Four Hour Workweek Lifestyle or Rich Dad Lifestyle

This is one of the best questions I have heard on the forums. I am heavily into Robert Kiyosaki's stuff. His stuff rocks. And who hasn't heard of Tim ferris. Dude deserves a nobel prize.

I think both are surprisingly similar. They are both big on Leverage. One of the best quote in rich dad poor dad was

"is it easier to save 1 million dollars or borrow 1 million dollars"

that one really opened my eyes. Infact, i ended up buying my first house at age 21 after reading the book but thats a different story.

The question really is, what do you want?

Me personally, I couldn't give 2 monkeys about building a multi million pound business. My focus has always been passive income. Just do it ONCE and get paid for it.

But then again, I am only 24 so my preferences are different at this point. I go out 7 nights a week, work about 3 hours a day and don't really have other responsibilities outside of mortgage, bills and food. Thats easily taken care of.

Something Tim said in his book which sturck me like a lightening bolt :

"no amount of money warrants spending the best years of your life working 12 hours a day"

I am probably being selectively perceptive but I assume the best years hes talking about are the 20s. PERFECT

I think that one of the "problems" is that people associate "work" with "working for money" and assume that the opposite is doing absolutely nothing.
I'd love to not have to work for money anymore, but that doesn't mean that I would do nothing but sleep and watch TV all day. I have about a million things that I'd love to do in that time, including volunteer work, gardening, quilting and other crafts, and so on. Even if I were to do something like travel, I would consider it more active in that I'd be learning about other cultures or something like that.

I think that few people want to "work for money", but most people still want to do something worthwhile with their lives, which often counts as "work".

Love,
Shannon

Both are good authors, but both have -ve points:

I don't like Rich Dad because:

• Real estate does not create value to the society
• If you earn a lot through real estate, its just money, you have created no value. Make a million through this, and what have you added to the people around you?

I don't like Tim Ferris because:

• If everyone is resting in Panama, who will take care of the world?
• Remote working reduces human interaction and socialization
• Already there is too much Information Overload, and he advices people to create information products.

Both of them will improve your life, guaranteed, but in a SELFISH way.

You CANNOT automate an income completely without your interaction except in a very few cases.

Like Eben Pagan says, you need to involve yourself into the business.

Life is about creation, not possession.

Convince me if I am wrong,
Deepak

If you create a million through real estate, you're at least preventing yourself from becoming a burden on the society in your old age. If thousands more baby boomers had followed his advice, we wouldn't be so worried about Social Security and Medicare falling apart. Not that I agree with all the Rich Dad stuff - he seems to share a remarkably small amount of information for all the books he puts out...

Alright, I accept defeat. I understand that people who loved these books did not like my -ve points about it. I apologize for that!

In fact, on a second thought, they are not absolutely valid.

Anyway, I guess I stirred up some conversation.

A lot of what Tim writes in his book is about creating muses, meaning creating projects that will fund other projects. When you run a totally automated businesses, it inevitably frees you up to do more things. Make key investments that will fuel bigger and better projects. For example, when he was talking about his friend who spent 2 hours a week working because he owned an easy to manage music dropshipping website pulling in 120k/year, he emphasized the fact that his friend was using this merely as a jumping point to accelerate his career as a music producer.

Wow, great question and great conversation here. I was going to address people in particular ... but that's not going to happen

I've read both. Considering my position now, I'm pretty much living the 4 hour lifestyle. I was just cogitating the Rich Dad lifestyle but thought, if I'm still making money....doing next to nothing....why ever stop doing it?

I know Kevin Riley will respectfully disagree with me there but I do have a response.

Right now my content creation firm is 80% ish on autopilot. Working on getting the other 20% automated / outsourced this week between my staff of writers and my VA. This means that I'm making very good money doing very little. If I can let this run for the rest of my life (purely hypothetical - but apply this to a similar venture that runs itself and produces income like Tim's company) then why retire?

I will concede to one thing: I am young and don't fully understand retirement or anything to do with stopping working and just kind of living, so if my points seem entirely invalid I do apologize for my ignorance.

Anyway, why I like Tim Ferris is I've applied a handful of principals from the book and I've made my life so much better because of it:

80/20 principal: Fired a couple customers that expected way too much and we're constantly calling me for no good reason. They were not worth the income they were bringing in, so firing them freed up a lot of time I could dedicate to my higher paying, less bothersome customers.

Outsourcing / VA: Just hired a VA a couple days ago. This even ties in with the 80/20. The time it used to take me to coordinate orders from writers, get them to customers, post them on the blogs, submit them to Ezine Articles etc, can now be spent either making more money or enjoying myself more. Even furthering my education.

I think I had a few more things to say, but I can't remember what they were, and I really want to go get breakfast - take it for what it's worth

Michael

This is an interesting thread. I've read both books (I am a Robt. K fan -- read most of his books and I've seen him in person at one of his seminars). I think the real value of both these books is 1) showing a different way to create sustainable income; 2) motivation that it can be done!

Back to Wilson's original question on this thread: Which lifestyle do I prefer? I am willing to work many hours now to create passive income for later . . . so I guess it's a combination of both. My #1 desire is to have enough income so that whenever there is a person in need, I can write the check to help. I have been involved in international relief and development since 1980. I've seen first hand the value of "teach them to fish" and that's where I invest my money now. I just want to be able to invest more!

So, because of this goal, I am now working to produce a great sustainable monthly income -- passive income -- so I can focus my time, talents and resources on "teaching people to fish."

There is also something else which I disliked about the 4 hour week lifestyle. It appears to be an very selfish, self-centred, self-indulgent and inconsiderate.

For example, the author recommends to organize out of hours meetings with business partners so that he could cut through the secretaries. Just how would you like to meet someone after 5.00 clock on a Friday afternoon, just when you are looking forward to going home? Why is his time more valuable than yours? If anything, this would get on the nerves of potential business partners.

-Derek

I prefer the latter, building a nest egg with income producing assets is so much more rewarding in the long run.