What Schools Will Never Teach You About Money By Robert T. Kiyosaki

Level 3: The I’m-Too-Busy Level
This is the investor who is too busy to learn about investing. Many 
investors at this level are highly educated people who are simply too 
busy with their careers, family, other interests, and vacations. Hence, 
they prefer to remain financially naïve and turn their money over to 
someone else to manage for them.
This is the level that most 401(k)s, IRAs, and even very rich 
investors are at. They simply turn their money over to an “expert,” and 
then hope and pray their expert is really an expert.
The Wall Street bankers took these subprime loans and packaged 
them into bonds, magically got this subprime bond labeled as prime, 
and sold them to institutions, banks, governments, and individual 
investors. To me, this is fraud. But that is the banking system.
Once the subprime borrower could no longer pay the interest on 
their mortgages, these MBS bonds began blowing up all over the world. 
Interestingly, it was Warren Buffett’s firm, Moody’s, that blessed 
these subprime mortgages as AAA prime debt, the highest rating
for bonds. 
Today, many people blame the big banks such as Goldman Sachs 
and J. P. Morgan for the crisis. Yet, if anyone should be blamed for 
this crisis, it should be Warren Buffet. He is a smart man, and he knew 
what he was doing. Moody’s was blessing rotting dog meat as Grade A 
prime beef. That is criminal.
The problem is that these subprime bonds are now causing ripple 
effects all over the world. Today, countries such as Ireland and Greece 
are in serious trouble, unable to pay the interest on their bonds. In the 
United States, governments and municipalities are going broke, unable 
to pay the interest on their bonds.
In 2011, millions of individuals, many retirees, pension funds,
governments, and banks are in trouble as the bond market proves
how unsafe bonds can be. 
On top of that, rising inflation makes bonds an even riskier
investment, which is why savers who only know how to save are losers. 
For example, if a bond is paying 3 percent interest and inflation is
running at 5 percent, the value of a 3 percent bond crashes, wiping
out the investors’ value. 
China could be the biggest loser of all. China holds a trillion
dollars in U.S. bonds. Every time the U.S. government devalues the 
dollar by printing more money and issuing more bonds, the value
of China’s trillion-dollar investment in the United States goes down.
If China stops buying U.S. government bonds, the world economy
will stop and crash.
Millions of retirees are just like China. Retirees in need of a steady 
income after retirement believed government bonds were safe. Today,

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Five Levels of Investors
Unfair Advantage
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In most cases, the do-it-yourselfer has very little, if any, formal 
financial education. After all, if they can do it themselves, why should 
they learn anything?
If they do attend a course or two, it is often in a narrow subject 
area. For example, if they like stock trading, they will focus only on 
stock trading. The same is true for the small real estate investor.
At the age of nine, when rich dad began my financial education 
with the game of Monopoly, he wanted me to have a bigger picture of 
the world of investing. The following are some of the basic big-picture 
asset classes he wanted me to spend my life learning. They are:
As more people realize the need to invest, millions of them will
become small Level-4 investors in all four categories.
After the 2007 market crash, millions of people have become
entrepreneurs, starting small businesses, and many are investing in
real estate while prices are low. Most, however, are trying their hand at stock 
trading and stock picking. As the dollar declines in value, millions of people 
are beginning to save gold and silver instead of dollars.
Obviously, those who also invest in their ongoing financial
education, taking classes regularly and hiring a coach to enhance
their performance, will outpace those who just do it on their own. 
With a sound financial education, a few of the Level-4 investors
will climb to the next level, the Level-5 investor, the capitalist.
Soon after the financial crisis broke in 2007, many affluent people 
found out their trusted expert was not an expert at all and, even worse, 
could not be trusted.
In a matter of months, trillions of dollars of wealth vaporized as 
real estate and stock markets began to crash. Panicking, these investors 
called their trusted advisors and begged for salvation.
A few rich investors found out that their trusted advisors were 
extremely sophisticated con men, running elaborate Ponzi schemes. 
A Ponzi scheme is an investment scheme where investors are paid off 
with new investors’ money. The scheme works as long as there are new 
investors adding new money to pay off the old investors. In the United 
States, Bernie Madoff became famous because he “made off” with 
billions in rich people’s money.
There are legal Ponzi schemes and illegal Ponzi schemes. Social
Security is a legal Ponzi scheme, as is the stock market. In both
instances, the scheme works as long as new money flows into the 
scheme. If new money stops flowing in, the scheme—be it Madoff’s 
scheme, Social Security, or Wall Street—collapses.
The problem with the Level-3 investor, the I’m-too-busy investor, 
is that the person learns nothing if they lose their money. They have 
no experience except a bad experience. All they can do is blame their 
advisor, the market, or the government. It’s hard to learn from one’s 
mistakes if the person does not know what mistakes were made.