In his ‘autobiography’, Kiyosaki sets out the opposite attitudes to money of his two dads. He builds a whole sermon around mindset and lands the idea that made him famous:

Never buy your own home: it’s a liability

At the time, I had just joined an asset manager. Small problem: I understood nothing about finance. On top of the in-house training, I was taking 1 to 2 hours of courses a day with Belgium’s Université catholique de Louvain.

And then I got it.

Under cover of a self-help parable, Kiyosaki turns a glaring conflict of interest ($495 for the written course, $45,000 for coaching in buy-to-let investing) into a truth shaped by storytelling. His dads, who never existed, are only there to prove, for a hundred-odd pages, that his business is sound. A bit like the strangers every politician claims to have met on the bus when they turn up on a breakfast show.