Robert T. Kiyosaki

If you have seen the old infomercials Robert Kiyosaki has made about retiring and making millions of dollars, you get the gist of this book. It is a three hundred and thirty five page ad for all of his other products under his Rich Dad moniker. Most frustrating is Kiyosaki's complete lack of skills as a writer. He freely admits he is not a great writer, and proceeds to prove it. He repeats himself constantly throughout the book, and writes pages of dialogue scenes he swears are from memory, but play like the worst staged scenes in an aforementioned infomercial.

Kiyosaki manipulates the reader with his constant berating. If you are doubtful of his methods, or if you question whether you can go running out and buying real estate with no money down, then that is your problem. You are wrong, and he is right. I was consistently made to feel stupid as I read this thing, and that was confirmed by the authors' smug attitude toward people who actually must work for a living.

Kiyosaki doesn't get specific about how to retire young and rich. He dances around the subject, throwing out little helpful hints here and there, but never gets down to the brass tacks when it comes to sitting down and doing it. Recommending I go to seminars and hire a bookkeeper are lovely ideas but then what? If anyone is retiring young and rich, it is the people behind this book length ad for other get-rich-quick products. If anything, reading this will inspire you to go it on your own, and ignore the advice of "experts" like this. Don't waste your money, or self-esteem, and avoid "Rich Dad's Retire Young, Retire Rich."… (més)

I remember reading this book in middle school and being unimpressed. You won't learn anything in this book that you otherwise could learn in your high school economics class. Just knowing that you should maximize your assets, minimize your liabilities, increase your income, and decrease your expenses means you've read half the book already. If you know the difference between an income statement and a balance statement as well, you've basically read 3/4 of the book. He does briefly mention the *idea* of leveraging real estate and corporation deductions for taxes, but he doesn't delve deep (or even shallow) in either of them. I could potentially see the benefit of this book for someone who has absolutely no control over their finances, but even then there are much better alternatives out there.… (més)