Rich Dad's Retire Young, Retire Rich: How to Get Rich Quickly and Stay Rich Forever! [Paperback]

Kiyosaki explains that most people have 50%-100% of their income is from earned income from a J-O-B. BIG MISTAKE! Those who retire young and retire rich do so from portfolio income. From passive income. From residual income.

How do you do this? You create a business. It can be network marketing or a franchise (if you have that kind of money sitting around or the ability to borrow it) Or it could be real estate (my choice--no downlines, uplines, sidelines, monthly quota's, sales volume requirements etc.) Or you could write a book. Self publishing is flourishing today because many people have excellent ideas and eager to disseminate these ideas in the form of a book.

Retire Young Retire Rich is an excellent book for anyone who regardless of their present income or level of wealth, wants to retire financially free and financially independant within 10 years or less.

Great book. Maybe his best to date.

Ok. That's good. Most people ignore their economic health far too much and ignore possibilities for creative investing / owning a business and thus scuttle their chances for a comfortable retirement or financial independence.

But Kiyosaki, while giving the reader no hard data, seems to think that owning your own business/investing in real estate is very easy. He encourages people to quit their jobs and work for themselves. He ignores the fact that 9 out of 10 small businesses go belly-up in the first five years. He ignores the fact that many small businesses never make sufficient profits to for a famliy to live on. He ignores the fact that real estate has business cycles, management can be a huge headache, and there are many hidden costs that can cripple small scale investors. What are these people supposed to do now that they've blown their savings and have no job?

Motivation is great, but without education novices are going to fail. Kiyosaki provides nothing beyond the most rudimentary education in this or pretty much any of his books. He does encourage further reading, but he really needs to inject a bit of reality into his books.

Furthermore, Kiyosaki appears to be making up most of his personal experiences. A review of the Maricopa County, AZ assessor (where he lives) shows that he owns only two properties: his own home(worth far less than he claims) and one possible single family rental. Not what the reader is led to believe. Historical records also indicate that he wasn't exactly the real estate mogul that he implies to his readers in the 80's and 90's in AZ. He did own a few properties, but his net worth and passive income could not have possibly been what he claimed based on it. It's also doubtful if he made the kind of fortune he claimed before his books hit it big.

Even the omniscient Rich Dad appears to be a myth. Seems like it'd be easy to track down the multimillionare who lived on the same street as Kiyosaki when Kiyosaki was growing up. But nobody living or dead seems to fit the bill. In fact, nobody living or dead in Hawaii seems to have owned the variety of businesses that Kiyosaki claims Rich Dad owned. Couple this with the fact that Rich Dad doesn't get an acknowledgment in Kiyosaki's early books (which give acknowledgements to pretty much everyone else, including his Poor Dad), and it seems that we're all being swindled.

So, take this book with a big grain of salt. Use it to get motivated about taking your financial destiny in your hands, but please learn from qualified advisors before you risk everything.

Kiyosaki tells us that it took Rockefeller 16 years to become a billionaire in his time. And it took Bill Gates 10 years to reach the billion dollar status. However it took Mike Dell and Steve Case only 5 years to become billionaires. It's easier than ever.

In Retire Young Retire Rich, Kiyosaki pounds to death the concept of leverage. One chapter I found interesting was the leverage of generosity. Kiyosaki discusses how his Rich Dad taught him reciprocity and service. He states an age old law "Give and you shall recieve." Kiyosaki says thath is rich dad taught him that if you want to be rich, you must first be willing to serve as many people as possible.

Aaccording to Kiyosaki, Rich Dad believed inthe law of reciprocity and in the idea of being generous was the best way to becoming very, very rich.

Kiyosaki also talks about networks and network marketing. He goes on to discuss the power of networks and the importance of leverage ratios and goes on to say that you can b ecome exceptionally wealthy in a short period of time by doing so and at a fraction of the cost.

I noticed that Retire Young Retire Rich is recommended here by a Nationally recognized CPA. I am glad that people of quality appreciate Rich Dad's and Robert Kiyosaki's work.

I'm with a company that does business around the world and the most successful people I know are exercising the concepts espoused by Kiyosaki and are becoming very wealthy as a result.
So can you.