I Think, Therefore I Am

Rich Dad Poor Dad is a psychological book more than anything. It teaches one to focus on the way s/he is thinking and to compare it to the way Mr. Kiyosaki imagines a rich person thinks. He is over-qualified, having bought and sold businesses, rentals, and stocks, then retiring in his 40's with millions. This would probably be the fastest review, except there is a lot more to say than just that.

I initially heard of this book from my father-in-law. I was looking into real estate and the infinite possibilities of earning a fortune. He mentioned to me about a book I may be interested in called Rich Dad Poor Dad. He said he had read it and had to "take it with a grain of salt." He has since repeated this phrase to me repeatedly. This peaked my interest even with that caveat.

My next point of contact with this book was while I was online looking for a game called CASHFLOW by Robert Kiyosaki. It was a game my brother-in-law (different family than the suggesting father-in-law) was drooling to get. It is a very expensive game he had told me, so I was searching on ebay to get the cheapest one available. I didn't, but because the creator of the game is the author of this book, it peaked my interest again, forcing me to half.com to check on the prices of the book. I saw how much it cost and with anything I plan on buying I forced my way through millions of pages searching for epinions to find what fellow citizens thought of the book.

Rich Dad Poor Dad starts out in a story telling manner. The coauthor Sharon Lechter, CPA, writes about how Robert Kiyosaki grew up with two fathers and how one would provide the educational background to mold Robert and how the other would give education for finances that Robert would learn to ignore. Both were financially the same in Robert's childhood, but both would take off like rockets in different directions as time would go on. Robert decided to take the advice of his "rich" dad, who, when Robert started to learn about finances, was poor but was starting his empire and had many theories that many of us have never even imagined.

The author illustrates personal stories of how he learned in different ways the theories of his rich dad. This part was sometimes hard for me to read because the dialog included some statements from his rich dad that didn't seem to make any sense; however, as I read on, I found that when Robert would explain them in his own words they would come to be very clear in definition. I was ecstatic.

I like to read books quickly to basically get the main idea and go on to the next book as many books only have one main idea and then leave you to other books to get specific in other areas of finance and so on. This book gave many ideas and main points to consider other than the greatest idea I took from it, assets and liabilities are different. They are different in that one takes your money away and one gets you money. Read the book to figure out which is which and what to do about it.

Some books, like the last book I read about foreclosures, do not have any personal stories told within. These books make it hard to understand new concepts, but with Kiyosaki's book, it was filled with personal applications and made the concepts easily understood and plainly written.

I would recommend this book to any friend or acquaintance and plan on buying it for my 5 brothers and 2 sisters as well as my mom and dad for Christmas. I've already lent the book out to a coworker for him to read. It was an easy read. It took me 3 days to read the book, which had many interruptions to keep me away from it. It was well written and co-written.