I’m starting to feel like there’s something fishy going on with Robert Kiyosaki.
After his “new rule” of money said that savers are losers, I wanted to find out a bit more about the rest of the personal finance advice he shells out. And I stumbled on the motherload.
Turns out, Kiyosaki runs (or lends his name to) a series of “wealth seminars” that, according to a consumer investigative report from CBC’s Marketplace, is anything but about smart personal finance advice.
Marketplace went undercover into one of these Rich Dad classes, where students are told to increase their credit card limit to $100,000, verbally harassed if they ask hard questions, and basically sold on buying more expensive classes without receiving any sort of decent advice.
They don’t allow embedding of the video, so you’ll have to go to their site to see it.
P.S. As I mentioned the other day, thanks to strong sales, I’m heavily considering increasing the price of Automatic Finances from $7 to $17. I’m going to be making the final decision over the weekend, but it’s looking pretty likely. If you want to save yourself $10, you shouldn’t wait — you should get your copy now.
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I find it a little ironic that you criticize Robert based upon what he’s done and then in the same breath are offering “Automatic Finances” before it goes up in price (a comme sales tactic).
I don’t defend Robert’s sales process (which aren’t directly him then anyway), nor believe in everything he says or his motive. Though, not all of his advice is crap and I can from my experience some of it is definitely is on target (i.e. house is not an investment). At minimum he does have some alternative viewpoints that helps you question the norm.
It’s not uncommon for those who offer a way to “get rich” get rich by off of what they sell. Kinda no different than what you doing?
Thanks for the comment, Junkie. Seriously, it’s a great question.
The difference is that you aren’t paying anything to read this blog, whereas the people who are paying hundreds of dollars for his seminars are mostly getting sales pitches for more products. That’s not ethical, and it’s not good business. And for someone who is supposed to represent smart financial decisions and business building, it does exactly the opposite.
I agree this blog is, like most, are “free”. Someway, somehow if it’s a true business, it must make money. Up-selling to paid products is a common way. I have no issue myself for paying for advice and knowledge transfer. After all you (or whoever) spent time, collecting, researching, analyzing, etc. to create the product/service. You should get paid for your effort.
I think your beef is in value of Robert’s course. The amount paid does not equal the amount returned. Which is fine and I agree. That might not be true to others who take the course. If they are so uneducated, or naive then they did get a lesson somehow from it no? It could be as simple as don’t listen to someone offering something that sounds too good to be true. In the end if Robert offers a crappy product/service, it will die a painful death. The ones behind the course is Russ Whitney which has been a scammer from day one. In your case a $7 (or $17) investment will more than likely yield a better return if you pay for the product. Even if you don’t get anything out of it, not much is really lost.
I happen to agree with this post. After watching the video, I agree that Robert is a crook. I read his books years ago, and the only thing I learned was that poor people think differently than rich people. He is good at getting people to believe that debt is leverage, and apparently believe that it’s worth $500 to listen to someone try to sell them a bigger “more advanced” seminar. They paid $500 to listen to a sales pitch when they thought they would be learning how to get rich quick.
Misleading people—a sales tactic? Offering someone a product at a discounted price is a sales tactic, this is just straight up theft.
Getting people to raise their credit limits to $100,000 so they can buy his CRAPPY product? That’s insane even if he wasn’t trying to sell them anything. It’s HORRIBLE financial advice.
Investor Junkie – I have to say I was kind of surprised that you took up for Robert Kiyosaki on this. He’s clearly a fraud trying to make a KILLING off of a few good morsels of personal finance knowledge and the brand he created called Rich Dad Poor Dad. This would be more honest if it were titled “Rich Me, Poor You!”
I will probably burn the books I still have on my shelf just so no one ever makes the mistake of reading them. The small amount of morsels that are found in them, can be found elsewhere—by more honest, and respected authors who really want to help people.
…my two cents. 🙂
@Brad Chaffee I’m not defending him, just stating a counter argument. Let’s look at Suze Ormann. How do you think she got wealthy? Read up on what she has her money invested in. While she recommend stocks, most of her money is in bonds. Her “throwaway” money is in stocks.
Bad Money Advice has some great opinion articles on how she’s not the oracle of San Fransisco.
http://badmoneyadvice.com/category/suze-orman
Junkie, I’m not going to defend Suze – in fact, I think she generally gives out pretty bad financial advice – but I think there is a legitimate reason for her investing choices.
Basically, when you have more than enough money to live on for the rest of your life, there’s simply no reason to have riskier investments (stocks) when you can conserve what you have by investing with bonds.
Not too many of us are in that position, though.
I have read books of Mr. Kiyosaki before and I can say that it’s very interesting yet mind-boggling. I came across a site before that revealed the lies that Robert Kiyosaki has been telling in his books and to other people. That experience made me question his integrity, I can’t remember the link of that site but I can really say, Robert Kiyosaki is a very mysterious man.
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