I mentioned yesterday that I’m starting to focus on learning more about money. Part of that learning is getting some books and reading them. I’ve got three so far, all from the Rich Dad Poor Dad series. Here’s some insights from the books I’ve gotten so far.

Rich Dad’s Guide to Becoming Rich… without cutting up your credit cards. This was the first of the books I bought and frankly wasn’t worth the money. There was too much reference to other books in the series and not enough practical advice. I wish I’d spent the money on other books in the series.

BTW I checked out from the library and read the original Rich Dad Poor Dad book a while back.

Rich Dad’s Success Stories I’ve only begun this book but found it interesting because these aren’t the typical “I saw the infomercial and in six months with none of my own money I’m worth $10 million dollars and now I live on the beach in Hawaii.” Instead these are real people talking specifics about the properties they bought and how much it cost and how much it makes. Sometimes it is negative cash flow, but for a reason.

Retire Young, Retire Rich I got the audio book via the iTunes Music store and put it on my iPod. I’m just into this one and it is interesting. Here are a couple of tidbits I learned.

The odds don’t change. Only 1 out of 10 businesses succeed. So everytime you start a new business you have a 1 in 10 chance of failing. So you need to keep doing it until it works. Making mistakes is how you learn.

Earned income is 50% money because you spend 50% of it on taxes in one form or another. Gain on investments is 20% money because that is the capital gains cost of getting the gain out of an investment. Real estate is 0% money because you don’t pay any taxes on gains in real estate if you reinvest it in real estate.