You know, I finished Rich Dad, Poor Dad today. It's pretty much an exercise in contradictory platitudes, but I can break the book down into a few basic tenets:

- buy real estate from people who are losing their homes

- spend money on real estate and stock investments, not boats

- invest in real estate seminars.

The "it takes money to make money" argument is paid a pretty insulting bit of lip service. It goes something like this: "pay yourself first because then your creditors will get mad at you for being behind on your bills and you'll be motivated to think of new ways to make money." In other words: need money for investing in speculative schemes? Don't pay rent! That way you'll want to strike it rich even more and your desperation will hone your drive and intellect!

You wanna talk about idiotic, tone-deaf Republican bullshit... and that's what I think most wealth-accumulating moguls boil down to: "I lucked out once and leveraged the money into more money, you can, too! All you need to do is luck out!" And yes. Luck favors the prepared. And the more time you spend in the right place, the more likely it is to be the right time. But if you don't have 200 bucks to pay for a new transmission, you probably don't have $8k to invest in foreclosures.

"Think and grow rich" my ass.