Rating: F+
Robert Kiyosaki’s Why the Rich Are Getting Richer is a bloated, repetitive rehash of his far superior work, Rich Dad, Poor Dad. While Rich Dad, Poor Dad earns an “A+” for its clarity and impact, and Tax-Free Wealth by Rich Dad Advisor Tom Wheelwright gets a solid “A” for its practical value, this book feels like little more than a money grab filled with fearmongering and ego-stroking.
If you’ve read any of Kiyosaki’s previous books, you already know the main points here:
- The rich don’t pay taxes.
- They use OPM (Other People’s Money) to take calculated risks.
- Real estate offers tax loopholes the wealthy can exploit.
That’s basically the whole book.
Kiyosaki made his fortune by buying cheap houses and holding them, leveraging the tax code along the way. Fair enough—he’s shared that strategy for the price of a book, and it’s helped a lot of people. But Why the Rich Are Getting Richer offers nothing new—just recycled ideas padded with stories, rants, and some truly exhausting self-praise.
One of the most frustrating aspects is how many times he boasts about “predicting the crash.” Yes, Robert, we get it—you saw the signs. But repeating it over and over again just cheapens the message. And for the record, here’s my own bold prediction: the market will crash again. Maybe twice in the next thirty years. Give or take a decade. Now I am a prophet, woowhoo!
He doesn’t hide that he and Trump are all about ‘teaching people to fish’ rather than the Bernie Sanders ‘give them fish.’ Not sure if Trump University teaches still. Once you get to page 90, there is a single paragraph (and then later in the book a few pages) explaining how CEOs can use options to buy the company stock at a huge discount then immediately sell it and receive all the profit, allowing them to take a 1$ salary. Perfect example of how the rich get richer, there, now you know how to fish.
The fear mongering is out of control in this book, especially with regards to the stock market. And while he presents as VERY anti-stock market, he then states (correctly I might add) that if everything at Wal-Mart was half off, you couldn’t get in the doors! Well, if the stock market goes on sale you should buy!
Worse, the charts he uses to back up his claims are often just flat-out misleading. On page 24, he claims “the party began to wind down around 2000,” with a chart showing the Dow at around 7,000. By 2015, that same chart shows the Dow at 16,000. That’s not exactly a collapse. Then he uses the same chart to say that after 1971 the ‘economy took off.’ But the Dow in 1971 was about 850—and ten years later in 1981? About 875. That’s a 2.94% gain over a decade. If that’s a “takeoff,” I’d hate to see a stall.
If you want everything in this book, without the bloat and fear mongering, read (or re-read) Rich Dad, Poor Dad. The biggest take away is buy assets, not liabilities and know the difference. Know the game is rigged by the golden rule, he who has the gold, makes the rules. If you want to learn how some of these rules can apply to you, go on to read Tax Free Wealth. But trust me, you can skip this waste of paper.
And one last thing—please don’t buy physical gold or silver coins as an investment. Kiyosaki drops a casual line about someone doing it as part of the “I” quadrant, but offers no warnings. In the real world, when you go to sell that investment, expect to lose 30% off the top in fees. Buyer beware.
