Rich Dad's Guide to Investing Abridged

Rating:
Summary: You Can't Judge a Book by its Cover
Review: This book is the third and worst book in the Rich Dad trilogy, and if you believe the title, it will hand you to the secrets of investing. It won't.

This book opens up by taunting you with how the rich get to invest in investments that the majority of us cannot. From there it drifts through wandering narratives, and vague advice on investing. Surprisingly, the bulk of the book focuses on starting a business, with general information on how to take one public.

In almost every repetitive page, the authors give generalized advice and tell you what you need to do, but not how. Among the advice is to read more, learn more, and of course purchase more Rich Dad related products. The authors take every opportunity to pitch the CashFlow board games. Not surprisingly, they follow up with a chapter which focuses on these very board games.

This book, like the others, is repetitive, and regurgitates much of the same information presented in the previous two Rich Dad books. However, this time, there is more, and the wandering commentary is punctuated with notes from Susan.

Moreover, much of the given advice is often conflicting. The author touts that his Rich Dad told him not to work for a paycheck. He states he was even homeless because of his dedication to this principle. Later he says his Rich Dad told him to get a job with Xerox. Rich Dad also said to keep your day job and start a business part time. Much of the information contains conflicting nuggets like that.

Simply stated, most of the book isn't even about investing in stocks or even real estate. It is about vague financial advice for setting up your own company.

And the special investments that the introduction and title allude to? None are explained.

If you want a wandering, verbose book with conflicting advice, purchase this book. Otherwise, there are much better investment books on the market.


Rating:
Summary: Rich Dads Guide to investing
Review: It is the kind of book that you can read on the subway. It takes him a lot of pages to introduce simple ideas. I have been investing in stocks for a few years so part 3 of the book was interesting. I never really thought about IPOs from the sellers point of view. I recieved the 3 book set from a friend after he read them. It is a nice read. I would like to try the game but it is a little expensive. Anyway, I hope you enjoy these books. I prefer the Motley Fool series.

Rating:
Summary: Like checking into a 4star hotel.
Review: Buying this thick impressive book made me feel like I had just checked into a 4star "Richdad" hotel. Impressive cover, thick meaty book, great title...... But when I went to my room, I found I had to eat my whole pillow just to get the little chocolate inside.
Yes there are nuggets; but you have to 'eat' the whole book just to find them. I suggest take notes of the really good stuff that you learn; because you will probably forget what you read by the time you get to the end.
This book probably could be 1/3 the size and might be a good read. Don't look for specific details of investing.


Rating:
Summary: Investor Beware!
Review: One of the most challenging things about learning to use your money wisely is avoiding the plethora of bad advice available. This book is a perfect example of something that is seemingly innocuous which, if the advice is followed, will certainly lead to a lot of financial missteps.

For example, Kiyosaki discusses buying rental properties and discusses a history of purchasing single-family houses and renting them out to achieve positive cash flow and financial independence in "Rich Dad/Poor Dad" (the book that started his repetitive Advisor series). However, from my own experience in real estate there are few single-family homes in areas with decent appreciation (Bay Area, Boston, NYC, Chicago, RTP-NC, etc.) that will be cash-flow positive without investing at least 25-30% equity into the deal. If I took my money and did a number of such deals and evaluated my annual Return on Equity (ROE always trumps ROI) I quickly realize I'm getting about 6% on my money. Wow! Is that "thinking with quick words" or "increasing my cash flow"? Not at a rate which will make me financially independent in less than 20 or 30 years. So how is this advice really better than the "buy an index fund and fugeddabout it" conventional wisdom of the financial services marketing community? Don't I get the same place in the same amount of time? When you factor in the hassle of tenants and maintenance of real property the index fund is looking like a no-brainer!

I own 11 rental units and a million-dollar home and I can say simply that there are few opportunities out there that haven't already been discovered and exactly NONE that don't have a measure of risk. Kiyosaki does everyone a disservice by encouraging them to seek financial freedom then giving vague and erroneous advice. His real estate recommendations are dangerous and understate the tremendous toll on your time and energy rentals can take. His equity investment advice is so vague as to lack coherent value.

If you want to make money consistently you need to have a real plan. Not "I want to be wealthy in 10 years" but rather a keen understanding of your strategy, entry and exit criterion for each investment, ability to roll with the punches, and continous monitoring of your plan to find the flaws. Most of the time your assumptions were wrong or you left out a critical variable. Knowing how to fix the system and keep going is what differentiates the gambler from the successful investor.

If you want to get started in real estate please evaluate:
http://www.johntreed.com and pay close attention to his rules for evaluating "investment gurus". They are a great rule-of-thumb. I can't offer a similar source for equities because I haven't invested the time to build my equity portfolio since learning that I had no idea what I was doing with my money in the markets. BTW, being honest with yourself about what you do and don't know is the best place to start building your own business plan for financial freedom.

Good Luck!

Rating:
Summary: Not at all what I expected!
Review: In essence, all I can say about this book is that the title is completely misleading. Why do I say this? Because the title reflects it to be a "guide to investing", and I personally did not see it as such.



I let myself be convinced into buyig and then reading this book by following some of the reviews provided here and a few other places (this was before I read John T. Reed's views on some so called "Guru's" here: http://www.johntreed.com/Reedgururating.html) as well as by recommendation from a few readers at [...]. With a guide, I was hoping to see more statistics, more math, more real life examples, such as what you might find on a great book based on deep research and investigation, a true guide based on documented real life experiences and with true examples. I was hoping for good advise on where I can get more information, websites to other books to read, great reference at the end of the book (and by that, I do not mean self marketing of all other products that Mr. Kiyosaki sells, self-marketing is fine, but also promote other good authors). I never hope to find the answers to my questions by only reading one book or one author, following one person's advise, or taking one course, but I hope to find from good books all references used and also recommendations to other good references.



The book does not even have an index, like if you are looking for specific investment advice; it only has a table of contents in the beginning. I do not care at all about all of the anecdotes and all the references placed in the book about "Rich Dad" (by the way this is the first Kiyosaki book I have read, I just bought "Rich Dad/Poor Dad", but have not read it yet; once I read it I will also post my thoughts about it).



The references to rich dad would mean something to me if at the end of one of these books the readers found out who the real Rich Dad is. If rich dad was such an inspiration to Mr. Kiyosaki and he is in fact such a successful businessman and maybe not just a fictional character, I would encourage him, the Master, to write his book and how he acquired all of his knowledge, or part of it. So many people would benefit from sharing such information if it was not fictional.



This books is more like an inspirational guide, one that foretells that being an employee is not the best idea if you plan to some day be financially independent, and I do agree with that. The book does provide a couple of pointers, but the "gravy" of it may be summarized in about 4-6 pages of good information.



Unfortunately, since I have not done enough reading on this subject, sadly I cannot recommend other books. However, once I do more research of my own and I become capable of comparing and "test the waters" with what other writers advise, I hope I can come back here and provide that feedback.



I DO NOT RECOMMEND THIS BOOK! ESPECIALLY IF WHAT YOU ARE LOOKING FOR IS A GUIDE TO PUT AN INVESTMENT PLAN TOGETHER. FORTUNATELY, I ONLY PAID ABOUT $4 FOR THE USED BOOK!