<story><title>Rich Dad Poor Dad... Worst Personal Finance Book of All Time?</title><url>http://finchblogs.com/2012/02/07/rich-dad-poor-dad-review/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>zavulon</author><text>I disagree.. the most important message in the book is that business and entrepreneurship is the path to success, NOT being an employee and staying in the rat race. While it may be common sense to someone who&apos;s been in business for a while, or read a lot of similar literature, it&apos;s far from obvious to most people.&lt;p&gt;I&apos;m not ashamed to say Rich Dad Poor Dad has been one of the most influential books I&apos;ve read in my life. At 20, I had very little idea about business - I thought my path was clear: graduate with a degree, get a job, work up corporate ladder, etc. Reading this book was completely mind-blowing and eye-opening.&lt;p&gt;Yes, most of the advice is trivial, as I look at it now.. But there&apos;s certainly great value in the book - business vs &quot;rat race&quot;, building assets vs liabilities, learning to sell, active vs passive income, what you can&apos;t afford your business can, value of financial literacy, and much more. But most importantly this: you can very rarely get rich working for someone else.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>huxley</author><text>&quot;the most important message in the book is that business and entrepreneurship is the path to success&quot;&lt;p&gt;No, it may be one of the best paths to wealth and independence --unless you&apos;re born into wealth already -- but it&apos;s not necessarily a path to success.&lt;p&gt;My parents worked themselves to the bone in business, were repeatedly screwed by business partners and banks. It didn&apos;t give them one bit of gratification.&lt;p&gt;My mother went back to university and got into not-for-profit microcredit and was reborn as a happy person.&lt;p&gt;My dad spent time with his kids and neighbours, when he passed away he had three times as many people come to the funeral as we had space for.&lt;p&gt;Entrepreneurship has a lot going for it, but it is very hard and given the barriers that can be thrown in your face, it can be just another rat-race for lots of people.</text></comment>
<story><title>Rich Dad Poor Dad... Worst Personal Finance Book of All Time?</title><url>http://finchblogs.com/2012/02/07/rich-dad-poor-dad-review/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>zavulon</author><text>I disagree.. the most important message in the book is that business and entrepreneurship is the path to success, NOT being an employee and staying in the rat race. While it may be common sense to someone who&apos;s been in business for a while, or read a lot of similar literature, it&apos;s far from obvious to most people.&lt;p&gt;I&apos;m not ashamed to say Rich Dad Poor Dad has been one of the most influential books I&apos;ve read in my life. At 20, I had very little idea about business - I thought my path was clear: graduate with a degree, get a job, work up corporate ladder, etc. Reading this book was completely mind-blowing and eye-opening.&lt;p&gt;Yes, most of the advice is trivial, as I look at it now.. But there&apos;s certainly great value in the book - business vs &quot;rat race&quot;, building assets vs liabilities, learning to sell, active vs passive income, what you can&apos;t afford your business can, value of financial literacy, and much more. But most importantly this: you can very rarely get rich working for someone else.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>dkarl</author><text>Sounds more like inspiration and self-help than personal finance.  You could point to any number of career paths and say, &quot;This is a well-established route to wealth, and if you work very very hard and manage your money well, you can become wealthy this way.&quot;  For example, there are high-paying specialties in law and medicine where the rat race really does lead to wealth.  You have to outcompete 95% of the people in your field to become wealthy, but the same thing is true of entrepreneurship.</text></comment>