It seems so obvious how backward that is. I am fit BECAUSE I bike to work. People like to think its a question of “good genes” because it gives them an excuse to be lazy.

Same goes for frugal living. As a hauler and mover, people are always saying they have too much stuff, they wish they could downsize. It gets done by doing it.

Thanks for helping to inspire people

Yes- I have taken on RK’s preferred investing strategy of residential real estate as my main investment category.

I agree with Jacob that RK’s best book for me was Cash Flow Quadrant. The understanding of that simple diagram has changed my life. I will leave the rat race a lot soon because of moving in that direction. But if I left all my real estate education to RK I would be incurring too many risks.

But bashing him because he is wealthy and a poor writer is foolish. The guy has a best seller and also many more published books than the entire readership of this site. You may not like him but he has cashed in on something. And for the neigh sayers of how poorly his real estate investments are doing- now is the time people like him make a killing in the foreclosures.

Collecting rent check monthly has been a good thing for me. Now I do not rely on my paycheck like I used to.

Power lifters throw/flip tractor tires, but which cars I think they stick to lifting up one half of it.

I didn’t think Jacob had a car, or a driver’s license for that matter.

It seemed a funny mental image– a power lifter repeatedly throwing a car into a ditch, for the sake of his fitness, or as an expression of anger, rather than to damage another person’s car.

I think that people cannot simply deal with ideas on the ideas own merit based upon the fact that we are more trained to understand an idea based on who said it and what they did with it. Of which I am guilty. It is almost natural, and politics in America is very much predicated on this basis.

Also, your point about postmodernism is interesting. However, in Kiyosaki’s case, he did not present his ideas in a totally objective sense. He appealed to emotion, hence the prose of his book having a theme of cognitive development. So people reacted emotionally to finding out that 2 dads might not have existed and Kiyosaki isn’t “Bill Gates” successful.

Jacob, perhaps when you write your next book, you can distill the essential psychological ideas of RDPD and appeal to the INTP crowd. RDPD was written more for the “-SF-” crowd. But really, this is all psychological… and must not be taken like science.

In the overall scheme of things, given that a human lifespan is almost a thousand months, that’s not a lot, so it’s more a question of which provides a higher quality of life: eating or moving. This comes down to personal preference.

But really now, Aristotle put it best: moderation in all things. The middle way is key to a virtuous life.

I read and enjoyed RDPD but I did go into it with a bit of a negative mindset due to some pf blogger non-love. I didn’t learn anything new but it was entertaining and just inspired me a little more to think like a capitalist and not a middle class person.

I think there’s far too much character analysis going on. I don’t really care about that. I only care about the ideas presented and very frequently I forget where the actual ideas came from. It saddens me when presidential elections get into whatever the candidates did 30 years ago or what their stance is on something which is completely irrelevant to their politics.

I mainly blame postmodernism for this. Everybody now believes that all ideas are equally valid and thus that the way to go is to forego critical analysis (since by postmodernistic edict, we can’t judge anyway) and just try to figure out the character of whoever is making the statements, since hypocrisy is still anathema.

Yeah, I have half a car. We got it one month before I reached financial independence to replace DW’s old (dead) car. I don’t drive it (never bothered to get a US license). The question then is whether owning half a car I don’t drive somehow invalidates my ideas about transportation.

I watched his lectures on PBS a while back, and it did help me understand a few things. He writes a column on Yahoo! Finance, and you can find the articles where he suggests things like buying silver and gold bars, and you can look at the dates and see how useful his advice is. I thought he was a pirate for a while, with all the silver and gold, and put it in a chest… bury it on an island… get a parrot and peg leg…

Jacob, the car you don’t own is in a ditch somewhere. Maybe it’s your wife’s car, I don’t know. Some guy threw it in there. I’m not sure why, but perhaps he should keep throwing it, because it’s the means not the end.

Just for the record, I count NADPH/NADH, not calories.

What you’ve said above is so true. My SO and I are both very physically fit and eat much healthier than all of our friends. They think we’re crazy for eating organic and running half marathons. We’ve tried having similar conversations as yours and get so irritated with the “well it’s easy for you to say–you’re so skinny!”. People’s attitudes towards health and fitness is VERY much comparable to financial matters. They want it ALL to be quick and easy, let’s just make everything brainless, shall we?

Let’s also not forget his cheery Yahoo! articles, where he extolled the brilliance of Nazis and blabbered on about how poor people are stupid and evil–and I mean that he *literally* blabbed about how fabulous Nazis were and how poor people are stupid and evil. L-i-t-e-r-a-l-l-y. Some of us prefer to derive our information from folks who aren’t Nazi-loving bigots. Go figure.

But feel free to chalk it up to being unable to handle such radical ideas. (Insert eye roll.)

Speaking of bigots, do you think we could possibly get a Black Dad/N!gger Dad series? Or maybe Homosexual Dad/Faggot Dad (or Straight Dad/Faggot Dad if you really can’t hang)? ‘Cuz marginalizing segments of the population based on appearance and/or perceived lifestyle is so genius. God knows anyone considered fat certainly has skewed thinking and never lifts a dumbell. Same goes for all the rest of those “Others.”

Seriously, dude? Seriously? Seriously. For someone who loathes conventional thinking and the idiocy of group think, you sure do cling to it mightily when it comes to fat folk. And you must know that you’re venturing into the land of bigoted idiocy, or you wouldn’t preface the post with the thin veil o’ “controversy.” I mean, seriously. Seriously?

Why is this so difficult for people to comprehend? Marginalizing segments of the population based on appearance and/or perceived lifestyle is asinine. Say it with me, children!

Having said that, an expanded book with such a title would sell like hotcakes, because people are freakin’ idiots. Cash in.

the only thing That Guy demonstrates about finance is the old truth: it’s a lot easier to get rich selling financial advice than by _following_ your own advice.

Without careful planning, risking everything you have can be a disaster. Of course risk-reward levels are linked, but a higher risk of failure due to foolish planning does not increase reward. He definitely advocates pulling out all the stops of safe and “stupid” retirement vehicles and going full risk. He also mocks those who don’t choose his path and thinks himself superior.

And of course he wrote it that way to rile people up and get them talking. He’s a salesman after all, not a writer. The question now is, could he have written a book that shook people up but didn’t have the negatives I mentioned? Perhaps not.

Ok I’m done.