Going over Niagara falls in a barrel

"Going over Niagara falls in a barrel", this is how I felt after reading the information in this book. Sure, a few people might survive, but most of us will become victims of Niagara falls.

The author talks about the importance of being self employed. My main question is how do you quit your job in order to work for yourself? Sure if we had the luxuries of the Hiltons and the Trumps, I would have started my own business after a getting a university degree, but I'm not that lucky. Most of us have to begin from somewhere and build our wealth gradually before we make that leap.

This entire book can be summarized into one paragraph. The information provided in the first chapters covers the entire book. My advice would be to just glance through the book at a local book store, if you really feel the need to purchase it.

Coming to think about it, this book sounds like an infomercial. You are inspired by it, then purchase the product to realize that the information was futile. What a minute, Robert T. Kiyosaki has an informercial.

My advice is to work hard, start to save your money and invest. Also have long term goals and a positive attitude, because you never know when your life can change for the better.

Good For General Advice

This book gives general finance principles in the first few chapters, and the later chapters are impractical and boring, they seem as if they are written to fill up pages, Kiyosaki always talks about making more money , buy a real estate investments in the most part of the book, but in actual he made money by opening companies setting up productions, by opening new ventures and emphasing on sales and marketing and those things are not discussed in the book. This book is good for a novice who had not yet planned anything in terms of finance.the good things in this book are It brings the concepts of assets and liabilities, introduces financial terms like Income Statement, Balance Sheet and the relationship between them explains a cash flow. The book discusses about couple of business oppurtunities in real estate, but the discussions are incomplete and out of date.So It would be recommanded for teenagers, and newly graduates and newly wed couples who just feel their income doubled.It is a good book for a start.

Verbose and Oversimplified

Kiyosaki is correct saying that schools don't teach money skills, and that much of what we buy (eg. cars, boats) are poor investments because of the immediate and substantial depreciation upon purchase.

However, to also state that an owner-occupied home is a liability (incur taxes, repair, and other costs), not an asset, is going too far. An owner-occupied home may be the only "asset" that allows personal enjoyment and substantial appreciation gains at the same time. Further, unlike owning rentals, it has a much lower risk of serious damage from irresponsible occupants. True one does become exposed to the risk of losing one's home if one becomes overextended; however, many have lost money on rental properties also - forcing unplanned early selling because of various inherent problems. And once one reaches retirement age, the home can be reverse-mortgaged and provide a good supplemental retirement income.

The author's bias is towards buying rental properties. However, this "business" is one that has been sold for years by others (eg. Allen), and I've always wondered why, if the business was really so good, they would want to focus on teaching others to become additional competitors bidding up acquisition prices to unrealistic levels, instead of quietly doing it themselves. The "business model" quickly becomes overcrowded and infeasible.

Kiyosaki also makes a big point about wage-earners constantly paying taxes and increasing expenditures at a rate equal or greater than income. Unfortunately, he forgets to mention that wage-earners have an increasing number of means to reduce taxes (eg. Keogh and IRA plans), and those deriving income from investments are just as vulnerable to becoming over-committed financial as wage-earners.

The other problem I had with the book is that it is too verbose - taking entirely too long to make a few points. Perhaps that was the point - to drag it out so that readers wouldn't realize how little they were getting.

Kiyosaki would serve his readers better if he also talked about the value of getting and keeping a "safe" job (eg. in government, education, or healthcare) with good benefits, maintaining a two-income family (both work; avoid divorce)