A fourth-generation Japanese American, Kiyosaki was born and raised in Hawaii. He is the son of the late educator Ralph H. Kiyosaki (1919–1991). After graduating from Hilo High School, he attended the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy in New York, graduating with the class of 1969 as a deck officer. He later served in the Marine Corps as a helicopter gunship pilot during the Vietnam War, where he was awarded the Air Medal.

Kiyosaki left the Marine Corps in 1975 and got a job selling copy machines for the Xerox Corporation. In 1977, Kiyosaki started a company that brought to market the first nylon and Velcro "surfer" wallets. The company was moderately successful at first but eventually went bankrupt. In the early 1980s, Kiyosaki started a business that licensed T-shirts for Heavy metal rock bands. In 1997 he launched Cashflow Technologies, Inc. which owns and operates the Rich Dad and Cashflow brands.

He is married to Kim Kiyosaki. He has one sister, Emi Kiyosaki, a Tibetan Buddhist nun and known by the name Ven. Tenzin Kacho. He has co-authored one book with her.

A large part of Kiyosaki's teachings focus on generating passive income by means of investment opportunities, such as real estate and businesses, with the ultimate goal of being able to support oneself by such investments alone. In tandem with this, Kiyosaki defines "assets" as things that generate cash inflow, such as rental properties or businesses—and "liabilities" as things that use cash, such as houses, cars, and so on. Kiyosaki also argues that financial leverage is critically important in becoming rich.

Kiyosaki stresses financial literacy as the means to obtaining wealth. He says that life skills are often best learned through experience and that there are important lessons not taught in school. He says that formal education is primarily for those seeking to be employees or self-employed individuals, and that this is an "Industrial Age idea." And according to Kiyosaki, in order to obtain financial freedom, one must be either a business owner or an investor, generating passive income.

Kiyosaki often refers to "The Cashflow Quadrant," a conceptual tool which he developed to categorize the four major ways income is earned. Depicted in a diagram, this concept entails four groupings, split with two lines (one vertical and one horizontal). In each of the four groups there is a letter representing a way in which an individual may earn income. The letters are as follows.

Kiyosaki is best known for his book Rich Dad, Poor Dad. Kiyosaki followed with Rich Dad's CASHFLOW Quadrant and Rich Dad's Guide to Investing. He has now had at least a dozen books published, including:

Kiyosaki stresses the value of games, particularly Monopoly, as tools for learning basic financial strategies such as "trade four green houses for one red hotel." Kiyosaki has created several games to reinforce the information in his books.

Several local stations of the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), including WTTW of Chicago, KAET of Phoenix, KOCE of Orange County, California, WLIW of the New York/New Jersey area, and WGBH of Boston, have featured Kiyosaki during fund-raising drives. During this television special, Rich Dad's Guide to Wealth with Robert Kiyosaki, he provides viewers with financial education, as opposed to academic or professional education.

Kiyosaki has been seen giving financial advice on various network television news channels.