Pick a path to wealth

Image courtesy of Wiley.

Book Review
Title: "The Ten Roads to Riches: The Ways The Wealth Got There (And How You Can Too!)"
Author: Ken Fisher with Lara Hoffmans
Publisher: Wiley, 2009; 228 pages; $16.95

Ask a stockbroker how to get rich, and the stockbroker will usually give you stock picks. Ask a real estate broker, and that broker will dig out a statistic proving that real estate is the only way to riches. Entrepreneurs "know" they'll never get rich working for someone else.

In "The Ten Roads to Riches: The Ways the Wealthy Got There (And How You Can Too!)," Forbes columnist and money manager Ken Fisher makes a strong case that each of these paths can lead to riches, but none of them owns the exclusive. In the book's 10 modular (read: standalone) chapters, Fisher backs up his arguments that each of these roads leads to wealth:

• 1. Starting a business, which Fisher deems "the richest road"
• 2. Becoming the CEO of an existing company
• 3. Hitching your wagon to that of a successful visionary
• 4. Celebrity fame
• 5. Marrying a wealthy spouse (don't shoot the messenger, people)
• 6. Legalized stealing (this is Fisher's term for being a plaintiff's attorney)
• 7. Using other people's money (according to Fisher, 86 members of the 2007 Forbes 400 got there by managing or brokering others' money)
• 8. Inventing a product or an income stream
• 9. Investing in real estate
• 10. Saving and investing

Then, for each "road to riches," Fisher goes on to provide some basic how-tos, reading resources, case-study examples and caveats before closing the chapter out with a bullet-point summary of steps to guide readers down the particular road to which the chapter was devoted. ...CONTINUED

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