Geek Book Reviews

Rich Dad's Guide to Investing by Robert Kiyosaki was an interesting take on business and investing. While there are certainly things that can be taken away from it, the book overall is not as well written as I would like. He tended to ramble at times, and he repeated himself way too much. I felt as though the 400 or so pages could have been cut in half. That being said it was still an easy read for me including many interesting anecdotes from his relationship with his "Rich Dad."

While the book claims to be about investing, a large portion of it is dedicated to comparing being an employee to owning a business. He makes it clear that he thinks the only way to get truly rich is to own your own business. While he doesn't give many specifics as to how go about doing this, he does provide a lot of motivation for prospective entrepreneurs. He also goes into great detail on what he believes are the advantages of creating a business. Many of them include the way tax law treats businesses and individuals differently and some of the advantages that can be gained by investing as a business.

There are some great tidbits that can be found if look for them as you go through the book. Here is one that applies for anyone hoping to start their own business, "Rule number one in becoming an entrepreneur is to never take a job for money. Take a job only for the long-term skills you will learn." This I think is great advice for someone who wants to run their own business.

In general, money is ultimately never enough of a reason to do something. You will be much happier if you are doing something you love. For someone who wants to run their own business this is especially true. Take a job that will teach you something or give you the opportunity to work with someone you can learn a business from. In Robert's personal experience he took a job with Xerox in sales because they had the best sales training program at the time. This is the type of thing people should consider when choosing a new job.

While it didn't quite give me what I expected as far as learning about investing, Rich Dad's Guide to Investing was an interesting if long read. It was also good as a motivational book for someone looking to start a business at some point.