Thread: Robert Kiyosaki - Rich Dad Secrets

Many years ago I purchased a program from Nightingale-Conant Corporation called "Rich Dad Secrets" by Robert Kiyosaki.

It was an audio version that was divided into 12 sessions that told me how I could "profit from the new rules of the rich!"

Nightingale-Conant said this about the program: "Rich Dad Secrets to Money, Business, and Investing offers the lessons about money that Robert Kiyosaki, a self-made millionare, learned from his rich dad . . . a dad that gave him not only money, but his secrets to acquiring great wealth."

Well, let me just say this: I was very disappointed.

Kiyosaki claimed that he had 2 dads: His real dad, who was poor and "socialistic", and his "other" dad, who was rich.

He never revealed who his rich dad was, but said that he was the richest man in Hawaii, and that he first met him when he was 9. Oh yeah, and his rich dad was actually his best friend's father.

In the program, Kiyosaki would complain about buying a home, working hard, and 401k plans. He said that people "sell their soul" for a steady job and a steady paycheck.

He would say things like:

"My rich dad used to say, 'Money is just an idea.'"

"If you want to be rich, think big."

"Your house, for most people, is not as asset, it's really a liability."

"My only problem (with a 401k plan) is it's really a saving's plan, not really an investment plan."

"My rich dad used to say, 'the less involved you are, the richer you will become.'"

"The biggest secret of all that my rich dad taught me was that the way the world, the universe, God, our maker set this whole thing up, is that it is impossible to lose."

"If your spirit is strong, you will succeed."

After I spent hours listening to Kiyosaki rambling on and on, it was obvious that buying this was a mistake and Kiyosaki had absolutely nothing useful to say.

At one point he started talking about how he was a helicopter gunship pilot in Vietnam in 1972-73, and he said, "Some of the highest spiritual moments in my life have come (from) facing death."

Then he bragged about how fearless he was.

Well, that's nice, but . . . . who cares? How is that going to help me?

In another part, he talked about how he was going to buy an apartment house in Arizona for $1.1 million dollars, but somebody named Joe had a stroke and he got it for only $690,000.

Okay, so he got lucky from somebody else's tragedy. I guess that made him feel better.

When talking about a 401k plan, he said, "if the market is very high, you're a rich person. But if the maket crashed, you're poor." He also said, "Your 401k may be fat today and empty tomorrow."

I do have a 401k, and it's never been "fat" one day and "empty" the next. Kiyosaki doesn't know what he's talking about.

Kiyosaki said that it's not how much money you make, but how you manage it that really determines your life. But that's not completely true. Somebody who doesn't make a lot of money has to spend all of it on their bills. There's nothing left to manage.

Kiyosaki seems to just make up stuff because it sounds good.

My advice is this: don't waste your money on this worthless program. I didn't learn anything useful from Kiyosaki. He might as well have just said, "blah blah blah" during the whole program. It would have made no difference.

It's funny, but in his ramblings, Kiyosaki always seems to leave out the part where he was the owner of the "Money and You" organization and its' offshoots.

"Money and You" was driven out of Australia after it was identified as a mind controlling cult by the Oz version of the "60 Minutes" program.

From memory Kiyosakis' "Money and You" and its' role in infiltrating government agencies was also the subject of debate in the New South Wales parliament, prior to its' demise and leaving the country.

One might also ask whether Kiyosaki ever discusses the source of his purported "millions" and whether or not his wife/partner maybe had just a tiny bit to do with its' acquisition.

Here is the best expose on Kiyosaki ever. He made his money selling books to brainwashed MLmers. His realestate holdings seem to be a figment of his imagination and his advice could land one in the pokey in Martha Stewart's old cell.

Soapboxmom

Originally Posted by Soapboxmom

Here is the best expose on Kiyosaki ever. He made his money selling books to brainwashed MLmers. His realestate holdings seem to be a figment of his imagination and his advice could land one in the pokey in Martha Stewart's old cell.

Soapboxmom

Indeed it is, SBM. I had read that expose after reading Tracy Coenen's article.

Kiyosaki is a worthy addition here, thank you Blue Wolf. He's like the Paris Hilton of the entrepreneurial self-help movement, both are famous but basically only for being famous. He makes his money by telling people how to make money, only he doesn't tell them to do it the way he did because they wouldn't buy his advice if he did. He was a barely keeping his head above water buisness man before he found his real talent in life, telling other people how to live theirs. He learned his craft from landmarks in the industry, Werner Erhard and Marshall Thurber. After his first book sold poorly on it's own merits, he was able to sell enough of his next one, Rich Dad through the Amway "tool" program to become a best seller.

I'm glad SBM posted the link to John Reed's expose of Kiosaki, it's a great introduction to both of them. Russ Whitney was a real estate seminar guru who relationship with Reed in is some ways similar to Tim Darnell's relationship with our own SBM. Whitney became notorious for selling (very) high priced get rick quick seminars, primarily real estate but forex,stocks and options as well. bassicly anything he could find to get unsophisticated people to pry open their wallets for. One of his favorite seminar tactics was on the first day, tell people how to talk their credit card company to increasing their spending limits and the rest of the seminar was geared to getting people to spend that new limit on the next round of seminars.

As consumer complaints and criminal prosecutions mounted Whitney was forced to change his companies names several times. Whitney International, Whitney Information Group and so on. It came to the point that just a few years ago Russ's buisness partners forced him to get his name completely off the corporate moniker and pushed him out of any public role. Well without Russ the company faced a difficult choice, they could either abandon ripping people off with over priced get rich quick seminars, or they needed a new name and a new front man. They found both, they changed their name to "Rich Dad Education" and I'll let you guess who their new scamming front man is.

my favorite RKism was a Yahoo finance article where he stated that Wall Street managers were taking 85% from your mutual fund without taking any risk. while he had a great opportunity to show how much a fund with high expense ratio can cost versus a low one, instead, he decided to demonstrate how little he knows about typical expense ratios, how he doesn't understand how to carry his "no risk" assumption into math formulas, or how to honestly present an idea. it was very typical of RK. all talk with little truth.