CHAPTER TWO Lesson One: The Rich Don t Work for Money Dad, Can You Tell Me How to Get Rich?" My dad put down the evening paper. "Why do you want to get rich, son?" "Because today Jimmy's mom drove up in their new Cadillac, and they were going to their beach house for the weekend. He took three of his friends, but Mike and I weren't invited. They told us we weren't invited because we were 'poor kids.'" "They did?" my dad asked incredulously. "Yeah, they did." I replied in a hurt tone. My dad silently shook his head, pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose and went back to reading the paper. I stood waiting for an answer. The year was 1956. I was 9 years old. By some twist of fate, I attended the same public school where the rich peo- ple sent their kids. We were primarily a sugar plantation town. The managers of the plantation and the other afflu- ent people of the town, such as doctors, business owners, and bankers, sent their children to this school, grades 1 to 30 Rich Dad, Poor Dad 6. After grade 6, their children were generally sent off to private schools. Because my family lived on one side of the street, I went to this school. Had I lived on the other side of the street, I would have gone to a different school, with kids from families more like mine. After grade 6, these kids and I would go on to the public intermediate and high school. There was no private school for them or for me. My dad finally put down the paper. I could tell he was thinking. "Well, son," he began slowly. "If you want to be rich, you have to learn to make money." "How do I make money?" I asked. "Well, use your head, son," he said, smiling. Which re- ally meant, "That's all I'm going to tell you," or "I don't know the answer, so don't embarrass me." A Partnership Is Formed The next morning, I told my best friend, Mike, what my dad had said. As best I could tell, Mike and I were the only poor kids in this school. Mike was like me in that he was in this school by a twist of fate. Someone had drawn a jog in the line for the school district, and we wound up in school with the rich kids. We weren't really poor, but we felt as if we were because all the other boys had new base- ball gloves, new bicycles, new everything. Mom and dad provided us with the basics, like food, shelter, clothes. But that was about it. My dad used to say, "If you want something, work for it." We wanted things, but there was not much work available for 9-year-old boys. "So what do we do to make money?" Mike asked. "I don't know," I said. "But do you want to be my part- ner?" The Rich Don't Work for Money 31 He agreed and so on that Saturday morning, Mike be- came my first business partner. We spent all morning com- ing up with ideas on how to make money. Occasionally we talked about all the "cool guys" at Jimmy's beach house having fun. It hurt a little, but that hurt was good, for it in- spired us to keep thinking of a way to make money.