The Latino/Latina community comprises some of the most hardworking people in America and around the world. Sadly, like for most races, work ethic by itself doesn’t make much of a difference for their lives if it isn’t coupled with financial education. That’s why one of the big initiatives of the Rich Dad Company is to bring the Rich Dad education and philosophy to the Latino market all around the world, whether in the United States, Mexico, different countries in Latin America, or Spain. And at the head of that movement, serving as the bridge between the Rich Dad Company and the Spanish-speaking world, is the founder of Rich Dad Latino, Fernando González.

Formerly an officer of the Peruvian Navy, Fernando says that his biggest fear growing up was to be poor. He says, “I didn't know anything about money. And in my family, my father, my two brothers, we all worked for the government, so we didn't have any financial education.” So he watched both his parents struggle with money: his father, after thirty-five years of service, saw his income shrink from $2,000 to $150 a month after he retired—and when he died, Fernando’s eighty-eight-year-old mother was left with $75 per month to live on as a pension plan. If Fernando was not taking care of his mother, she’d barely have enough to afford food and shelter. If she got sick, she’d be left at the mercy of a failing public medical system that doesn’t have the appropriate physical conditions, skills, or technology to assist her. Speaking about the patients stuck in this medical system, Fernando elaborates, “They are miserable, and then death is coming soon. That happens to many people. They die quicker because they don’t have assistance.”

Unfortunately, this is very common in Latin America. So when Fernando retired from the Peruvian Navy in the late eighties, as Peru suffered from increasing inflation and devaluation, he knew there was no hope for a better life for him and his family if he remained in his native country. Instead, he came to America in search of the American Dream.

Around this time Fernando also met Robert Kiyosaki, founder of the Rich Dad Company. Fernando’s wife had given Fernando a copy of the book Rich Dad Poor Dad, and this financial education began to change his family’s life. His wife, Anna Cecilia, is a former real estate agent who decided she no longer wanted to work for tips, so now she’s a successful real estate investor going for infinite returns. Their daughter, Alexandria, manages the Rich Dad Company’s social media site. As for Fernando himself, he realized that the financial education provided by the Rich Dad Company was a message that the Spanish-speaking world needed to hear. So he committed himself to becoming the bridge between Rich Dad and the Latino/Latina community.

In many ways, the Latino/Latina community in America recognizes the need for capitalistic financial education more than most other Americans do. Many of these Latinos/Latinas are immigrants who have escaped from countries such as Cuba, Venezuela, and Peru, all of which are under socialistic and communistic governments today. Under these systems, it doesn’t matter how hard you worked: you’ll always receive the same wages, which could be as low as $20 per month even if you’re a doctor, as is the case in Cuba. With strict government control and ownership of everything, there is no free market, and without a free market, there is no incentive to work hard and do well. This is why many Latinos and Latinas escape to America seeking a better life with better financial opportunities for growth.

Unfortunately, many of these people are recognizing socialism starting to gain some traction in America. While other Americans entertain Marxist philosophies regarding money and start to promote socialist economic practices, immigrants from Cuba and other Latin American countries know what it’s like to actually live under these philosophies and economies. It’s exactly what they escaped from, hoping to find change by living in a country ruled by a free democracy. So when these free market ideals are challenged in America, they are rightly concerned, afraid that the nightmares of fear and depression they’ve escaped will take hold here, too. Other Americans often do not understand what the Latino/Latina community in America is running from. As Robert says to those who believe the horrors of communist takeovers and government dictatorships could never happen in America, “Sweetheart, it's already happening. This goes back to the point, if there's no financial education, you can't see how they're stealing or robbing you blind.”

That’s why Fernando has had so much success promoting the message of the Rich Dad Company among the Latino/Latina community. In his own words, speaking about the situation his people often find themselves in, “As Latinos, we are hardworking people without financial education. So we work for money. We never knew how to build assets. That's the problem. . .

“So we depend on the pension plan, because there is no other choice.” The Rich Dad Company is changing that through its CASHFLOW Clubs and CASHFLOW games, which are now being translated into Spanish to reach this wider audience. Fernando travels around the world speaking about free markets and financial education, and he loves seeing his racial community embracing this change.”

But not everyone embraces this message. Fernando has organized a major Rich Dad Company event in Argentina, but the Argentine president at the time, Mauricio Macri, blamed the educational system for the financial troubles in his country, which he could not change. But Fernando doesn’t listen to this kind of argument, noting, “That’s how they control our minds.”

He also doesn’t listen to arguments that say the kind of financial change that the Rich Dad Company promotes can’t be done in this Latino neighborhood or that Latino city. He’s seeing this change taking root before his very eyes. He explains, “Once we opened the door, there is no way back, because we want to be free.”

The financial freedom offered by the Rich Dad Company is meant not just for English-speaking Americans, but for the whole world. Thanks to Fernando, the Spanish-speaking world is quickly gaining access to this freedom. Fernando knows that his fellow Latinos and Latinas are extremely driven, and that in turn drives him to take to them the much-needed message and philosophy of the CASHFLOW Clubs and games provided by the Rich Dad Company. He’s worked with this company for over twenty years, and he’s not stopping anytime soon. He makes his passion for this financial education clear when he concludes, “We, as Latinos, we used to have all the wrong answers. But once you have a team with real teachers, there is another dimension. It's when you take your life to that next level.”

Fernando’s website is RichDadLatino.com, and he’s hosting the Rich Dad Company’s “How to Win in 2021” event in Spanish on December 8, 9, and 10. More information about it can be found on the website.

Rich Dad Latino: https://www.richdadlatino.com/