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Rich Dad Poor Dad... Worst Personal Finance Book of All Time?

134 points by slarvtrax 15y ago

mixmastamyk 15y ago
A lousy critique. RDPD is far from perfect, but it has a few good nuggets. The author barely scratches the surface what he actually dislikes about it, and instead angrily slings poo and expects us to agree and join in the ridicule. In short, unconvincing link-bait submitted by the author, using a tactic just as sleazy as what he condemns Kiyosaki for. Would downvote if I could.
toadi 15y ago
Don't really get the arguments. Don't spend more then you earn. So why is it bad to destroy your credit rating? Advise is not using credit. Maybe he wrote the book for Europeans? We don't have a credit rating. Just if you fuck up you get blacklisted and don't receive any credit. But we don't have a personal bankruptcy system either ;) Actually it's not that bad to pay yourself first and the government later. You have to eat and make sure you can work. Here we have to pay taxes on invoices even when we didn't receive the money of the invoice yet. So I did the same and didn't pay the tax yet and postponed. It's a bit like taking credit from the government when late you pay interest. So in some contexts maybe good advice?
- euroclydon 15y ago
  Sounds like you take it coming and going: someone else is holding on to your money, taking advantage of the float, and you on the other hand, have to pay interest to the government on money you don't even have yet. Why do people put up with that?
- dedward 15y ago
  i found it a really sound book. I took away several points, it should change peoples perspective about what money is, or can be. I good credit rating should be a side effect of good financial practices. The modern day idea seems to be that you should pay to borrow as much as you can afford so that you can qualify to pay to borrow even more money down the road. With good financial practices, your credit rating should be fine, or if things are going so well for you that you dont need to borrow institutionally, your credit rating is irrelevant anyway. That said, credit is a good financial instrument if used properly. The best take away was his definition of wealth.... when your income from your assetts pay for your lifestyle.....simple as that. thats wealthy.
- roel_v 15y ago
  "Maybe he wrote the book for Europeans? We don't have a credit rating. Just if you fuck up you get blacklisted and don't receive any credit." Yes we do, at least some of us (I don't know about each and every Member State). It's not accessible to most people, since it's locked away behind credit rating bureau's models, but rest assured that there are many places that track e.g. how often you've not paid you phone bill on time. I much prefer the US approach, at least it's out in the open that it exists, and you have a legal right to access your data.
- weavejester 15y ago
  The UK is in Europe, and we certainly have credit rating agencies and personal bankruptcy. Laws differ between countries in Europe. Please don't try and generalize unless you're certain there are no exceptions, otherwise it may give people incorrect information. Instead, mention your country specifically.
  - toadi 15y ago
    UK doesn't have the euro to start with. They have their own monetary system so it differs from all the other countries in the EU. Yes you live on an Island and are special ;) The other EU countries just do an audit of existing loans, employment history, income, ... If you miss payments you end up getting blacklisted for loans in the future. So we use some form of credit rating.
    - weavejester 15y ago
      Out of the 27 countries in the EU, 10 still retain their own currency. The UK is in the minority, but it isn't the only country outside the Euro. So given you've gotten that little detail wrong, forgive me if I'm a little dubious that the UK is the only EU country with personal bankruptcy and credit ratings!
cd34 15y ago
http://www.johntreed.com/Kiyosaki.html http://www.johntreed.com/Kiyosaki.html Is probably one of the better resources regarding Robert Kiyosaki.
- slarvtrax 15y ago
  Ha, excellent stuff. Pretty damning crucifixion of his claims to wealth wizardry!
- zavulon 15y ago
  While it doesn't say anything about his arguments, it should be noted that John T. Reed is far from unbiased, he's Kiyosaki's direct competitor.
  - mgkimsal 15y ago
    Certainly not unbiased, but there's very little in his criticism I've read that doesn't seem accurate. Regardless of who is making the criticism, Reed seems to have some pretty good points of criticism, and I've never heard/read good rebuttals to his points, other than "well, he's biased!"
  - fakeslimshady 15y ago
    Haters will hate and John Reed is capitalizing on this fringe niche to sell his own investment books. Anyone who dismisses RDPD based solely on what Reed wrote is as big a sheep as what he calling Kiyosaki's fans. I enjoyed RDPD and there were several other Rich Dad books I found very good : Success Stories and Form Your Own Corporation. I can hardly think of dryer subject material than corporate legal structures, but I found the RD book easy reading
  - salemh 15y ago
    Direct competitor? John T Reed self publishes. He lacks $16,000+ "seminars" that tour the country. Kiyosaki puts on, a horrendous Yahoo! run of financial advice, etc. Reed educates by noting the falseness of other guru's: http://www.johntreed.com/Reedgururating.html http://www.johntreed.com/Reedgururating.html He is not unbiased as you say, but "direct competitor" is rather strong.
ry0ohki 15y ago
It's written extremely poorly in my opinion (reads like a self help book), but the positive take-aways I got from it when I read it years ago... 1) Understand the difference between assets and liabilities (according to the author most people don't, which is shocking) 2) Take advantage of US taxation of corporations to spend money pre-tax as opposed to post tax (do this within the confines of tax law though) 3) You'll never get rich just doing what most people do, which is go to school, get a job, and work for 40 years. Starting a business is how the rich get rich.
- burnsie_la 15y ago
  I agree that it is poorly written. However if people take away from it the idea of getting out of debt and buying assets then I believe it is a great step forward!
- alsocasey 15y ago
  RDPD author's whole point about assets/liabilities centres around home-ownership and how many people see it as an asset or investment rather than a liability or cost-centre. It's the only good example of a common confusion in the book and it's really not that shocking in light of the market as most people will have experienced it and the marketing around refinancing and home-equity loans in the past decade.
klbarry 15y ago
This person severely misread the book. I could give quite a few examples from the writing. For instance, the child labor issue he brings up is ridiculous - "Rich Dad" obviously didn't benefit from this labor in any financial way. The premise of the book is solid; invest in assets that make money for you without you having to be there. He specifically says in the book a few times that he doesn't necessarily advocate real estate investing, but to invest in what makes financial sense, as long as you invest in something. He gives this as a representative list of such investments: 1) Businesses that do not require your physical presence I.E. a web app that you have someone program once and people pay $10 a month for 2) Stocks 3) Bonds 4) Mutual funds 5) Income generating real estate 6) Royalties from intellectual property 7) Any other recurring sources of income
- wisty 15y ago
  If the only valid point he has is that passive investments are a good thing, it's not a great personal finance book. You could learn a similar amount by looking up "investment" in a good dictionary.
  - maaku 15y ago
    The 'point' of the book is that this contradicts general beliefs of society. For example, that hard work is what gets one rich. Going from poor to rich does require hard work, but which work you choose to do matters far more than how hard you work at it. If you read HN then you already understand the premise of the book. But for society writ large "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" was a wakeup call to reexamine core values and life choices.
    - wisty 15y ago
      OK, I get it. It's for people who never have looked up "investment" in a good dictionary. But that doesn't make it a good book. I mean, you can get that and more off a single page: http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/personal-finance-for-dummies-cheat-sheet.html http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/personal-finance-for-d... Or this one: http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/making-millions-for-dummies-cheat-sheet.html http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/making-millions-for-du...
zavulon 15y ago
I disagree.. the most important message in the book is that business and entrepreneurship is the path to success, NOT being an employee and staying in the rat race. While it may be common sense to someone who's been in business for a while, or read a lot of similar literature, it's far from obvious to most people. I'm not ashamed to say Rich Dad Poor Dad has been one of the most influential books I've read in my life. At 20, I had very little idea about business - I thought my path was clear: graduate with a degree, get a job, work up corporate ladder, etc. Reading this book was completely mind-blowing and eye-opening. Yes, most of the advice is trivial, as I look at it now.. But there's certainly great value in the book - business vs "rat race", building assets vs liabilities, learning to sell, active vs passive income, what you can't afford your business can, value of financial literacy, and much more. But most importantly this: you can very rarely get rich working for someone else.
- dkarl 15y ago
  Sounds more like inspiration and self-help than personal finance. You could point to any number of career paths and say, "This is a well-established route to wealth, and if you work very very hard and manage your money well, you can become wealthy this way." For example, there are high-paying specialties in law and medicine where the rat race really does lead to wealth. You have to outcompete 95% of the people in your field to become wealthy, but the same thing is true of entrepreneurship.
  - firichapo 15y ago
    It is more about self-help that anything else, and the people who swear by it use it as an argument of why it is such a crappy personal finance book. But then they promote it as a personal finance book. Nice loop there.
- huxley 15y ago
  "the most important message in the book is that business and entrepreneurship is the path to success" No, it may be one of the best paths to wealth and independence --unless you're born into wealth already -- but it's not necessarily a path to success. My parents worked themselves to the bone in business, were repeatedly screwed by business partners and banks. It didn't give them one bit of gratification. My mother went back to university and got into not-for-profit microcredit and was reborn as a happy person. My dad spent time with his kids and neighbours, when he passed away he had three times as many people come to the funeral as we had space for. Entrepreneurship has a lot going for it, but it is very hard and given the barriers that can be thrown in your face, it can be just another rat-race for lots of people.
vsl2 15y ago
I agree - Kiyosaki is full of hot-air generalizations that will just as easily put you into huge financial headaches (e.g. huge investment losses, tax penalties, shot credit) as build wealth. You can't underestimate the gullibility of the masses when a book starts getting some good initial publicity - the wave becomes its own animal with everyone repeating all of the good things previously said of the book, no matter how right or wrong. Sad to say, I bought and read the book a few years under the same guidance. Product being up-sold like a time share? Superlative claims like a male enhancement product? Partnering with Donald Trump's hair? Check, check and check.
S_A_P 15y ago
The best way to make money? Sell advice/a book on how to make money. It seems to me that some of these investment opportunities are limited(real estate bargains, etc) so why would you tell the world to leverage them and remove competitive advantage? It seems to me that if you have to buy infomercial time to sell advice, it isnt very good advice, or it isnt going to work. The Rich Dad, Poor Dad books seem to me like a Don Lapre pitch wrapped in a slightly nicer presentation.
- jpdoctor 15y ago
  Another website: http://www.johntreed.com/Kiyosaki.html http://www.johntreed.com/Kiyosaki.html Kiyosaki added a note about fictionalizing, which caused a stir.
TamDenholm 15y ago
I think the book is 90% full of just filler text, i wish it was shorter. The advice i think is valuable which i took from the book was to concentrate on cashflow. Analyse all the things you pay each month and try to get each of those payments to be less, this is especially easy for things like mobile phone contracts, gym memberships, TV subscriptions, etc. Then you have more money each month. If your cashflow is greater each month, you'll be better off. I think this advice is applicable to most people and more importantly, its actionable.
martinkallstrom 15y ago
I disagree with the review. The book doesn't contain a complete and perfect path to personal wealth for anyone. But what book could ever accomplish that? Disclaimer: I read it several years ago. But the takeaways of the book that stayed with me to this date are: * Don't get emotionally attached to the concepts of money and debt. Money is not worth anything by itself and debt is not bad by itself. They are simply tools that you use and you can use them wisely or foolishly. * Try to invest your money and time in a way that creates recurring income. I.e. a house is a very bad investment because it creates recurring costs rather than income. Of course you need somewhere to live but don't get emotionally attached to the idea that happiness equals living in a fancy house or driving a fancy car. * Debt is nothing more and nothing less than a tool for creating recurring income as long as the costs of the debt are lower than the income it creates. Discounting for risk etc. * The way we teach our kids "the value of money" is creating exactly the emotional ties above that will lead them to making bad decisions about their personal finances, and ties their happiness to how much money they have in the bank. I don't know if these points are what the book says, simply because I don't know how much of it is my own interpretations. But reading this book allowed me to come to a number of conclusions that have been very helpful ever since. I can think more clearly about what money, income, debt and costs really are.
- AlexBucataru 15y ago
  This would be a more accurate review that the OP :) Another big takeaway for me was that you cannot have a healthy relationship with your money until you stop working for the money. Work for passion, curiosity, experience, whatever satisfies your mind, and you will start seeing the bigger opportunities for profit; the ones that can free you from the rat race of selling away your life (time & effort) in the hope of improving it.
- dgreensp 15y ago
  Agreed entirely; I enjoyed RDPD as well. The review is indignant sputtering, as vague and insulting as the book is claimed to be. "Common sense looks like genius when it’s viewed from a cesspit of stupidity"? The reviewer's final attack is to admit you may learn something from the book, but only if you're stupid. Every time someone (like the reviewer) uses the phrase "beat the market," I sigh and shake my head. To hear some people talk, you'd think getting a job was "beating the job market"; riding the bus is "beating the transportation market." Somewhere out there, phantasmic figures are matching opportunities with takers perfectly, so that every prospect becomes break even; every creative, individual, independent action you could take is rendered pointless by unseen forces. You might as well sit on your ass. It's efficient market theory turned demotivational wisdom. Surely, if there were so much value to my being across town, it would cost me more than $2 bus fare. Or a professional trader would have already found me, told me where to go, and made a profit on the transaction. You can't beat the market. I only developed a head for business in my 20s, but I imagine that if I had been running lemonade stands and mowing lawns as a kid, I would be immune to thinking that opportunities were for others to discover, or were already exploited, or that being enterprising only brings risk. This is the kind of lesson taught by RDPD, and I wonder if the reviewer has learned it.
dev_jim 15y ago
I'm always fascinated as to why people on this board fervently defend scammy self-help books. Tim Ferris' completely phony 4-hour series provoked a similar reaction.
- tomp 15y ago
  Why scammy? It's pretty common sense that these books do not offer any recipes for wealth creation, but they do offer something very important: the correct mindset for wealth creation. That is something that many many people lack and need. Finally, if you find it useless, why do you assume that everybody else does so as well?
  - davidw 15y ago
    > these books do not offer any recipes for wealth creation Oh but they do: for the authors. The problem with them is that there is little of substance and lots of feel-good hand waving. The good bits could usually be summed up on a page. Compare and contrast, with, say "Founders at Work" where each story is different, unique and interesting in its own way.
    - Czarnian 15y ago
      Don't forget the ever-present promise that if you give him just twenty more dollars, he'll reveal the secrets to his success. Unfortunately, the secret to his success IS the act of giving him twenty more dollars.
      - spindritf 15y ago
        Didn't Tim Ferris found and run a supplement company years before publishing his first 4-hour book?
        Czarnian 15y ago
        Tim Ferris founded and ran a Multi-Level Marketing company that sold supplements. I have no use for anyone or anything that comes from a MLM background.
forgottenpaswrd 15y ago
I think it is a good book. I agree it is really bad written, but also provides a different perspective over a few important areas, like owning(second) houses being liabilities instead of assets for most people, and them not realizing that.
tomp 15y ago
I find it funny how the author of the article is bashing the book for offering no real ways of value creation, when he is an internet marketer... The very definition of no value creation. I once got a book from this Warrior Forum (an online marketing forum) he speaks of, that would supposedly teach you how to earn money online. The main point of this book was that if you want to sell online, you must first find people who are willing to buy online, such as on (you guessed it!) the Warrior Forum itself! Funny enough, on that forum all the praises were positive, suggesting that people are too ashamed to admit they were cheated (or the admins, who took a large cut of all sales on this forum, deleted all posts that could have a negative financial impact). Thank god I downloaded the book! I know that ad hominem argument is a logical fallacy, but I find it hard to believe the personal opinions of dishonest people.
- slarvtrax 15y ago
  You realise I mentioned the Warrior Forum in a negative light, right? I think it's probably the worst forum in the world on the subject of wealth creation. Hence, the cesspit of stupidity. For your information, Internet Marketing has much more to do with value creation than you probably think. It's a multi-million dollar industry. But if you confuse Internet Marketing with what you see on the Warrior Forum, I can see how it's easy to make that mistake...
  - tomp 15y ago
    Hm... My bad, then. Could you possibly point me to another resource so that I could get more informed? All I ever read was either affiliate marketing (which has certain value, but the better the product, the less it's needed) and the internet "get-rich-from-your-couch" schemes which are very... appalling.
    - slarvtrax 15y ago
      Honestly, I think what you saw on Warrior Forum is pretty representative of the grand majority of info products floating around there on Internet Marketing. The good ones are few and far between, primarily because anybody can claim to be an expert. There's no barrier to entry. When I refer to Internet Marketing as my profession, I don't mean slinging info products in the form of a pyramid scheme. I simply mean working with brands to sell and promote their products online. Big brands though, brands you've probably actually heard of, with legit products that have nothing to do with the Internet! Unfortunately, Warrior Forum is a circle jerk driven by gurus who actually know very little about marketing brands online. They only market their own crappy products.
itmag 15y ago
I'm very interested in the metaphysics of wealth. Does anyone have any tips on that? I have a copy of Georg Simmel's "The philosophy of money", which is supposed to be about that. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg_Simmel#The_Philosophy_of_Money http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg_Simmel#The_Philosophy_of_...
j45 15y ago
This post missed the entire point of the book. Time is wealth. Spending time how you want is being rich. Money is the tool that allows that. How we earn money decides how rich, and wealthy we are. There is a better way to earn money than simply, and only working for money in exchange for our time. Money you earn in exchange for your time will never be as much as what a business you setup can earn with out you. This book teaches the difference between working "on" your business instead of in a business, whether it's your own, or someone elses. The E-Myth Revisited drives this point home even further. Learning that there's another way to earn an income without your time is a powerful lesson. One that I think this post misses. This book speaks to how there is no such thing as job security. While we in tech might be used to it, the majority of folks aren't. Learning the only real job security is the security we create ourselves via multiple streams of income is often a troubling lesson to face, realize, accept, and adapt to. These are huge, key, fundamental lessons that you either get, or you don't. You can't wake up someone who doesn't know they're asleep, and as is evident here, sometimes we need to remember to learn to take the best good from everything. Living in a world of possibilities is nothing like living in a world of doubts that accrue to seem insurmountable. We shouldn't live blindly faithful, or blindly doubtful, neither are fruitful.
blisper 15y ago
I use this book as a barometer (scale) of how bad a person's business sense or money sense is. If he/she considers the Rich Dad series book of any value - that's a measure of their ignorance and gullibility.
bryanh 15y ago
What these simplified self help books do well: they wrap important concepts into sound bytes that you can take with you wherever you go. The fact that any given concept might not be revolutionary to you in particular is irrelevant. The perfect example is "pay yourself first". It is catchy and simple way to wrap up the concept of "you can expense things that help you make money to a business".
patrickryan 15y ago
The quote I always remember from the book goes something like, "The average dad, also the poor dad, tells their children to work hard in school and get a steady job in a good company. The rich dad tells their children to start a company."
bufordtwain 15y ago
I recommend Felix Dennis' book "How to get Rich" as a good alternative to Rich Dad Poor Dad. Felix doesn't sugar coat his advice, he points out the sacrifice that will typically be involved in getting rich if that's what you want.
- rubashov 15y ago
  Yeah, he even goes on about compromised health. After a couple of his big scores he looked around the celebratory dinner table and realized how the preceding three years had badly aged people.
- sireat 15y ago
  I've read both and Dennis book is much better, plus it is also more authentic. As has been pointed out, Kiyosaki made up his rich dad.
swang 15y ago
A couple months ago there was an article about people in NY who wanted to charge $3K+ to teach others how to program in Ruby. HN went ballistic, "How could you charge so much when you can learn it all on the Internet?" Yet for some reason when the field isn't exactly an area of expertise for most HN readers, and the author of the book is giving only common sense financial advice, you get tons of people here saying that the book is pretty decent because it reaffirms common sense financial advice. Never mind that you can find most of this advice on the Internet... For Free! So my question is, why isn't there more outrage that Robert Kiyosaki wrote a book and charges $11-20/book for common sense advice, but when people try to charge money to teach Ruby, people on HN get angry? Is it the price? Wouldn't you say that to someone who knows nothing about either subject, that a $3K class that teaches you a skill is worth more than a $20 advice book?
- nostrademons 15y ago
  Well, for me Rich Dad Poor Dad was free, because I got it out of the public library. People actually pay for books?
- lrobb 15y ago
  I think it's because people tend to discount what they know.
- paulhauggis 15y ago
  "A couple months ago there was an article about people in NY who wanted to charge $3K+ to teach others how to program in Ruby. HN went ballistic, "How could you charge so much when you can learn it all on the Internet?"" A good personal tutor goes much further than reading something on the Internet. Especially something that could increase your yearly salary.
tferris 15y ago
im my opinion this blog post is kind of a very clever marketing FOR the book
- slarvtrax 15y ago
  Ha, I can assure you that it's definitely not intended to be, even if that ends up becoming the case!
- firebones 15y ago
  Note that the link to the book contains the blog owner's Amazon affiliate referral code, so even if you disagree and click through to Amazon and buy something, he gets a cut. I'd love to see the economic benefit of this post to the author (along with the number of orders of the book the post actually induced). This is not a moral judgment of linking to products you disavow, just intellectual curiosity about the results of such a counterintuitive marketing approach compared to affirmative recommendations of other popular books.
ghpdx 15y ago
When I read this book, I was a busser at a hotel restaurant. Some customer I was talking to had recommended it to me. He made me promise him I'd read it (seems kinda lame in retrospect). I ignored a lot of it (like the risky real estate stuff), but what I took away from it was that you can't get rich working for someone else because you can only work so many hours in a day; you need to start your own business or invest to make lots of money. That seems like common sense now, but it wasn't for me at the time. I'm not exaggerating when I say this-- I saved up and bought a Mac, bought books on HTML/CSS, PHP, Ruby, MySQL, Photoshop, Illustrator, design, etc., bootstrapped a SAAS company, and now I make a solid living off of it. This took me about 5 years because I started from scratch, but I can say I'm definitely a lot happier with my lifestyle now, than I was before I read the book, as cheesy as it was. Just my two cents.
sritch 15y ago
Ironically this is one of the first books I read that spurred my interest into Personal Finance. Ha.
AznHisoka 15y ago
Does anyone else confuse Robert Kiyosaki with Guy Kawasaki?
ascentofstan 15y ago
"Personal self-discipline is the #1 delineating factor between the rich, the poor and the middle class" The main takeaway point for me, and the most influential. Fresh out of college, I make several times the amount of money my entire family was raised on. I have not played my hand at entrepreneurship yet (I have a regular job), but discipline is exactly what my poor family lacks. They are very gifted in terms of talent, passion, strong work ethic, but without financial discipline times were always tough growing up.
maxer 15y ago
i find a similar but very much better book is "the millionaire next door" which shows the traits of an average millionaire
chaostheory 15y ago
From the point of view of the article, I think two of the major points aren't crap. 1) > 1. Education is important, but always second to financial literacy. People turn out poor because they’re not taught financial literacy. The first one is apparent. I definitely agree that his books, especially the later titles are scammy. However they are not completely without any value. Kiyosaki is more like a motivational guru than a finance expert. I think the message that it's better to produce than to consume is pretty successfully conveyed. 3) >Pay yourself first. Even if the government comes knocking on your door, you deserve to be paid first. The best way to do this, in Kiyosaki’s opinion, is to hide under the umbrella of a corporation. The author fails to recognize the difference between business expenses and personal expenses. I admit that this is bad advice, but for different reasons. It's something I wouldn't do myself, because it isn't ethical and not because it's not effective. Chances are if you're making below 500k, you can get away with this tactic. Even if the IRS does audit you, there are just so many ways to still make it out alive. (One of my friends used to work for a law firm specializing in taxes.)
pavelkaroukin 15y ago
The thing is - there is no recipe to become quickly wealthy. Everyone will have their own road and no one can use someone else's experience to get to the same place. What this book gave - overall excitement about possible future, that's it. It should not motivate, not educate.
arandomJohn 15y ago
Here's the thing. His rich dad is fictional. He doesn't make money the way he tells you to. He's not a real estate mogul. He make money selling books and seminars. If the advice he gives were so great he'd be Donald Trump ten times over.
- gm 15y ago
  Kiyozaki has made a lot of money in real estate. And he does cooperate a lot with Trump: http://www.amazon.com/Why-We-Want-You-Rich/dp/B0013MN78Q/ref=sr_1_sc_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1328811353&sr=8-3-spell http://www.amazon.com/Why-We-Want-You-Rich/dp/B0013MN78Q/ref... At the very least they have written several books together.
blindhippo 15y ago
Haven't read Rich Dad Poor Dad but from what I got out of this article and several of the comments here is that the main point is disconnecting your personal time from your wealth generation. Your time is better spent generating products/investments that generate wealth independent of your own input. It's really really hard to get rich as a consultant or even as an employee (though both can generate the capital to kick-start the real wealth generation). A concept that was illuminated quite brilliantly to me when I read How to Get Rich by Felix Dennis. However, I personally think intelligence and "balls" play a far bigger role in our ability to generate wealth for ourselves then anyone seems to give credit for. You can read all the books on finance you want, if you're an idiot, you will probably fail to get the returns you want. Same goes if you're a coward. Personally, I'm lacking a bit in the balls, and hope I'm smart enough. We'll see in the next 10 years or so.
deleted 15y ago
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joedev 15y ago
"Worst of All Time"? I would have thought one of these would at least be a contender for that title. "Turning Your Ordinary Photos into Your Lifetime Employees" - http://www.amazon.com/Automated-Income-Ordinary-Employees-ebook/dp/B006VSOHEK http://www.amazon.com/Automated-Income-Ordinary-Employees-eb... "Getting Started in Property Flipping" - http://www.amazon.com/Getting-Started-Property-Flipping-Thomsett/dp/047003937X http://www.amazon.com/Getting-Started-Property-Flipping-Thom... or even: "Watch TV, Get Rich" - http://www.amazon.com/Jim-Cramers-Mad-Money-Watch/dp/1416537902/ http://www.amazon.com/Jim-Cramers-Mad-Money-Watch/dp/1416537...
handzhiev 15y ago
No, it's not. The book is pretty basic and the author might be scam but the book is good enough for the average person who does not have a clue of finance management.
dennisgorelik 15y ago
Such angry article is a funny way to sell the book (and get his Amazon affiliate commission).
EREFUNDO 15y ago
That is the beauty and curse of entrepreneurship, there is no clear goal post, no absolutes, just approximations. It takes a lot of toughness to go through the emotional roller coaster of excitement and enthusiasm to frustration and disappointment. That is why most fail, that is why most don't even start. Resilience is the name of the game.
quietness 15y ago
Rich Dad Poor Dad was not meant to be a Biblical be-all end-all; in one of his talks, he mentioned that the original manuscript is supposed to be a manual for the game he invented, "Cashflow 101," which was trashed by the first testers for being a long and complicated game, but anyway. The author nailed down the first point, about financial literacy being critical, and people turning out poor because of the lack of it. If this were not true, most if not all summa cum laude graduates would own, instead of just work for, a company; they succeeded in traditional education, but know nothing about finance. The two others are completely off. RDPD was never meant to be an instruction booklet on how to become rich, much less how to get rich in real estate. He also misunderstood the concept of "paying yourself first" to mean "don't pay your taxes," which is simply false. He made it sound like Kiyosaki is some selfish person who is demanding the rest of the world to be the same; but if you read the rest of the book, he actually points out that rich people are very unselfish, because they give what other people want: jobs, products, services, etc., as opposed to those who just want to be paid more despite being mediocre. He also said that if you want to be rich, you have to give other people what they want. Kiyosaki's example about being "inspired" by the screaming of creditors and the government is nothing more than that: a personal example. He didn't say everyone should follow that example. In fact, he said a couple of paragraphs later: "If you do not like financial pressure, then find a formula that works for you." And he said a few paragraphs prior: "If you cannot get control of yourself, do not try to get rich. You might first want to join the Marine Corps or some religious order so you can get control of yourself." He's clear about the dangers of falling to the temptation of spending on consumer debt and using investment to cover it up. Also, that little bit about child labor is odd. It's not like Rich Dad was trying to make millions from his son and his friend. It was more of a lesson to show how employees live their lives; personal experience tends to be a more powerful teacher, after all. Saying that, I admit that some of the stories in some of his other books were simply repeated from this one. It must be kind of him to assume that the readers of his other books haven't read the others, but it can get annoying reading the same story.

134 points by slarvtrax 15y ago

A lousy critique. RDPD is far from perfect, but it has a few good nuggets. The author barely scratches the surface what he actually dislikes about it, and instead angrily slings poo and expects us to agree and join in the ridicule. In short, unconvincing link-bait submitted by the author, using a tactic just as sleazy as what he condemns Kiyosaki for. Would downvote if I could.

toadi 15y ago

Don't really get the arguments. Don't spend more then you earn. So why is it bad to destroy your credit rating? Advise is not using credit. Maybe he wrote the book for Europeans? We don't have a credit rating. Just if you fuck up you get blacklisted and don't receive any credit. But we don't have a personal bankruptcy system either ;) Actually it's not that bad to pay yourself first and the government later. You have to eat and make sure you can work. Here we have to pay taxes on invoices even when we didn't receive the money of the invoice yet. So I did the same and didn't pay the tax yet and postponed. It's a bit like taking credit from the government when late you pay interest. So in some contexts maybe good advice?

euroclydon 15y ago
Sounds like you take it coming and going: someone else is holding on to your money, taking advantage of the float, and you on the other hand, have to pay interest to the government on money you don't even have yet. Why do people put up with that?
dedward 15y ago
i found it a really sound book. I took away several points, it should change peoples perspective about what money is, or can be. I good credit rating should be a side effect of good financial practices. The modern day idea seems to be that you should pay to borrow as much as you can afford so that you can qualify to pay to borrow even more money down the road. With good financial practices, your credit rating should be fine, or if things are going so well for you that you dont need to borrow institutionally, your credit rating is irrelevant anyway. That said, credit is a good financial instrument if used properly. The best take away was his definition of wealth.... when your income from your assetts pay for your lifestyle.....simple as that. thats wealthy.
roel_v 15y ago
"Maybe he wrote the book for Europeans? We don't have a credit rating. Just if you fuck up you get blacklisted and don't receive any credit." Yes we do, at least some of us (I don't know about each and every Member State). It's not accessible to most people, since it's locked away behind credit rating bureau's models, but rest assured that there are many places that track e.g. how often you've not paid you phone bill on time. I much prefer the US approach, at least it's out in the open that it exists, and you have a legal right to access your data.
weavejester 15y ago
The UK is in Europe, and we certainly have credit rating agencies and personal bankruptcy. Laws differ between countries in Europe. Please don't try and generalize unless you're certain there are no exceptions, otherwise it may give people incorrect information. Instead, mention your country specifically.
- toadi 15y ago
  UK doesn't have the euro to start with. They have their own monetary system so it differs from all the other countries in the EU. Yes you live on an Island and are special ;) The other EU countries just do an audit of existing loans, employment history, income, ... If you miss payments you end up getting blacklisted for loans in the future. So we use some form of credit rating.
  - weavejester 15y ago
    Out of the 27 countries in the EU, 10 still retain their own currency. The UK is in the minority, but it isn't the only country outside the Euro. So given you've gotten that little detail wrong, forgive me if I'm a little dubious that the UK is the only EU country with personal bankruptcy and credit ratings!

cd34 15y ago

http://www.johntreed.com/Kiyosaki.html http://www.johntreed.com/Kiyosaki.html Is probably one of the better resources regarding Robert Kiyosaki.

slarvtrax 15y ago
Ha, excellent stuff. Pretty damning crucifixion of his claims to wealth wizardry!
zavulon 15y ago
While it doesn't say anything about his arguments, it should be noted that John T. Reed is far from unbiased, he's Kiyosaki's direct competitor.
- mgkimsal 15y ago
  Certainly not unbiased, but there's very little in his criticism I've read that doesn't seem accurate. Regardless of who is making the criticism, Reed seems to have some pretty good points of criticism, and I've never heard/read good rebuttals to his points, other than "well, he's biased!"
- fakeslimshady 15y ago
  Haters will hate and John Reed is capitalizing on this fringe niche to sell his own investment books. Anyone who dismisses RDPD based solely on what Reed wrote is as big a sheep as what he calling Kiyosaki's fans. I enjoyed RDPD and there were several other Rich Dad books I found very good : Success Stories and Form Your Own Corporation. I can hardly think of dryer subject material than corporate legal structures, but I found the RD book easy reading
- salemh 15y ago
  Direct competitor? John T Reed self publishes. He lacks $16,000+ "seminars" that tour the country. Kiyosaki puts on, a horrendous Yahoo! run of financial advice, etc. Reed educates by noting the falseness of other guru's: http://www.johntreed.com/Reedgururating.html http://www.johntreed.com/Reedgururating.html He is not unbiased as you say, but "direct competitor" is rather strong.

ry0ohki 15y ago

It's written extremely poorly in my opinion (reads like a self help book), but the positive take-aways I got from it when I read it years ago... 1) Understand the difference between assets and liabilities (according to the author most people don't, which is shocking) 2) Take advantage of US taxation of corporations to spend money pre-tax as opposed to post tax (do this within the confines of tax law though) 3) You'll never get rich just doing what most people do, which is go to school, get a job, and work for 40 years. Starting a business is how the rich get rich.

burnsie_la 15y ago
I agree that it is poorly written. However if people take away from it the idea of getting out of debt and buying assets then I believe it is a great step forward!
alsocasey 15y ago
RDPD author's whole point about assets/liabilities centres around home-ownership and how many people see it as an asset or investment rather than a liability or cost-centre. It's the only good example of a common confusion in the book and it's really not that shocking in light of the market as most people will have experienced it and the marketing around refinancing and home-equity loans in the past decade.

klbarry 15y ago

This person severely misread the book. I could give quite a few examples from the writing. For instance, the child labor issue he brings up is ridiculous - "Rich Dad" obviously didn't benefit from this labor in any financial way. The premise of the book is solid; invest in assets that make money for you without you having to be there. He specifically says in the book a few times that he doesn't necessarily advocate real estate investing, but to invest in what makes financial sense, as long as you invest in something. He gives this as a representative list of such investments: 1) Businesses that do not require your physical presence I.E. a web app that you have someone program once and people pay $10 a month for 2) Stocks 3) Bonds 4) Mutual funds 5) Income generating real estate 6) Royalties from intellectual property 7) Any other recurring sources of income

wisty 15y ago
If the only valid point he has is that passive investments are a good thing, it's not a great personal finance book. You could learn a similar amount by looking up "investment" in a good dictionary.
- maaku 15y ago
  The 'point' of the book is that this contradicts general beliefs of society. For example, that hard work is what gets one rich. Going from poor to rich does require hard work, but which work you choose to do matters far more than how hard you work at it. If you read HN then you already understand the premise of the book. But for society writ large "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" was a wakeup call to reexamine core values and life choices.
  - wisty 15y ago
    OK, I get it. It's for people who never have looked up "investment" in a good dictionary. But that doesn't make it a good book. I mean, you can get that and more off a single page: http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/personal-finance-for-dummies-cheat-sheet.html http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/personal-finance-for-d... Or this one: http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/making-millions-for-dummies-cheat-sheet.html http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/making-millions-for-du...

zavulon 15y ago

I disagree.. the most important message in the book is that business and entrepreneurship is the path to success, NOT being an employee and staying in the rat race. While it may be common sense to someone who's been in business for a while, or read a lot of similar literature, it's far from obvious to most people. I'm not ashamed to say Rich Dad Poor Dad has been one of the most influential books I've read in my life. At 20, I had very little idea about business - I thought my path was clear: graduate with a degree, get a job, work up corporate ladder, etc. Reading this book was completely mind-blowing and eye-opening. Yes, most of the advice is trivial, as I look at it now.. But there's certainly great value in the book - business vs "rat race", building assets vs liabilities, learning to sell, active vs passive income, what you can't afford your business can, value of financial literacy, and much more. But most importantly this: you can very rarely get rich working for someone else.

dkarl 15y ago
Sounds more like inspiration and self-help than personal finance. You could point to any number of career paths and say, "This is a well-established route to wealth, and if you work very very hard and manage your money well, you can become wealthy this way." For example, there are high-paying specialties in law and medicine where the rat race really does lead to wealth. You have to outcompete 95% of the people in your field to become wealthy, but the same thing is true of entrepreneurship.
- firichapo 15y ago
  It is more about self-help that anything else, and the people who swear by it use it as an argument of why it is such a crappy personal finance book. But then they promote it as a personal finance book. Nice loop there.
huxley 15y ago
"the most important message in the book is that business and entrepreneurship is the path to success" No, it may be one of the best paths to wealth and independence --unless you're born into wealth already -- but it's not necessarily a path to success. My parents worked themselves to the bone in business, were repeatedly screwed by business partners and banks. It didn't give them one bit of gratification. My mother went back to university and got into not-for-profit microcredit and was reborn as a happy person. My dad spent time with his kids and neighbours, when he passed away he had three times as many people come to the funeral as we had space for. Entrepreneurship has a lot going for it, but it is very hard and given the barriers that can be thrown in your face, it can be just another rat-race for lots of people.

vsl2 15y ago

I agree - Kiyosaki is full of hot-air generalizations that will just as easily put you into huge financial headaches (e.g. huge investment losses, tax penalties, shot credit) as build wealth. You can't underestimate the gullibility of the masses when a book starts getting some good initial publicity - the wave becomes its own animal with everyone repeating all of the good things previously said of the book, no matter how right or wrong. Sad to say, I bought and read the book a few years under the same guidance. Product being up-sold like a time share? Superlative claims like a male enhancement product? Partnering with Donald Trump's hair? Check, check and check.

S_A_P 15y ago

The best way to make money? Sell advice/a book on how to make money. It seems to me that some of these investment opportunities are limited(real estate bargains, etc) so why would you tell the world to leverage them and remove competitive advantage? It seems to me that if you have to buy infomercial time to sell advice, it isnt very good advice, or it isnt going to work. The Rich Dad, Poor Dad books seem to me like a Don Lapre pitch wrapped in a slightly nicer presentation.

jpdoctor 15y ago
Another website: http://www.johntreed.com/Kiyosaki.html http://www.johntreed.com/Kiyosaki.html Kiyosaki added a note about fictionalizing, which caused a stir.

TamDenholm 15y ago

I think the book is 90% full of just filler text, i wish it was shorter. The advice i think is valuable which i took from the book was to concentrate on cashflow. Analyse all the things you pay each month and try to get each of those payments to be less, this is especially easy for things like mobile phone contracts, gym memberships, TV subscriptions, etc. Then you have more money each month. If your cashflow is greater each month, you'll be better off. I think this advice is applicable to most people and more importantly, its actionable.

martinkallstrom 15y ago

I disagree with the review. The book doesn't contain a complete and perfect path to personal wealth for anyone. But what book could ever accomplish that? Disclaimer: I read it several years ago. But the takeaways of the book that stayed with me to this date are: * Don't get emotionally attached to the concepts of money and debt. Money is not worth anything by itself and debt is not bad by itself. They are simply tools that you use and you can use them wisely or foolishly. * Try to invest your money and time in a way that creates recurring income. I.e. a house is a very bad investment because it creates recurring costs rather than income. Of course you need somewhere to live but don't get emotionally attached to the idea that happiness equals living in a fancy house or driving a fancy car. * Debt is nothing more and nothing less than a tool for creating recurring income as long as the costs of the debt are lower than the income it creates. Discounting for risk etc. * The way we teach our kids "the value of money" is creating exactly the emotional ties above that will lead them to making bad decisions about their personal finances, and ties their happiness to how much money they have in the bank. I don't know if these points are what the book says, simply because I don't know how much of it is my own interpretations. But reading this book allowed me to come to a number of conclusions that have been very helpful ever since. I can think more clearly about what money, income, debt and costs really are.

AlexBucataru 15y ago
This would be a more accurate review that the OP :) Another big takeaway for me was that you cannot have a healthy relationship with your money until you stop working for the money. Work for passion, curiosity, experience, whatever satisfies your mind, and you will start seeing the bigger opportunities for profit; the ones that can free you from the rat race of selling away your life (time & effort) in the hope of improving it.
dgreensp 15y ago
Agreed entirely; I enjoyed RDPD as well. The review is indignant sputtering, as vague and insulting as the book is claimed to be. "Common sense looks like genius when it’s viewed from a cesspit of stupidity"? The reviewer's final attack is to admit you may learn something from the book, but only if you're stupid. Every time someone (like the reviewer) uses the phrase "beat the market," I sigh and shake my head. To hear some people talk, you'd think getting a job was "beating the job market"; riding the bus is "beating the transportation market." Somewhere out there, phantasmic figures are matching opportunities with takers perfectly, so that every prospect becomes break even; every creative, individual, independent action you could take is rendered pointless by unseen forces. You might as well sit on your ass. It's efficient market theory turned demotivational wisdom. Surely, if there were so much value to my being across town, it would cost me more than $2 bus fare. Or a professional trader would have already found me, told me where to go, and made a profit on the transaction. You can't beat the market. I only developed a head for business in my 20s, but I imagine that if I had been running lemonade stands and mowing lawns as a kid, I would be immune to thinking that opportunities were for others to discover, or were already exploited, or that being enterprising only brings risk. This is the kind of lesson taught by RDPD, and I wonder if the reviewer has learned it.

dev_jim 15y ago

I'm always fascinated as to why people on this board fervently defend scammy self-help books. Tim Ferris' completely phony 4-hour series provoked a similar reaction.

tomp 15y ago
Why scammy? It's pretty common sense that these books do not offer any recipes for wealth creation, but they do offer something very important: the correct mindset for wealth creation. That is something that many many people lack and need. Finally, if you find it useless, why do you assume that everybody else does so as well?
- davidw 15y ago
  > these books do not offer any recipes for wealth creation Oh but they do: for the authors. The problem with them is that there is little of substance and lots of feel-good hand waving. The good bits could usually be summed up on a page. Compare and contrast, with, say "Founders at Work" where each story is different, unique and interesting in its own way.
  - Czarnian 15y ago
    Don't forget the ever-present promise that if you give him just twenty more dollars, he'll reveal the secrets to his success. Unfortunately, the secret to his success IS the act of giving him twenty more dollars.
    - spindritf 15y ago
      Didn't Tim Ferris found and run a supplement company years before publishing his first 4-hour book?
      - Czarnian 15y ago
        Tim Ferris founded and ran a Multi-Level Marketing company that sold supplements. I have no use for anyone or anything that comes from a MLM background.

forgottenpaswrd 15y ago

I think it is a good book. I agree it is really bad written, but also provides a different perspective over a few important areas, like owning(second) houses being liabilities instead of assets for most people, and them not realizing that.

tomp 15y ago

I find it funny how the author of the article is bashing the book for offering no real ways of value creation, when he is an internet marketer... The very definition of no value creation. I once got a book from this Warrior Forum (an online marketing forum) he speaks of, that would supposedly teach you how to earn money online. The main point of this book was that if you want to sell online, you must first find people who are willing to buy online, such as on (you guessed it!) the Warrior Forum itself! Funny enough, on that forum all the praises were positive, suggesting that people are too ashamed to admit they were cheated (or the admins, who took a large cut of all sales on this forum, deleted all posts that could have a negative financial impact). Thank god I downloaded the book! I know that ad hominem argument is a logical fallacy, but I find it hard to believe the personal opinions of dishonest people.

slarvtrax 15y ago
You realise I mentioned the Warrior Forum in a negative light, right? I think it's probably the worst forum in the world on the subject of wealth creation. Hence, the cesspit of stupidity. For your information, Internet Marketing has much more to do with value creation than you probably think. It's a multi-million dollar industry. But if you confuse Internet Marketing with what you see on the Warrior Forum, I can see how it's easy to make that mistake...
- tomp 15y ago
  Hm... My bad, then. Could you possibly point me to another resource so that I could get more informed? All I ever read was either affiliate marketing (which has certain value, but the better the product, the less it's needed) and the internet "get-rich-from-your-couch" schemes which are very... appalling.
  - slarvtrax 15y ago
    Honestly, I think what you saw on Warrior Forum is pretty representative of the grand majority of info products floating around there on Internet Marketing. The good ones are few and far between, primarily because anybody can claim to be an expert. There's no barrier to entry. When I refer to Internet Marketing as my profession, I don't mean slinging info products in the form of a pyramid scheme. I simply mean working with brands to sell and promote their products online. Big brands though, brands you've probably actually heard of, with legit products that have nothing to do with the Internet! Unfortunately, Warrior Forum is a circle jerk driven by gurus who actually know very little about marketing brands online. They only market their own crappy products.

itmag 15y ago

I'm very interested in the metaphysics of wealth. Does anyone have any tips on that? I have a copy of Georg Simmel's "The philosophy of money", which is supposed to be about that. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg_Simmel#The_Philosophy_of_Money http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg_Simmel#The_Philosophy_of_...

j45 15y ago

This post missed the entire point of the book. Time is wealth. Spending time how you want is being rich. Money is the tool that allows that. How we earn money decides how rich, and wealthy we are. There is a better way to earn money than simply, and only working for money in exchange for our time. Money you earn in exchange for your time will never be as much as what a business you setup can earn with out you. This book teaches the difference between working "on" your business instead of in a business, whether it's your own, or someone elses. The E-Myth Revisited drives this point home even further. Learning that there's another way to earn an income without your time is a powerful lesson. One that I think this post misses. This book speaks to how there is no such thing as job security. While we in tech might be used to it, the majority of folks aren't. Learning the only real job security is the security we create ourselves via multiple streams of income is often a troubling lesson to face, realize, accept, and adapt to. These are huge, key, fundamental lessons that you either get, or you don't. You can't wake up someone who doesn't know they're asleep, and as is evident here, sometimes we need to remember to learn to take the best good from everything. Living in a world of possibilities is nothing like living in a world of doubts that accrue to seem insurmountable. We shouldn't live blindly faithful, or blindly doubtful, neither are fruitful.

blisper 15y ago

I use this book as a barometer (scale) of how bad a person's business sense or money sense is. If he/she considers the Rich Dad series book of any value - that's a measure of their ignorance and gullibility.

bryanh 15y ago

What these simplified self help books do well: they wrap important concepts into sound bytes that you can take with you wherever you go. The fact that any given concept might not be revolutionary to you in particular is irrelevant. The perfect example is "pay yourself first". It is catchy and simple way to wrap up the concept of "you can expense things that help you make money to a business".

patrickryan 15y ago

The quote I always remember from the book goes something like, "The average dad, also the poor dad, tells their children to work hard in school and get a steady job in a good company. The rich dad tells their children to start a company."

bufordtwain 15y ago

I recommend Felix Dennis' book "How to get Rich" as a good alternative to Rich Dad Poor Dad. Felix doesn't sugar coat his advice, he points out the sacrifice that will typically be involved in getting rich if that's what you want.

rubashov 15y ago
Yeah, he even goes on about compromised health. After a couple of his big scores he looked around the celebratory dinner table and realized how the preceding three years had badly aged people.
sireat 15y ago
I've read both and Dennis book is much better, plus it is also more authentic. As has been pointed out, Kiyosaki made up his rich dad.

swang 15y ago

A couple months ago there was an article about people in NY who wanted to charge $3K+ to teach others how to program in Ruby. HN went ballistic, "How could you charge so much when you can learn it all on the Internet?" Yet for some reason when the field isn't exactly an area of expertise for most HN readers, and the author of the book is giving only common sense financial advice, you get tons of people here saying that the book is pretty decent because it reaffirms common sense financial advice. Never mind that you can find most of this advice on the Internet... For Free! So my question is, why isn't there more outrage that Robert Kiyosaki wrote a book and charges $11-20/book for common sense advice, but when people try to charge money to teach Ruby, people on HN get angry? Is it the price? Wouldn't you say that to someone who knows nothing about either subject, that a $3K class that teaches you a skill is worth more than a $20 advice book?

nostrademons 15y ago
Well, for me Rich Dad Poor Dad was free, because I got it out of the public library. People actually pay for books?
lrobb 15y ago
I think it's because people tend to discount what they know.
paulhauggis 15y ago
"A couple months ago there was an article about people in NY who wanted to charge $3K+ to teach others how to program in Ruby. HN went ballistic, "How could you charge so much when you can learn it all on the Internet?"" A good personal tutor goes much further than reading something on the Internet. Especially something that could increase your yearly salary.

tferris 15y ago

im my opinion this blog post is kind of a very clever marketing FOR the book

slarvtrax 15y ago
Ha, I can assure you that it's definitely not intended to be, even if that ends up becoming the case!
firebones 15y ago
Note that the link to the book contains the blog owner's Amazon affiliate referral code, so even if you disagree and click through to Amazon and buy something, he gets a cut. I'd love to see the economic benefit of this post to the author (along with the number of orders of the book the post actually induced). This is not a moral judgment of linking to products you disavow, just intellectual curiosity about the results of such a counterintuitive marketing approach compared to affirmative recommendations of other popular books.

ghpdx 15y ago

When I read this book, I was a busser at a hotel restaurant. Some customer I was talking to had recommended it to me. He made me promise him I'd read it (seems kinda lame in retrospect). I ignored a lot of it (like the risky real estate stuff), but what I took away from it was that you can't get rich working for someone else because you can only work so many hours in a day; you need to start your own business or invest to make lots of money. That seems like common sense now, but it wasn't for me at the time. I'm not exaggerating when I say this-- I saved up and bought a Mac, bought books on HTML/CSS, PHP, Ruby, MySQL, Photoshop, Illustrator, design, etc., bootstrapped a SAAS company, and now I make a solid living off of it. This took me about 5 years because I started from scratch, but I can say I'm definitely a lot happier with my lifestyle now, than I was before I read the book, as cheesy as it was. Just my two cents.

sritch 15y ago

Ironically this is one of the first books I read that spurred my interest into Personal Finance. Ha.

AznHisoka 15y ago

Does anyone else confuse Robert Kiyosaki with Guy Kawasaki?

ascentofstan 15y ago

"Personal self-discipline is the #1 delineating factor between the rich, the poor and the middle class" The main takeaway point for me, and the most influential. Fresh out of college, I make several times the amount of money my entire family was raised on. I have not played my hand at entrepreneurship yet (I have a regular job), but discipline is exactly what my poor family lacks. They are very gifted in terms of talent, passion, strong work ethic, but without financial discipline times were always tough growing up.

maxer 15y ago

i find a similar but very much better book is "the millionaire next door" which shows the traits of an average millionaire

chaostheory 15y ago

From the point of view of the article, I think two of the major points aren't crap. 1) > 1. Education is important, but always second to financial literacy. People turn out poor because they’re not taught financial literacy. The first one is apparent. I definitely agree that his books, especially the later titles are scammy. However they are not completely without any value. Kiyosaki is more like a motivational guru than a finance expert. I think the message that it's better to produce than to consume is pretty successfully conveyed. 3) >Pay yourself first. Even if the government comes knocking on your door, you deserve to be paid first. The best way to do this, in Kiyosaki’s opinion, is to hide under the umbrella of a corporation. The author fails to recognize the difference between business expenses and personal expenses. I admit that this is bad advice, but for different reasons. It's something I wouldn't do myself, because it isn't ethical and not because it's not effective. Chances are if you're making below 500k, you can get away with this tactic. Even if the IRS does audit you, there are just so many ways to still make it out alive. (One of my friends used to work for a law firm specializing in taxes.)

pavelkaroukin 15y ago

The thing is - there is no recipe to become quickly wealthy. Everyone will have their own road and no one can use someone else's experience to get to the same place. What this book gave - overall excitement about possible future, that's it. It should not motivate, not educate.

arandomJohn 15y ago

Here's the thing. His rich dad is fictional. He doesn't make money the way he tells you to. He's not a real estate mogul. He make money selling books and seminars. If the advice he gives were so great he'd be Donald Trump ten times over.

gm 15y ago
Kiyozaki has made a lot of money in real estate. And he does cooperate a lot with Trump: http://www.amazon.com/Why-We-Want-You-Rich/dp/B0013MN78Q/ref=sr_1_sc_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1328811353&sr=8-3-spell http://www.amazon.com/Why-We-Want-You-Rich/dp/B0013MN78Q/ref... At the very least they have written several books together.

blindhippo 15y ago

Haven't read Rich Dad Poor Dad but from what I got out of this article and several of the comments here is that the main point is disconnecting your personal time from your wealth generation. Your time is better spent generating products/investments that generate wealth independent of your own input. It's really really hard to get rich as a consultant or even as an employee (though both can generate the capital to kick-start the real wealth generation). A concept that was illuminated quite brilliantly to me when I read How to Get Rich by Felix Dennis. However, I personally think intelligence and "balls" play a far bigger role in our ability to generate wealth for ourselves then anyone seems to give credit for. You can read all the books on finance you want, if you're an idiot, you will probably fail to get the returns you want. Same goes if you're a coward. Personally, I'm lacking a bit in the balls, and hope I'm smart enough. We'll see in the next 10 years or so.

deleted 15y ago

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joedev 15y ago

"Worst of All Time"? I would have thought one of these would at least be a contender for that title. "Turning Your Ordinary Photos into Your Lifetime Employees" - http://www.amazon.com/Automated-Income-Ordinary-Employees-ebook/dp/B006VSOHEK http://www.amazon.com/Automated-Income-Ordinary-Employees-eb... "Getting Started in Property Flipping" - http://www.amazon.com/Getting-Started-Property-Flipping-Thomsett/dp/047003937X http://www.amazon.com/Getting-Started-Property-Flipping-Thom... or even: "Watch TV, Get Rich" - http://www.amazon.com/Jim-Cramers-Mad-Money-Watch/dp/1416537902/ http://www.amazon.com/Jim-Cramers-Mad-Money-Watch/dp/1416537...

handzhiev 15y ago

No, it's not. The book is pretty basic and the author might be scam but the book is good enough for the average person who does not have a clue of finance management.

dennisgorelik 15y ago

Such angry article is a funny way to sell the book (and get his Amazon affiliate commission).

EREFUNDO 15y ago

That is the beauty and curse of entrepreneurship, there is no clear goal post, no absolutes, just approximations. It takes a lot of toughness to go through the emotional roller coaster of excitement and enthusiasm to frustration and disappointment. That is why most fail, that is why most don't even start. Resilience is the name of the game.

quietness 15y ago

Rich Dad Poor Dad was not meant to be a Biblical be-all end-all; in one of his talks, he mentioned that the original manuscript is supposed to be a manual for the game he invented, "Cashflow 101," which was trashed by the first testers for being a long and complicated game, but anyway. The author nailed down the first point, about financial literacy being critical, and people turning out poor because of the lack of it. If this were not true, most if not all summa cum laude graduates would own, instead of just work for, a company; they succeeded in traditional education, but know nothing about finance. The two others are completely off. RDPD was never meant to be an instruction booklet on how to become rich, much less how to get rich in real estate. He also misunderstood the concept of "paying yourself first" to mean "don't pay your taxes," which is simply false. He made it sound like Kiyosaki is some selfish person who is demanding the rest of the world to be the same; but if you read the rest of the book, he actually points out that rich people are very unselfish, because they give what other people want: jobs, products, services, etc., as opposed to those who just want to be paid more despite being mediocre. He also said that if you want to be rich, you have to give other people what they want. Kiyosaki's example about being "inspired" by the screaming of creditors and the government is nothing more than that: a personal example. He didn't say everyone should follow that example. In fact, he said a couple of paragraphs later: "If you do not like financial pressure, then find a formula that works for you." And he said a few paragraphs prior: "If you cannot get control of yourself, do not try to get rich. You might first want to join the Marine Corps or some religious order so you can get control of yourself." He's clear about the dangers of falling to the temptation of spending on consumer debt and using investment to cover it up. Also, that little bit about child labor is odd. It's not like Rich Dad was trying to make millions from his son and his friend. It was more of a lesson to show how employees live their lives; personal experience tends to be a more powerful teacher, after all. Saying that, I admit that some of the stories in some of his other books were simply repeated from this one. It must be kind of him to assume that the readers of his other books haven't read the others, but it can get annoying reading the same story.