Tuesday, May 11, 2004Rich Dad, Poor Dad -- snakeoil?This morning, I was flipping channels on the boob tube when I ended up getting caught up in an infomercial about 'getting rich quick.' I probably would have changed the channel except that the 'get rich quick' scheme was being peddled by the author of Rich Dad/Poor Dad. 'Choose to be Rich', as it was called, comes with a set of 12 audio cassette/CD self-help guides. (Wow, those infomercials really do a subliminal number on you.) Like many commercials of its type, the entire commercial centered around 'secrets of the rich that you don't know' and showed a ton of actors who were supposedly nobodies that got enormously wealthy by buying the guides. Of course, rather than exposing any secrets in the 30 minute segment, the commercial just repeatedly made you aware that there were 'secrets of the rich' out there and that people were making a lot of money off these 'secrets' and that you needed to pay $9.95 to try the 'satisfaction-guaranteed' program for 30 days. Anyhow, ever since playing his game, Cashflow, and reading a bit of his book I've been wondering what his secret was. In fact, he never explicitly mentions any "secrets" in either his books or his game, but instead dangles "real secrets of getting rich" in your face and supplies endless fictional anecdotes. Although the cynic in me felt that he's probably rich because he's found a way to make people buy $200 dollar slightly-more-sophisticated monopoly board games/self-help guides, the commercial really brought up sore points that working folks like myself often wonder (i.e. why we're not rich and whether salaried life will ever bear wealth). You got to hand it to his marketing team, they're really good at selling the audience the dream of wealth. Out of impulse I nearly bought it, until I decided to look for any related reviews or critiques. An article on MSN's Slate came up in my search. It echoed a lot of what I had felt reading his books and playing his games. In the Slate article, the author mentions "a long and withering critique by a real-estate writer named John T. Reed." The center of the piece questions a lot of the examples that Kiyosaki, author of Rich Dad/Poor Dad, uses and the truthfulness of his "life experience and background." While I'm not clear how factual Reed's article is, it's definitely a sensational read. The article's main point resonates with my own feelings. Kiyosaki never explicitly states how to achieve those income streams in either his book or his games. In fact, opportunities just "exist" in his games, and he never goes over measures by which we, the audience, can judge "good" opportunities versus "bad" opportunities. To be fair, the one thing I did get out of both his games and his book was that passive income streams are why the wealthy become wealthier and salaried folk are unable to achieve "real" wealth. Anyhow I've decided to pass on 'Choose to Be Rich' probably saving a few hundred bucks in the process. Hurray! posted @ 08:06 AM PST [link] |
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