It is repeated to emphasize the 190 Rich Dad's Guide to Investing importance of financial literacy. This question is very im- portant because one of the costs of becoming a rich in- vestor and investing in investments of the rich is the price of investing time in continual improvement of your own fi- nancial literacy. If your answer is "No" to this question, then most of the investments that the rich invest in are far too risky for you. If you are financially literate, then you will be better prepared to find the very best investments in the world. Chapter 17 Investor Lesson # 15: The Magic of Mistakes My real dad came from the world of academics, a world where mistakes are perceived as bad and to be avoided. In the world of education, the more mistakes a person makes, the less in- telligent that person is thought to be. My rich dad came from the streets. He had a different view on mistakes. To him, mistakes were opportunities to learn something new, something he did not know before. To him, the more mistakes a person made, the more the person learned. He often said, "There is a bit of magic hidden in every mistake. So the more mistakes I make and I take the time to learn from, the more magic I have in my life." My rich dad constantly used the example of learning to ride a bicycle to reinforce the idea of the magic found inside of mistakes. He would say, "Just remember the frustration you went through as you struggled to learn how to ride a bicycle. All your friends are riding but all you are doing is climbing on the bike and immediately falling off. You make mistake after mistake. Then suddenly, you stop falling off, you begin to ped- dle, the bike begins rolling, and then suddenly like magic, a whole new world opens to you. That is the magic found in mistakes." 192 Rich Dad's Guide to Investing Warren Buffet's Mistake Warren Buffet, America's richest investor, is known and re- spected for his company Berkshire Hathaway. Today, Berkshire Hathaway's share price is one of the highest priced company shares in the world. While many investors value Berkshire Hathaway's stock, few people realize that acquiring Berkshire Hathaway was one of Warren Buffet's biggest in- vestment mistakes. When he acquired the company, Berkshire Hathaway was a shirt-manufacturing company that was slowly going out of business. Warren Buffet thought his team could turn the com- pany around. Well as most of us know, textile manufacturing was dying in America and moving to other countries. It was a trend that even Warren Buffet could not go against, and the company eventually failed as a manufacturing company, even with Warren Buffet behind it. Yet, inside of this company fail- ure, Warren Buffet found the gems that ultimately made him extremely rich. For those who are interested in this story, the book The Warren Buffet Way, by Robert Hagstrom, is most enlightening, giving the reader insights into one of the great- est investor minds in the world.