Why Reading Rich Dad Poor Dad Ruined My Life as a Young Black British Woman
I didn’t expect a personal finance book to be both empowering and stagnating. Reading Rich Dad Poor Dad opened my eyes at 21 but also destroyed my life as I knew it.
Like many people, I picked it up searching for a way out of the quiet ceiling that sits over your life when you don’t come from wealth but here is what I found:
The Promise: Escape the System
The core message is simple: don’t rely on traditional education, build assets, think like the rich, escape the “rat race.”
For a young Black British woman, that message feels powerful. It suggests freedom. It suggests that the system isn’t your destiny.
But what the book doesn’t say loudly enough is this: not everyone starts at the same point on the board.
Access to capital, social leverage and corporate relationships is not the same for all.
The Reality: You Still Need Capital
The book pushes entrepreneurship—property, investing, business ownership—as the route to wealth.
But entrepreneurship without capital isn’t strategy. It’s risk.
When you don’t have:
family money
access to low-risk loans
a financial safety net
networks that open doors
…you’re not “taking bold risks.” You’re gambling with your stability.
In the UK, this hits differently. Structural barriers mean Black entrepreneurs are significantly less likely to access funding. The data consistently shows disparities in venture capital investment, bank lending, and business support.
So when I tried to follow that advice—invest, build, scale—I wasn’t stepping into opportunity. I was stepping into exposure. I was stepping in to the frustration of major gaps in opportunity, as well as a feeling that my traditional education was usless.
The Myth of “Just Think Differently”
One of the most damaging ideas in the book is that mindset is the main barrier.
Think like the rich, and you’ll become rich.
But mindset doesn’t replace:
denied business loans
postcode disadvantage
underpaid work
caring responsibilities
lack of childcare
systemic bias in hiring and investment
You can’t “positive mindset” your way out of structural inequality.
And yet, when things didn’t work, I blamed myself. Not the lack of access. Not the lack of capital. Not the system.
Just me.
Maybe I need to think bigger, try harder.
I gambled with my formal education and postponed it to chase a dream whilst building a young family.
That gamble made me lose out on my opportunity to graduate with my cohort.
The Quiet Devaluation of Education
The book also downplays traditional education—something that, for many Black British families, is one of the few reliable routes to stability and upward mobility.
Rejecting education is a very different decision when:
you don’t have a financial cushion
failure has real consequences
there’s no safety net to fall back on
For some, dropping out to pursue business is a strategic move.
For others, it’s a fast track to precarity.
The Emotional Cost
What I didn’t expect was the emotional impact.
I felt:
behind, because I wasn’t building “assets” fast enough
stuck, because I couldn’t access the same opportunities
ashamed, because the narrative suggested it was my mindset holding me back
It reframed structural barriers as personal failure.
What I Wish I Knew Instead
Entrepreneurship is powerful—but it’s not neutral. It’s shaped by who has access, who is funded, and who is supported.
A more honest framework would say:
build stability before taking risk
understand the system, don’t just try to “escape” it
use education strategically, not dismissively
recognise that access to capital changes everything
Most importantly: your starting point matters.
Rewriting the Narrative
I’m not anti-entrepreneurship. I’m anti-illusion.
Books like Rich Dad Poor Dad are written from a position of relative privilege—where risk is buffered, and opportunity is more accessible.
For young Black British women, the conversation needs to be different. It needs to include:
structural inequality
realistic pathways to capital
community-based wealth building
policy-level change
The earning inequities that directly affect WOMEN and MOTHERS.
Because the truth is: it wasn’t that I didn’t think like the rich.
It’s that I didn’t have access to what makes wealth-building possible in the first place.
Final Thought
The book didn’t ruin my life because it was entirely wrong.
It ruined my thinking because it was incomplete—and I didn’t yet have the language or experience to challenge it.
Now I do.
There is a movement of online coaches pushing for escape from the rat race without underpinning the truth about what it requires to escape work life when your starting point is built on structural disadvantage.
I believed that he who works all day has no time to make money.
I now believe he who works all day can build the foundations needed to shift their starting point.
Join me on my journey to shifting my starting point.
