Sharon Lechter

Sharon Lechter is the co-author, editor, and educational advocate who helps shape Robert T. Kiyosaki’s account of his two fathers into a book about preparing children for a changing financial world. Her role is both practical and interpretive: she finds the unfinished manuscript in fragments, argues for its publication, and frames its lessons through her experience as a mother, CPA, and education-focused professional. In the book’s closing appeal, that work becomes a call to treat financial learning not as an optional specialty but as part of preparing a family for the future.

From Fragments to a Co-Authored Book

Lechter enters the book’s account of its own making through a conversation about what children need to learn about money. When she asks how parents might teach accounting and investing—especially if they do not understand those subjects themselves—Kiyosaki tells her that he has already written a book on the subject. It has remained in his computer for years as disconnected pieces, added to occasionally but never assembled. Lechter reads those sections, decides that they have merit and should be shared, and agrees with him to co-author the book. Her contribution begins, therefore, not with a polished manuscript but with recognition and editorial commitment: she helps turn a collection of unfinished material into a work intended to reach readers.

The book identifies the argument that holds those pieces together. Kiyosaki’s story contrasts a rich father figure who teaches ownership with an educated father who advises working for a corporation; Lechter presents that contrast as a perspective on differing life goals, not simply a family anecdote. She says her own first response to Kiyosaki’s ideas was surprise, because she had been raised to understand schooling and a good job as the expected route. Her editorial introduction asks readers, particularly parents and accountants, to approach the book’s unconventional claims with openness, while acknowledging that they challenge accepted accounting principles. The result is a framing that invites scrutiny without treating the book’s ideas as ordinary school knowledge.

Education, Parenting, and Financial Preparation

Lechter’s central concern is the gap between conventional schooling and the demands children may face after graduation. She argues that telling a child only to study hard and find a job repeats a cultural habit, while leaving financial education largely unaddressed. In her account, the problem is not that scholastic learning has no value: education remains the foundation of success, but financial and communication skills are also necessary. She presents these as different kinds of learning that must accompany academic achievement, rather than as replacements for it.

Her appeal is grounded in the responsibilities of parenting. She describes a system that has not kept pace with global and technological change and warns that parents cannot assume schools will teach subjects the system itself does not know. The need is particularly pressing, she argues, because families face an uncertain future and many workers have little or no promise of a pension. She connects employment advice to the burden of taxes, noting that many families effectively work from January to mid-May to cover them. Against the familiar instruction to become a good employee, she proposes a more sophisticated aim: children might learn to work well while also learning to own an investment corporation.

Lechter does not claim that all parents must adopt every recommendation. She acknowledges that some families are struggling simply to keep their children in school, and that the book’s ideas may seem too radical to many. Her invitation is instead to keep searching for more adequate forms of education. The distinction matters to her argument: financial literacy is presented as a teachable capacity, not a privilege restricted to children already surrounded by wealth. She says that gardeners, janitors, and unemployed people can educate themselves and help loved ones learn to take care of themselves financially.

Professional Background and Educational Work

The biography at the end of the book supplies the professional experience behind Lechter’s emphasis on education. She is described as a wife and mother of three, a CPA, a consultant to the toy and publishing industries, and a business owner. After graduating with honors from Florida State University with an accounting degree, she joined one of the large accounting firms. She later became chief financial officer of a computer-industry turnaround company, tax director for a national insurance company, and founder and associate publisher of Wisconsin’s first regional women’s magazine, while maintaining her CPA credentials.

Her attention shifted increasingly toward education as she watched her children grow. She describes the difficulty of getting them to read when they would rather watch television, and says this led her to welcome the chance to work with the inventor of the first electronic talking book. Together they helped expand the electronic-book industry into a multimillion-dollar international market. The experience connects her professional work to a concrete household concern: how to make learning accessible and appealing to children.

Lechter also became active in advocating for mathematics, computers, reading, and writing education. She presents those areas as part of a broad educational responsibility, while insisting that conventional academic subjects alone are insufficient for the modern world. As co-author of Rich Dad Poor Dad and CASHFLOW Quadrant, she directs her efforts toward developing educational tools for people who want to improve their financial education. Her work therefore extends beyond editing a single manuscript: the book’s biographical account places her in a continuing project of building and promoting learning resources.

Framing the Book’s Appeal

Lechter’s introduction mediates between Kiyosaki’s personal story and its intended audience. She explains that the account of two fathers develops skills he says he acquired over a lifetime, while her own role is to support, edit, and assemble the book. She also prepares specialist readers for its challenge to generally accepted accounting principles, asking accountants to set aside academic assumptions long enough to consider how investors analyze decisions. This framing does not erase disagreement; it makes the book’s departure from conventional instruction part of the reader’s task.

Her outlook is shaped by the difference between two models of success that the book assigns to Kiyosaki’s fathers. One advises him to work for a corporation; the other advises him to own one. Lechter connects that contrast to a broader parental choice: whether to prepare children only for employment or also to equip them to build and manage assets. She treats the second path as requiring education, not as an automatic outcome of ambition. Financial intelligence, in her formulation, is a mental process for solving financial problems, and learning how to use it is a responsibility that individuals can take up for themselves and pass on to their children.

The book’s closing pages make that educational purpose explicit. Lechter joins Kiyosaki in asking readers to share what they have learned with their children, on the grounds that nobody else can prepare them in their place. Their final emphasis is on decisions made now rather than deferred: families’ futures depend on choices made today. In that ending, Lechter’s editorial and professional roles converge. She has helped organize an argument about money into a book, but its promised effect lies in what readers choose to teach, study, and do after reading it.