When it comes to thinking about money, people always seem to fall into one of two camps: first, there are the so-called "workaholics," employees who are so dedicated to their jobs that they are more than willing to work overtime, bring business home with them, and sometimes even give their families short shrift when the office demands it. On the other hand you have the "slackers," who see the workaholic lifestyle as needless drudgery and have themselves convinced that money isn't all that important anyways.

Robert Kiyosaki, author of the Rich Dad book series, has money and he doesn't agree. "Anyone who says money isn't important obviously has not been without it long," he says in his book "Cash Flow Quadrant."

One would do well to heed Kiyosaki's words on these matters, because although he is now rich, he does know what it feels like to be flat broke - as a matter of fact, he spent several weeks in 1985 living in his car. After that, Kiyosaki and his wife moved into the basement of a friend, where they lived for about a year. During this time, they took small jobs here and there but didn't look for steady careers, as security wasn't what they were really after - they wanted to be rich.

Four years later, they were millionaires.

Money is definitely a crucial thing, but it's not important simply for its own sake. This is what many people fail to consider when rushing into high-paying jobs; although these careers will make you money, are they really worth the stress, and the pain being separated from your loved ones for extended periods of time. Yes, money is important, but only to the extent that it lets you live the life you really want to live.

One thing a job will never give you is extra time with loved ones. In fact, it will take away as much of that precious time as you allow it to.

At times it seems like a no-win situation; it takes so long to make the money you need in order to get what you want out of life that you'll never actually have the time to do the things you've always dreamed of. As an employee, this really can be an unanswerable problem; as an investor with money working for you, it's much easier to keep your priorities in order.

Robert Kiyosaki had to reach this conclusion himself, years ago; in one of his books, he wrote, "Money is important, but I did not want to spend my life working for it." As luck would have it, Kiyosaki's "Rich Dad" knew plenty about this dilemma and its true solution.

He knew that there was a way to be a responsible provider for his family without spending most of his waking life working. He knew the secret was become an investor.

When you become an investor, you are simply getting your money from a different place. What you want to do is take the money you get from your job, and put it into the I quadrant. That means that you now have money working for you. Your money is making money and you didn't have to lift a finger for those extra dollars.

That is how you can have your cake and eat it too; because the money you make no longer represents hours of your life spent away in pursuit of a living, you can take those hours and reinvest them in spending actual time with your family, in pursuing hobbies, hanging out with friends. In short, you can reinvest them in your life.