Rich Dad, Poor Dad

Has anyone read or considered reading "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" by Kiyosaki? This book was a #1 New York Times bestseller, and I think it is enjoying a recent resurgence and has a following with some of my friends/associates. It is the story of the author who was raised by two dads, his own highly educated but "poor" father, and the multimillionaire eighth-grade dropout father of his best friend. His poor dad was a highly ranked government official in Hawaii's department of education, who died broke and left behind severe debt because, according to Kiyosaki, he never spent time to make his money work for him. The rich dad left behind tens of millions of dollars to his family, his charities, and his church. The book describes habits and ways of thinking of poor vs rich.

Personally, I didn't find much value in the book, or in his "CashFlow 101" game. The main point of the book is to invest in assets (assets are those items that put money in your pocket) that generate positive cash flow. To me this is pretty obvious. What I was interested in were ideas and techniques, but his book is short on concrete realistic examples. His writing style is simplistic, and he repeats the same basic concepts over and over again with different wording. He takes whole chapters to explain concepts that could have taken a few paragraphs. Also from reading his book, the reader gets the impression that the only way to make money is through real estate. With over-inflated real estate prices all across the country, this looks like a risky investment to me except in select areas.

CashFlow 101 game is worthless. It plays like a board game that has never been play-tested, but costs $199. Real estate investment in the game generates ridiculous, out-sized returns that dwarf any other numbers in the game (hmmm, maybe this DOES model real-life for many people haha). My brother-in-law started out as a janitor in the game, and finished it in 1 1/2 hours at the first sitting by leveraging heavily on real estate opportunities with no risk. After exiting the "Rat Race" which is supposed to be just the start of the game, and entering the "Fast Track", it takes only a few turns to accomplish your dreams on the "Fast Track" because the goals are set too low. Pretty disappointing, anti-climactic ending.

The game was marketed as a realistic, difficult-to-learn, educational product that would take 8+ hours at the first sitting. Gameplay was nothing like that.