Pound Foolish: Exposing the Dark Side of the Personal Finance Industry by Helaine Olen

Author:Helaine Olen [Olen, Helaine]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Portfolio / Penguin
Published: 2008-12-25T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER EIGHT

WHO WANTS TO BE A REAL ESTATE MILLIONAIRE?

The Selling of Home Ownership as a Cure for Income and Investment Stagnation

IT’S AN AUGUST evening in suburban Tarrytown, New York, the sort of night when one thinks about coming home from work, eating dinner, and maybe sitting outside to enjoy the unseasonably cool weather. But the approximately two hundred people streaming into the Marriott Hotel located just off the perennially traffic-clogged and forever-under-construction Cross Westchester Expressway have resisted temptation.

Perhaps they found their way there, like I did, by clicking on a banner ad on Salon: “Use Real Estate to Build Wealth—in Any Market Condition!” Perhaps they received a flyer in the mail—also like I did—announcing “Today’s financial turmoil tells me one thing… ‘THE MIDDLE CLASS WILL BE TOAST!’ BUT I’VE GOT YOUR SURVIVAL PLAN INSIDE….” Perhaps, like I did, they heard the radio commercial on am talk radio, telling them that 401(k)s and other retirement accounts are a hoax.

And, so, they are here in August 2011, sitting in a hotel ballroom listening to a two-hour pitch for a three-day Rich Dad Academy where—if they sign up!—they will begin to learn the secrets of Robert Kiyosaki, the creator of the highly popular Rich Dad, Poor Dad series of books, DVDs, board games, and other assorted products designed to teach us a new way of thinking about money and real estate, a way guaranteed to ensure that we will never need to rely on a traditional nine-to-five job again.

Robert Kiyosaki is only here via a prepared video, but we have a host, a young southerner named Brent, with an incredibly engaging, sincere, and enthusiastic manner, and impossibly boyish face. He’s telling us there is a way for us to go from wage slave, living paycheck to paycheck, to mega mogul, flying off on our dream vacations on a private jet.

Real estate.

There are, Brent says, “massive opportunities” in real estate, even in 2011 when prices are bottoming out all over the country. You just need to learn how to convince a bank to sell to you. “Being rich is a mindset,” he tells those assembled. “You tell me you’re broke and you have no credit, you’re lazy, that’s what you are!”

So where do you go if you need to learn now how to convince a lending institution to sell you a REO property on their books with no money down—or, for that matter, where do you go if you first need to learn what an REO is?

You sign up for the next level Rich Dad class.

“Our classes costing between $3,000 and $5,000 are filled, with waiting lists,” Brent says. “How is that possibly happening during a global downturn like this?”

“The tuition for our signature three-day Rich Dad, Poor Dad Academy is usually $595,” he continues. “It includes tuition and course materials,” Brent goes on to say. But if we sign up in the next few minutes—a period that keeps getting extended by ten or fifteen minutes as the evening progresses—the charge for the class will be reduced to $199, “the most significant discount ever offered.

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