Rich Dad Poor Dad... Worst Personal Finance Book of All Time?

- "business vs 'rat race'": As others have pointed out, business is certainly not better than the rat race for everyone, or even most people. Based on every study I've ever seen, the reality seems to be that starting a business is only appropriate or beneficial for a small subset of the population. I.e. people with certain unique skillsets, a high tolerance for risk, and boatloads of time to invest.

- "building assets vs liabilities": In other words "make lots of money, and try not to borrow too much." Well, duh. Anyone who would even think to buy a personal finance book can probably appreciate that income is desirable and debt undesirable. They don't need Kiyosaki's help with that.

- "learning to sell": I don't think Kiyosaki offers anything close to a practical guide on improving your sales skills.

- "active vs passive income": Passive income is not a realistic goal for the vast majority of people. Even if you found a successful business, chances are, you will continue to invest large amounts of effort to keep it running profitably. You pretty much have to win the startup lottery if you want passive income. As the term "startup lottery" implies, it's a pretty rare occurrence in the real world.

- "value of financial literacy": This is just the same as saying "it's a good idea to know how to make money." Telling people to have financial literacy is worthless if you don't offer any useful education on finance. It's even worse if you instead offer patently wrong advice, such as ignoring your taxes in order to "pay yourself."

He is not unbiased as you say, but "direct competitor" is rather strong.

The author nailed down the first point, about financial literacy being critical, and people turning out poor because of the lack of it. If this were not true, most if not all summa cum laude graduates would own, instead of just work for, a company; they succeeded in traditional education, but know nothing about finance.

The two others are completely off. RDPD was never meant to be an instruction booklet on how to become rich, much less how to get rich in real estate. He also misunderstood the concept of "paying yourself first" to mean "don't pay your taxes," which is simply false. He made it sound like Kiyosaki is some selfish person who is demanding the rest of the world to be the same; but if you read the rest of the book, he actually points out that rich people are very unselfish, because they give what other people want: jobs, products, services, etc., as opposed to those who just want to be paid more despite being mediocre. He also said that if you want to be rich, you have to give other people what they want.

Kiyosaki's example about being "inspired" by the screaming of creditors and the government is nothing more than that: a personal example. He didn't say everyone should follow that example. In fact, he said a couple of paragraphs later: "If you do not like financial pressure, then find a formula that works for you." And he said a few paragraphs prior: "If you cannot get control of yourself, do not try to get rich. You might first want to join the Marine Corps or some religious order so you can get control of yourself." He's clear about the dangers of falling to the temptation of spending on consumer debt and using investment to cover it up.

Also, that little bit about child labor is odd. It's not like Rich Dad was trying to make millions from his son and his friend. It was more of a lesson to show how employees live their lives; personal experience tends to be a more powerful teacher, after all.

Saying that, I admit that some of the stories in some of his other books were simply repeated from this one. It must be kind of him to assume that the readers of his other books haven't read the others, but it can get annoying reading the same story.