If you can grasp the idea that money is not real, you will grow richer faster." "What is it?" was a question Mike and I often came back with. "What is money if it is not real?" "What we agree it is," was all rich dad would say. The single most powerful asset we all have is our mind. If it is trained well, it can create enormous wealth in what seems to be an instant. Wealth so far beyond the dreams of kings and queens 300 years ago. An untrained mind can also create extreme poverty that lasts lifetimes by teaching it to their families. In the Information Age, money is increasing exponen- tially. A few individuals are getting ridiculously rich from nothing, just ideas and agreements. If you ask many peo- ple who trade stocks or other investments for a living, they see it done all the time. Often, millions can be made in- stantaneously from nothing. And by nothing, I mean no money was exchanged. It is done via agreement: a hand signal in a trading pit; a blip on a trader's screen in Lisbon from a trader's screen in Toronto, and back to Lisbon; a call to my broker to buy and a moment later to sell. Money did not change hands. Agreements did. So why develop your financial genius? Only you can an- swer that. I can tell you why I have been developing this area of my intelligence. I do it because I want to make money fast. Not because I need to, but because I want to. It is a fascinating learning process. I develop my financial IQ because I want to participate in the fastest game and biggest game in the world. And in my own small way, I would like to be part of this unprecedented evolution of humanity, the era where humans work purely with their minds and not with their bodies. Besides, it is where the action is. It is what is happening. It's hip. It's scary. And it's fun. That is why I invest in my financial intelligence, devel- oping the most powerful asset I have. I want to be with people moving boldly forward. I do not want to be with those left behind. I will give you a simple example of creating money. In the early 1990s the ecj>nonTy_of_Phoenix was horrible. I was watching the TV show "Good Morning America" when a financial planner came on and began forecasting doom and gloom. His advice was to "save money." Put $100 away every month, he said, and in 40 years you will be a multimillionaire. Well, putting money away every month is a sound idea. It is one option-the option most people subscribe to. The problem is this: It blinds the person from what is really going on. They miss major opportunities for much more significant growth of their money. The world is passing them by. As I said, the economy was terrible at that time. For in- vestors, this is the perfect marketcondition. A chunk7)fTny~ money was irfthe stock market and in apartment houses. I was short of cash. Because everyone was giving stuff away, I was buying. I was not saving money; I was invest- ing.