have an asset, what's a liability? I have a new car.

It's an asset. That's really a liability. The worst type of debt today is student loans, thanks to, not to get political, but Barack Obama. Yeah. Student loan debt is, as a professional investor, I wouldn't touch student loan debt. It's the most onerous, nastiest, vicious,

worst type of debt possible invented by the, that side of the limits. Why is it, what makes it so much worse than other forms of credit debt or home loans? Why is it a student? student loan is such a bad form of debt. Well, because I'm a billion to in debt. If I say I quit, I declare bankruptcy, I'm out.

With a student loans, let's say I'm an 18 year old child, I go to school, I have 50,000 student loan debt, I can't bankrupt out of it. It stays with me for the rest of my life. So it becomes the albatross around your neck. It was designed that way, which is why when I studied the student loan, problem. Again, it was Barack Obama, you know, I thought probably in good faith, saying everybody should have a college education, but you go to college together, they teach you about transgender sex and why boys should be girls. And what are they teaching kids today? And then the kid

walks out of there in debt, and they haven't learned anything about money. Why? Yeah. Do you feel like you need to, you need a college education in order to be good with money? Do you feel like that, that that sort of education or what is the best education for it we're bringing like I have a I have a 10 year old daughter a 15 year old son um AI scares me when I look at the job workforce out there how many jobs are going to be available I'm already telling my kids you know watch the video game playing you're going to have to get serious probably earlier than I did because I think competition is going to be really steep what do I want where do I want them to learn or study how do I get them to understand money earlier than any school system is going to give it to them? What do I do as a parent? You dream the best thing you're talking to. You're letting know they're concerned. And a lot of families I found out, they don't talk about money because it's a volatile subject,

especially if you're broke. So in poor families, they don't talk about money, they use some kind of religious connotation, the love of money is a root of all evil and these, that things, rather than discuss it. So you're discussing it's number one. But number two, it's not that hard. An asset will put money in your pocket, the ability will take. So, like, if it, I have a friend, he's a multi-millionaire, but when he was a kid, his father gave him some chickens, and those chickens started to lay eggs. Those eggs became assets, do you know what I mean? Right, right.

And so he started raising these chickens and he reinvested the profits made from his eggs. And I think today he sells 18 million eggs a day. I mean, he has these massive farms full of chickens. Yeah. It's not rocket science. Right. He's a sce chickens. Or you could have a garden or, you know, you can plant an apple tree.

As long as producing something that we need, my friend and I invest in cattle, a Japanese wiku cattle. Okay. Yeah. And the reason for that is the rich will always spend more money for expensive meat. but we don't kill our animals. We sell the semen. So the bulls breed.

We don't kill the animals, and every month the bulls are breeding. So I call it semen flow or cattle flow or cattle flow. It's not that hard. Right. You just say, what will somebody pay me money for? Are there things about the economy that, I mean, when we watch the news and we see unemployment rates,

they're saying they're at a record low. You know, that inflation is really coming down. Are we being told the truth from your perspective? The reason in, you know, unemployment is many people have three jobs. Right. And then this is my biggest concern, if I tell this, what they don't tell you about money is when you, it's started being printed in 1971, when Nixon took the dollar off the gold standard. Every time you print money, two things happen.

the rich get richer and the poor get poor. So the more money we print more homelessness. And the reason that is is because, so you print money, the rich get richer, they buy my chickens, they buy my eggs, I have oil wells. Yeah. You know, they buy what I produce.

So assets get more expensive. But also when you print money, liabilities get more expensive. So houses go up, you know, eating those up, carrots go up. Right. And so every time we print money, the rich get richer and the poor get poor. So when I tell you people, we're printing a trillion dollars every 90 days, you can see homeless that skyrocket.

It's a matter of economics, but they don't teach you that. What do you think is, you know, how much time do we have before it becomes calamitous here in America? I mean, you've been watching this for some time. You know, we've been on this track with, you know, overspending all the time. But it really does feel like we're hitting a precipice. We have, you know, the oil and the, you know, the dollar, you know, looks like it's, you know, oil is not going to be traded in American dollars anymore. How big a deal is that? Well, you have to look.

There's so much. You're asking a very interesting question. Yeah. But you saw a picture of my helicopter going in the water. I went to Vietnam twice. Yeah. I was a Marine helicopter pilot. I fought for the U.S., you know, because American brought my back and all this stuff.

But in Vietnam, we were fighting for oil. Really? They don't tell you about it. So this is why I'll say it again, is my concern is versus currency wars, trade wars, shooting wars. That's my concern. So you can see the tensions, you know, China, Russia. Do you feel like Ukraine Russia? Is that an energy war? Yes. And then you have, you know, Middle East.

Yep. So war is one way of defaulting out. They create this, I hope it doesn't happen, but historically this always happened. They cause a war, so we can print more money to build, you know, it becomes emergencies. emergencies, they built factories and all that. The reason America is the richest country in the world was after World War II. We still out our factories, but Germany had no factories, neither Japan. So war is very profitable if you're on the winning side.

Do you feel like as we, look, it appears that we are ramping up. I just saw, I think in Denmark, the leader there said, everyone has to recognize this is no longer a Ukraine war, this is a war in Europe, which means you have NATO saying that there's moving into Ukraine, which is going to drag us into this. So as we sort of push in this war, it seems like one of the things that may be different from other moments of war is what you just said, manufacturing. We used to be really at the top of our manufacturing game. That's why World War II was very effective in building our economy.

We could produce the tanks, the airplanes, the bullets, all of it. We don't really have that manufacturing anymore, do we? No, because it was expirited to China. Right. So China has a factory city. So is a war even going to be lucrative the same way it once was? If we don't, or do you think we will turn and start figuring out how to manufacture should we get into that situation? Well, it goes back again. I went to Vietnam twice, you know, in 1966 and 1972.

And it was fought for oil. Look at Russia today. Russia, they call the gas station of the world. Yeah. Russia has more oil has now become a high income country, Russia has. war is profitable and if you understand that it goes boom and it goes bust and all this so that's my concern Hitler came to power because they printed too much money the why am i.

republic so that's my concern as a veteran two times yeah it goes back to energy so there was a Nord Stream pipeline that was blown up and so there's oil you know people who's buying from Germany is now buying oil from Russia and Saudi Arabia just said we're not called we're no longer take the US dollar yeah we're going to take Chinese you want so it's money currency and energy civilization runs on energy and one last I don't mean to be political no what was Biden's first act when he came to office I mean he I this first act seemed to be signing of stack of things. So which one in the stack that we were referring to?

The first act was to cut the Keystone Exile Pipeline. Right. Yeah. So they were shipping oil from Canada through the Gulf of Mexico. Yeah. I have oil wells. My, I went to school. I'm an, I drove tankers for standard oil. I'm an oil man. Okay. So I have oil wells throughout this. Right. Under Trump, I was selling oil for $30 a barrel. Those are the facts. The day Biden cut that pipeline, my oil went from 30 to 130. I knew he was a exactly what he was doing. He's going to crush the middle class because when oil goes that high, food goes up, transportation, everything goes up. That was his very first act. I actually liked

the guy because I was making a fortune off. Making $30 a barrel numbs off a hundred and thirty. But his, I suspect his intention is to crush our middle class. Watch what a person does, not what they say. It's the rule. of the US Marine Corps. Watch what a person says, does. Not what they say. They cut the pipeline. That was the first thing I noticed. Oh my God. I knew exactly what's going to happen next. Inflation would go through the roof. And then you see homelessness go through the roof. You see housing prices go through the roof. Stock market goes up. Everything goes up. And the rich get richer, poor and middle class, not getting poor. So now we have it to divide. And we're bordering

on a second civil war. America's second civil war is brewing, but it's the same war that Stalin faced was rich in the... Wow. That's my concern. And that's what is no financial education in school, because people like my poor dad, you know, academic types think that the love of money is the root of all evil. Right. It's not the love of money, it's the lack of money. I agree with that. I agree with that. To wrap it all up, obviously you're here, you speak out,

you want people to listen to you. Where is your hope? Do you have a sense of hope in how we get through this in the future? Where's the light? Well, the beautiful thing about Freedom Fest, I spoke here for a number of years. When I first spoke at it,

well, it's kind of interesting. Now this event, Freedom Fest, is more important than ever before. And there's a lot of people who are, the scientific term is pissed off. Yeah. You know, a lot of exhibitors here, they're bordering on extreme.

I like it. Yeah. I like it because they're pushing, they're angry, they're fighting back. Because if we don't stand up, they'll just keep taking it from us. Like last night was,

I was cracking up. There had a comedian up there who was complaining that comedians can't even tell jokes anymore. Right, yeah, Rob Snyder, I think. It's tragic. He can't tell a joke anymore. Absolutely.

And you go to school. and they're talking about boys becoming girls and going, and what are we talking about? Yeah. Why are we doing this? Why are we just teaching them about money? Right. So we have a war, a civil war between academics and the capitalists.

I'm a capitalist. My poor dad was the Marxist. They're Marxists. They believe in taxation, labor unions, and those. He read Karl Marxist's book, The Capitalist, Communist Manifesto. Number one thing is a, is a, to take away private property, it's labor unions and taxation. Marks said taxation is essential for the spread of communism.

America was founded on a tax revolt. It was called the Boston Tea Party. Remember that? Yeah. We fought. We fought against England taxing us. And then what happens, Marks comes in and he says, we have to tax so we can spread communist, read the Communist Manifesto. It's only about 50 pages. I was required to read it

because I went to military school. Military officers were required to read Marx just so we know who I enemies. And when I read Marx, the Communist Mental Festival, I realized my father, and most of the school teachers' friends are Marxists. They just don't know it. Wow. They never read the book. Why don't you read the book? So Marx said that that communism would take up over America in two stages. Stage one happened in 1930. They would take off our schools. So in 1930, Columbia University's Teachers College

imported Marxist teachers from Germany to start teaching communism or Marxism to teachers. That was 1930. By 1960, when I was in college, the military school, rioting was breaking up. When I returned from Vietnam, I got hit, I didn't get welcome home. I got hit by rotten eggs and spit on by these hippies from the Woodstock generation.

So I could see why my school, military school had us read marks because they go, they come at us from education. So my father was a very good man, poor dad. But he thought he was doing the right thing. We should pay taxes. you should join a labor union and the richer even. Right. So that's why today that saying is, someday you'll own nothing and you'll be happy.

We defund the police. Are we nuts? Right. Defund the police? Are we nuts? Yeah. What's going on? And we say nothing.

That's whatever one of my audience is asking you all the time. And what about COVID? You know what I mean? Absolutely. Well, I appreciate you asking the questions and giving us some advice. Let's fight back. We are fighting back.

Yeah, this is the Civil War. All right. Let's make it happens. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Take care. Thank you.