While I won’t argue against the notion that owning a profitable business is a much better predictor of financial success than having a job (let alone being unemployed), there is a lot to disagree with Kiyosaki. I won’t go into too many details (some interesting reading about that here, here, and here), but I will say that calling a house a liability is unbelievably silly.

If you don’t own your home (and aren’t homeless, couch-surfing, or living with your parents), you’re paying rent. Unless your landlord (or landlady) is stupid, your rent payments cover his (or her) mortgage payments, property taxes, the cost of maintaining the property, and still leave positive cashflow. This means that owning a similar property would likely be less expensive for you.

Certainly, any specific person may be in a position where s/he simply can’t come up with the necessary down-payment, or can’t get a mortgage because of bad credit, and/or can’t commit to staying in place for long enough to make buying a home practical. If that’s your situation, you may not be able to buy a home. However, that doesn’t make buying a home in general a bad idea.

In fact, if your situation makes home-ownership practical, it is the farthest thing from a liability. It’s a living solution that costs less than renting the same property, over the long term is likely to appreciate slightly faster than inflation (and in many cases actually not so slightly faster), it gives you access to extremely cheap money in the form of a mortgage that provides tax benefits, and it forces you to set aside some money each month to accumulating wealth (the principal part of your monthly payments).

Owning your home (if practical for you) is thus one of the better things you can do for yourself financially speaking.