Book Summary - I Will Teach You To Be Rich

I wish I could remember which Moronic blogger it was that highly recommended this book....because they are the one who rightfully deserves Marginalization!

This book not only sucked content-wise, the author also had a grating dorkiness about him.

For whatever reason, the self-delusionally cool Indian guy is more unbearable than that category of any other ethnicity. It's certainly no small irony that one out of every three of them is named *Atul*. Seriously, this guy's a complete HJ; he acts like a tough guy and peppers his book with incredible allusions involving him and *the ladies*.  I knew twenty dudes just like him at UPenn.  I fondly remember when one guy in particular, Raja(?), a trash-talking sloppy drunk woke up on the steps of his frat house with blood all over his face and his watch missing.  (The Wawa bum got him!)  And another, Aseem(?), who thought he was all bad-a$$ sprawled out on a couch at some club, smoking a cigar (Phillies!) right up until the point he passed out and set the couch afire!

Anyways, the book may have a place in the puerile Budgeting-101 for Dummies niche with its pay down your debt-limit your spending-save for the future-etc blather....but that's about it.

Beyond that, the poseur's entire, illiterately-framed *Be-Rich* recipe merely advises people to dump all their money into the stock market (index funds).

Y A W N.

And good luck with that in 2010!

Here's an excerpt from this hard to believe *NY Times Best-Selling* author. Under his Myths About Owning a Home section:

"YOU CAN USE LEVERAGE TO INCREASE YOUR MONEY."

Home owners will often point to leverage as the key benefit of real estate. In other words, you can put $20,000 down for a $100,000 house, and if the house climbs to $120,000, you've effectively doubled your money. Unfortunately, leverage can also work against you if the price goes down. If your house declines by 10 percent, you don't just lose 10 percent of your equity - it's more like 20 percent once you factor in the 6 percent realtor's fees, the closing costs, new furniture, and other expenses.

Okay...

If the house drops 10% to 90k....and you sell it, 80k goes to pay off the note and you are left with only 10k of your original downpayment.

That's an equity loss of 50%, NOT 10-20%, Ramit Atul!

Don't any of y'all waste your time or money on this book, please.