WARNING: What I wish I knew at 25. Listen to This Before It's Too Late

0:00Tyler Reddick here from 2311 Racing. Victory Lane? Yeah, it's even better with Chumba by my side. Race to chumbacasino.com. Let's Chumba. No purchase necessary. VGW Group. Void where prohibited by law. CTNCs. 21+. Sponsored by Chumba Casino. I'm 78 years old, and this is what I would go back and tell my 25-year-old self. And if you are under 40, you need to hear this right now. Not tomorrow. Not when things slow down. Right now. Your school lied to you about money. Your paycheck is not your friend. And every year you wait, somebody else is getting rich on your money. This is what the rich teach their kids.

0:44Nobody taught you this. I will. This is the Rich Dad Radio Show. The good news and bad news about money. Here's Robert Kiyosaki.

0:58Welcome to the Rich Dad Radio Show, the good and bad about money. This is Robert Kiyosaki, and today is just you and me. And we're talking about what the rich are teaching their kids about money. I am 78 years old. I've made millions, lost millions, made it back, and then some. I've been broke. I've been rich. I've been everything in between. And I've had time to think, a lot of time. And the one thing I keep coming back to, the one thing that keeps me up at night, is this. Most 25-year-olds today are about to make the exact same mistakes I almost made. The same traps, the same lies, the same invisible cage, dressed up to look like responsibility.

1:46And if I could sit across from my 25-year-old self right now, here's exactly what I'd say. The first thing I'd say is this. Your school lied to you. Not on purpose, but completely. Think about that for a second. Twelve years, maybe sixteen, maybe more. Hundreds of teachers, thousands of hours, and not one class, not one hour, not one lesson about how money actually works. They taught you how to read. They taught you how to do math. They taught you the history of wars fought by people who are now dead. And that's important. I'm not saying it isn't. But they never taught you how money works. They never taught you what a cash flow statement is.

2:35They never taught you the difference between an asset and a liability. Not once. And people get angry when I say this. They say, Robert, that's not fair. Teachers are doing their best. and maybe they are, but here's what I know. The system wasn't designed to produce investors. It was designed to produce employees. Good, obedient, show-up-on-time employees who need a paycheck. Think about it. The banks don't need you to understand money. They need you to trust them with it. The government doesn't need you to understand taxes. They need you to pay them. Your employer doesn't need you to understand cash flow.

3:19They need you to show up Monday morning. So the question isn't whether school failed you. The question is, what are you going to do about it now? Because here's what nobody told me at 25. The education you got was designed to serve someone else's financial future, not yours. My poor dad believed in school. He went, he studied, he got the degrees, he got the good job, he worked hard his whole life, and he died. Still worried about money. My rich dad never trusted what school taught about money. He taught himself. He asked different questions. He built assets. And that's the difference. Not intelligence, not luck, not connections.

4:05Two different educations about money. One of them produces employees. The other produces investors. and school only teaches one of them. Now, that's the lie. But the lie has a partner because most people figure out the lie eventually. They wake up, they start to question it, and then they fall into the second trap. And this one is worse because this trap feels like safety. The second thing I'd tell my 25-year-old self is this. Your biggest enemy is not your boss, it's your paycheck. I know, that sounds wrong. The paycheck is what pays the rent. The paycheck is what feeds the kids. The paycheck is what makes the car payment and keeps the lights on.

4:51How can the paycheck be the enemy? Because of what it does to your brain. Every month that check arrives and you relax. You pay the bills. You maybe put a little away and then you wait for the next one. month after month, year after year, and slowly, without you even noticing, your whole life starts to organize itself around that check. Your lifestyle grows to match it. Your spending grows to match it. Your debt grows to match it. And before you know it, you can't live without it. That's not freedom. That's a leash with direct deposit. My poor dad had a great paycheck his whole life, steady, reliable, government job, benefits, pension.

5:41By every traditional measure, he was doing it right. He died broke. Not because he was stupid, not because he was lazy, but because nobody ever taught him that the paycheck was the ceiling, not the foundation. My rich dad never trusted a paycheck. He used to say a job is a short-term solution to a long-term problem. He didn't want income from a job. He wanted income from assets. Income that came in whether he worked or not. Income that didn't stop when he got sick. Income that didn't disappear when the company downsized. Income that didn't retire when he retired. That's the difference. The paycheck tells you how much someone else thinks your time is worth.

6:27Assets tell you how much your money can earn on its own. Most people spend their entire lives optimizing the paycheck, asking for raises, getting promotions, jumping to a better job, and the whole time the income column on their financial statement has exactly one line. One line. Everything depends on that one line. The rich have multiple lines, assets producing income from multiple directions. Real estate, businesses, royalties, investments. If one line goes quiet, the others keep working. Most people don't realize the goal was never a bigger paycheck. The goal was to make the paycheck optional.

7:11And here's what that means for you at 25. Every decision you make right now, every dollar you earn, is either building toward that system or feeding someone else's. But before I get to how you build it, there's something you need to unlearn first. because the way you were taught to think about debt is completely wrong.

7:38We've been talking about the paycheck trap, the system that trained you to need a job, and why poor dad's great salary still left him broke. But here's what's coming next. The one financial concept the rich use every single day that your school called dangerous, debt. Not the kind that's destroying you, the kind that's making them rich. And if you don't know the difference, you are already on the wrong side of it. Most people hear the word debt and they cringe. They think collection agencies. They think stress. They think danger. That's what they told you. Stay out of debt. Pay off your bills.

8:20Save your money. That's the advice. That's the program. That advice will keep you poor. Let me say this again. That advice will keep you poor. Saving will not make you rich. Staying out of debt will not make you rich. And the reason is simple. Debt is not the enemy. Bad debt is. There's a difference, a huge difference. And school never taught you that difference. Here's what I learned from my rich debt. Bad debt takes money out of your pocket. Student loans, credit card balances, car payments on a depreciating vehicle. That debt makes the banks rich. It makes the finance companies rich. It makes everybody rich except you.

9:09Good debt puts money into your pocket. A loan on a rental property where the tenant pays your mortgage. That's good debt. Debt to build a business that generates cash flow. That's good debt. Debt used to acquire an asset that produces income, whether you work or not. That is the tool the rich had been using for generations. My poor dad's advice was, neither a borrower nor a lender be. Pay off everything. Stay clean. He followed that advice his whole life, and he died struggling. My rich dad said, the rich use debt to win. The poor and middle class use debt to lose. Same tool, two completely different outcomes.

9:57The difference is not the debt. The difference is what you buy with it. Think about it. A 288-unit apartment complex. Millions of dollars borrowed from the bank. Tenants paying the mortgage every single month, plus profit. The debt gets paid down. The property goes up in value. the cash flow comes in whether you're sleeping or working. That is good debt doing exactly what it was designed to do. But here's what nobody tells you at 25. You have to be educated enough to use it correctly. Debt is like a loaded gun. Respect it and it protects you. Ignore it and it destroys you. Most people never learn that, so they avoid debt completely or they use it to buy liabilities and wonder why they're always broke.

10:50That's the difference. And now that you understand what debt actually is, here's a part that is going to be the hardest thing I say today. Your 20s are not for playing it safe. People say, Robert, you have to be careful. You can't afford to fail. And I understand why they say that, but they are wrong. In fact, they have it completely backwards. The people who fail the most at 25 are usually the ones who win the most at 50. I failed multiple times. I lost companies. I lost money. I lost things I worked hard to build. Each time I got smarter. Each time I got better. Each time the failure taught me something no classroom ever could.

11:35Rich Dad said it directly. Success is a poor teacher. We learn the most about ourselves when we fail. You can't have success without failure. And here's a thing nobody talks about. When you are 25, failure is cheap. No mortgage, no kids depending on you, no legacy at risk, no employees to look after. You can fail fast, learn fast, and start over, fast. That window does not stay open forever. Wait until you're 45 to start taking risks. And now failure is expensive. Now it costs real things. Now the downside is a family, a home, a retirement you don't have. Fail now. Fail cheap. Fail forward. Most people do the opposite.

12:26They play it safe at 25 because they're afraid. And then they wonder why at 55 they are still trading time for a paycheck. The biggest risk is taking no risk at all. And people get uncomfortable when I say this. But a 401k is not investing. It is hoping. Put$50 a month away. Diversify. Trust the experts. Let the market work for you over the long term. That's what they told you. That's the plan designed by your employer, not by you. Here's the reality. The fund collects fees whether your money grows or not. The plan takes 100 % of your money, puts up zero of their own, and pockets a percentage of whatever you earn.

13:17If the market crashes, and it will, you lose. They keep the fees, and inflation is quietly destroying your purchasing power every single year. Saving money used to be smart. That was before 1971. That was before money was disconnected from gold, before the government could print dollars at will. Today, savers are losers, not because saving is wrong as a habit, but because the dollar you save today buys less tomorrow, and less the year after that. Real investing means studying, learning, building financial intelligence, taking calculated risks with full awareness of the downside, not hoping. But here's what I discovered, and this is important.

14:09You can learn all of this. You can build the financial IQ. You can get it right and still fail if you ignore this next part. The sixth thing I tell my 25-year-old self is something that sounds simple, but most people underestimate it completely. You will become who you spend time with. I mean that literally. If everyone around you is broke and comfortable with it, you will be too. Not because you're weak, not because you don't have ambition, but because your environment shapes your reality faster than any book you'll ever read. I learned this from my rich dad. He was deliberate about who he spent time with, who he let into his world, who he listened to, who he took advice from.

15:04Most people take financial advice from people who are not financially free themselves. They're parents who are worried about money. They're friends who are also worried about money. They're co-workers who are also on a paycheck. And people get angry when I say this. They say, Robert, that's cold. Those are the people who love me, and they do. But love and financial wisdom are not the same thing. Your network is your net worth, literally. The people you spend the most time with will determine the ceiling of your ambition, the quality of your financial decisions, and whether any of the lessons in this episode actually change your life.

15:47Find people who are doing what you want to do. Study them. Read what they read. Get as close as you can. Your rich dad doesn't have to be a blood relative. Mine wasn't. He was my friend's father. A man who saw in me a student who wanted to learn. That one relationship changed everything. Most people never find that relationship because they are too loyal to the wrong environment. Change the environment, change the outcome. And that brings me to the last thing I'd say, the one that costs people the most, because it's invisible and it compounds every single day.

16:31We've covered the school lie, the paycheck trap, why debt isn't your enemy, bad debt is, why your 20s are the cheapest time to fail, and why your environment will determine whether any of this actually changes your life. But here's what nobody talks about. The thing that has been quietly working against you every single day you waited. It has no invoice, no warning, no moment where you feel it hit, but it compounds every single day. And by the time most people see it, years are already gone. There is no right time to start. People say, I'll start investing when I have more money. I'll build a business when the kids are older.

17:20I'll learn about money when things slow down. That's what they tell themselves. And the years go. I wasted time waiting for the right moment. I know what that costs. I can measure it. Every year you wait to build assets, Compound interest is working for someone else. Not someday, right now, every single day. Think about it. A dollar invested at 25 has 40 years to work. That same dollar invested at 45 has 20 years. Same dollar, same investment, completely different outcome. The difference is not intelligence, not income, not opportunity. The difference is time. And time is the one thing you cannot buy back.

18:08Most people don't realize the cost of waiting because they can't see it. It doesn't show up on a bill. Nobody sends you a statement that says, here is what your delay cost you this year. But it's real, and it compounds. Rich Dad said, if you hate risk and worry, start early. That's the whole lesson. That's all of it. Starting is not about having money. Starting is about changing how you think about money. Every dollar you earn right now is a decision. Does it go into your asset column or into someone else's? Does it buy you freedom or does it buy you comfort for 30 days until the next paycheck?

18:55That is the question that separates the rich from everyone else. not the income, not the education, not the neighborhood, the question. And here's what I know at 78 that I didn't fully understand at 25. The question gets harder to ask the longer you wait, not because the answer changes, but because the lifestyle grows, the bills grow, the obligations grow, and one day you look up and realize that every dollar is already spoken for before it arrives. That is the trap and it is almost impossible to escape once you are fully inside it. Start now, not Monday, not January, not when the market settles or the kids graduate or the timing feels right.

19:44Now. The next 10 years of your life will set the foundation for everything that comes after. Build it wisely. I'm 78 years old. I don't say any of this to scare you. I say it because nobody said it to me when I needed to hear it, except my rich dad. Your school won't say it. They were never taught it themselves. Your employer won't say it. It's not in their interest. Your bank definitely won't say it. They profit from your confusion. So I will. Here's what I know. The people who are financially free at 60 were not smarter than everyone else at 25. They just asked different questions. They built assets instead of managing expenses.

20:33They used debt as a tool instead of a trap. They failed early and learned fast. They changed their environment and they started before they felt ready. That's it. That's the whole education. not complicated, just different. And once you see the difference, once it really lands, you can't unsee it. The cage looks different when you know it's a cage. And knowing is where it all begins. Thank you for your time. Thank you for caring about your future. Thank you for understanding that you are the only one who cares about taking care of you. Take care. Thank you.

22:01This podcast is a presentation of Rich Dad Media Network.