Customer Reviews

The Ten Roads to Riches: The Ways the Wealthy Got There (And How You Can Too!) (Fisher Investments Press)

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4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

A fun, fast (read it in one day) and eye-opening read on the real roads to real wealth. This was very different from Fisher's last book, the Only Three Questions that Count, which I also liked, but did not disappoint. This book is not about stocks per se (although Fisher does cover stock investing in one of the chapters as a path to wealth) but rather is a sort of frank public service announcement about the most realistic paths to wealth. And, it helps you figure out how to improve your odds of getting down the path you choose more successfully.

The book uses real life, and often very funny examples to show what to do and what to avoid doing if you want to build real wealth. Highly recommended.

This is a fun, breezy read, as investment advisor and long-time Forbes columnist Ken Fisher has written a serious, but humorous book about how to build wealth. And at 216 pages a quick read.

Fisher's last book, "The Only Three Questions that Count", was superb. This latest book is very different from "The Only Three Questions...", which is all about personal investing but which also has application to other areas of a person's life.

"The Ten Roads to Riches" is about the varied ways a person can build personal wealth. Fisher draws from his own experience of meeting many successful people, as he charts the paths. The chapters are insightful and written in a tongue-in-cheek style with ideas that can be easily visualized.

Some examples: The first chapter "The Richest Road", which is founding your own business and building it into the next Microsoft, Nike, or Charles Schwab. The third chapter, about the "Ride-alongs", people who hitch theirselves to the Bill Gates's or Warren Buffett's of the world and rise as they and their firm rise. If you are Warren Buffett's longtime sidekick, there's got to be wealth in that, right? (Yup. Charlie Munger is his name and his net worth is $2 billion.)

Chapter four is "Rich ... and Famous". Some tips: compose songs, don't sing them, and star high school baseball players have slightly better odds of making the big leagues then star football players.

Chapter five is "Marry Well, Really Well", which is very amusing, but also serious. Hey, if you want to get married, hang around with rich people and fall in love with one of them! Plenty of examples including John Kerry (twice) and John McCain.

Chapter six is "Steal It - Like a Pirate, But Legally", making a career as a plaintiff's lawyer and suing companies. Enough said.... And chapter nine is "Trumping the Land Barons" - all about real estate.

The last chapter is "The Road Most Travelled", about doing it the old-fashioned way - get a good job, work hard, save and invest wisely.

Each chapter is a survey, giving multiple examples of people who took the particular road, and offering ideas, but no detailed plan. At the end of each are brief reviews of suggested additional readings for anyone who might be inclined to follow that particular path. I was surprised that there are actually serious books about how to "Marry Well", but maybe I shouldn't have been?

An enjoyable, quick read about one aspect of the business of life.

Everyone knows its best to save your money and invest wisely, but here's the straight scoop on how the really rich got that way. This book was part no-nonsense career coach, part cheerleader, part cautionary tale. There's something for everyone here. And yes, it was a fast, inspiring, funny read.

Many dream of riches. Few achieve them. Why? It usually involves self-denial and hard work. It's not that anyone can't achieve riches, if they start young enough, but they won't make the sacrifices to do so. A strong education helps, but is not absolutely required. As my old boss Eric Hovde said to his staff repeatedly, the biggest difference in success comes from the degree of effort put forth. I would only add that working smart amplifies the effort of working hard.

Ken Fisher the billionaire asset manager, identifies the ten ways he has seen to become wealthy. They are:

1) Build a significant business.

2) Manage a significant business.

3) Be the right hand man of a wealthy person.

4) Be a star athlete, entertainer, or one who significantly facilitates star athletes and entertainers.

5) Marry a wealthy person.

6) Be a lawyer that helps clients sue for major amounts of money on a contingency fee basis.

7) Manage a lot of Other People's Money.

8 ) Be an inventor of something popular, a popular writer, a prominent politician, or invent an organization that a lot of people want to give money to.

9) Borrow a lot of money and speculate on property appreciation.

10) Work hard, save a lot, and invest wisely.

I think he has nailed it. My way of summarizing it is that you have to do something that makes a lot of people happy, or at least has the potential to make a lot of people happy. Or, make one wealthy person very happy or unhappy. Three groups -- how do they work out?

A) Those who do something that makes a lot of people happy can earn a lot:

* Successful business founders, CEOs, right hand men, inventors
* Stars and their significant enablers
* Good asset managers
* Good writers
* Successful real estate developers

B) But even those that promise to do something to make people happy and fail at it can earn a lot:

* Any CEO of a big enterprise can earn a lot -- at one investment firm, we used to joke that you got paid $50 million to destroy a company -- it is what they had to pay to get rid of you. Their right hand men will still prosper too, just not as much. In the current financial crisis, that is what gores many about the large surviving firms that were bailed out. The executives are still prospering after previous dumb decisions. Easy to complain about it, but it is nice work if you can get it. (Note: this is why they should not have been bailed out, especially not at the holding company level. Government officials lie when they say they could not have done it differently. I for one suggested alternatives ahead of time.)
* The same applies to CEOs that tweak the company's earnings while they are there, but leave their successor in the hole.
* Many still follow stars as their stars fade; they may not make as much, but it is still a lot. Same for writers that lose their knack.
* Many asset managers have an early period where they don't have much in the way of assets, and their track record is great; their ideas for excess return are executable with the current assets under management [AUM]. That leads to growth in assets, until they are too big for the asset class in which they have expertise. They become index-like, or they venture outside their circle of competence, and their track record suffers. But AUM is high, and the fees can provide a nice income. Assets are sticky if you don't do too badly, and are a good salesman/storyteller.
* Politicians can make a lot of money off of contacts or giving speeches once out of office, even if they were on net harmful to the nation while in office.
* Some charities (or nonprofits like mutual insurers or credit unions) can be less than scrupulous about what managers get paid.
* The real estate speculator, the CEO, and certain investment managers can have a "Heads-I-win, Tails-you-lose" attitude. America gives people a lot of second chances before you are permanently branded as a fraud. It only takes one big win to make a lot for yourself, even if you destroy the well-being of others in the process.

C) Then there are those that only have to serve a few:

* The spouse of a wealthy person.
* The right hand man of a wealthy person, and
* The Trial Lawyer going after a big tort
* Serve yourself, as an ordinary person working at a job.

No one begrudges the wealth of those in group A -- they have served society well. Many begrudge the wealth of those in group B -- they have not served society well. Group C? It depends on motives. More later on this.

One thing is certain, though. There aren't many seats in each of the "roads to riches," except for the last ordinary one, #10. Few are founders of massive enterprises, or CEOs, or stars, or investors of must-have products or processes. Few can serve in high office, or write best-sellers, or be able to source a lot of assets to manage. Few can get the capital markets or banks to loan them millions, even billions. Few get to try a lawsuit where a huge award is won. Few get to marry rich. Also, most succeeding have to hit their right path while young, to allow enough time for compounding their success.

It takes a lot of effort and good breaks in order to be at the top of any economic situation where there is a lot of wealth. Even road #10, doing well at your job, saving a lot and investing wisely is tough. Few get to become "The Millionaire Next Door," but more achieve reasonable wealth that way than all of the rest combined.

Ken Fisher writes about all of these areas in an entertaining way, and gives practical advice on how to follow each road, including additional books to read, and techniques for getting started. It is an ambitious and compact book weighing in at around 230 pages of text including the preface. It is an easy, breezy read. As a bonus, in road 10, Ken Fisher shares basic investment advice for the retail investor.

More than Quibbles:

I owe a lot to Ken Fisher for advice that he gave me in Winter 2000, and though I enjoyed the book, I can't endorse it wholeheartedly. He is out to tell you how to do it, even in cases where there might be significant moral compromise. He acknowledges that, but says it is a part of the game.

To me, the key question is what your motives are. It's one thing to enter into a risky business, offer full disclosure to all stakeholders in advance, make a best effort, and fail. It is quite another to trick/cajole people into backing you without full knowledge, and fail.

It is one thing to try a legal case where the damages are proportionate to the harm caused, and another thing to help create disproportionate judgments. It is one thing to serve a wealthy person who asks you to do things that are ethical, and another thing to serve in things that are unethical. Once you have fans, a privileged job, or "sticky assets," do you start giving less than your best? I write this as one that is himself prone to laziness when things go well. It is a common sin that one has to fight.

Are you looking out for the best interests of those you serve, and society more broadly? A tough question for any of us, but society itself does not do well when a dominant proportion of it does not serve for good motives. If it gets bad enough, the society will lose legitimacy and vitality.

Finally, it is one thing to marry because you love the person, and want to give your all to your future spouse. It is quite another thing to enter in with crossed fingers, and say, "Maybe this will work, maybe it won't. I will be careful to protect myself, because the odds of failure are significant. But economically, it will work out for me either way. I'm wealthy if we marry, whether it works or not, because the prenup will leave me well off."

Here's the common vow: I, (Bride/Groom), take you (Groom/Bride), to be my (wife/husband), to have and to hold from this day forward, for better or for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish; from this day forward until death do us part. Maybe promises don't mean much any more, but I can't see how one marrying for money can say that with a clear conscience.

Before my wife and I married, but after we were engaged, we were at a bookstore together, and we were looking over some marriage books to find one our pastor recommended. She found a book entitled, "Marry Rich." She said to me, "This is a joke book, right?" I said, "Uh, you would be surprised at the motives some have in marriage." She began leafing through it, amazed at the level of greed involved. She married her poor graduate student boyfriend anyway. 23 years later things are still working out well for her (and me).

One final note, not from the book: greed wears people out. It is one thing to do what you love so long as money is not the sole purpose. But those that are greedy for gain at all costs destroy themselves, and those around them. It is not a good trade.

I'm a fan of Ken Fisher's books. While he's other books are mostly about capital markets, but this one is a completely different book. It is based on Ken Fisher's experience in observing Forbes 400 list and managing wealthy people's money as a CEO of Fisher Investments. Based on these observations, the author have identified ten most usual patterns on becoming rich. The book isn't about getting rich quick. It's about getting mega-rich in ways that work over time.
What is the difference between this book and the author's other books about capital markets? The books on capital markets will teach how to invest wisely, but they don't teach how to become a billionaire, they just assume you already have enough investable money to have interest in capital markets and how they work.
To have enough investable money, it's better to be rich. And this is what this book about. While books like "Millionaire Next Door" in a plenitude, they teach you to save, to live beyond your means, to have compounding interest work for you as a way to get rich. But a majority of billionaires, like Bill Gates, never saved a penny. They have just created their wealth, rather than accumulated it by saving.
If you liked the chapter "Managing other people's money", I can also recommend the author's subsequent book "How to smell a rat", that augments and expands the topic of this chapter.
Pros
- Lots of statistical figures to proof the author's assertions
- Lots of useful tips throughout the book
- Lots of myths demystified about different professions, commonly believed to bring megawealth, e.g. sports players, actors, musicians, lawyers, etc.
- Each chapter has valuable references to further reading
Cons
- Minor factual errors: for example, the author wrote that Warren Buffett bought a "tiny" company Berkshire Hathaway. In fact, in 1955 the company had 15 plants employing over 12,000 workers.
- An audio version on CD (released by HarperAudio on November 4, 2008) has a foreword read by Ken Fisher with very awful quality, the sound seems to be distorted by excessive compression, voice sounds like "electronic" and is hard to tolerate. The rest of the book, read by J.s. Gilbert, is OK.

Billionaire and author Ken Fisher offers ten pathways to wealth:

1. Start your own business
2. Become a CEO
3. Become a "ride-along" to a successful CEO
4. Become rich and famous
5. Marry into wealth
6. Become a plaintiff attorney
7. Use other people's money
8. Invent something
9. Real estate
10. Save and live frugally

Fisher's book is entertaining and will likely never leave you bored. His tone is at times facetious but he offers a "macro" view of major pathways for those who want to achieve financial independence and security.

This is not your typical financial self-help read. It is an intriguing and fascinating introduction to various ways that others have accumulated wealth and you can too! I higly suggest this book if you're thinking of starting a business or are unsure of what you would like to do with your future. The author also offers suggestions on other books for each topic should you choose to do further research on one of the 10 roads. This was an easy and provocative read making it very hard to put down!

Bobby Knight, the famous basketball coach, says that every basketball player has the will to win, but not every basketball player has the will to do the workouts that lead to winning. Ken Fisher's book suggests that it's the same with getting rich: everyone wants to, but relatively few people have the discipline to do what it takes to achieve that goal.

Fisher, as successful in investing as Knight was in basketball, suggests that there are ten common roads to getting rich -- really, really rich -- and that anyone who has that as their goal should start thinking right now about the practical steps needed to reach that goal.

The ten roads to wealth that Fisher describes are:

1. Start your own business (like Bill Gates)
2. Become the CEO of someone else's business (like Jack Welch)
3. Be a rich person's side-kick (like Charlie Munger is to Warren Buffett)
4. Become famous (like Oprah)
5. Marry wealth (like John Kerry, who did it twice; the second time by marrying a woman who herself had married into wealth)
6. Become a plaintiff's attorney (True story here: A lawyer I know once filed a medical malpractice claim by filling out a one-page claim form and mailing it to the appropriate claims office. About six or seven months later, with essentially no further input from that lawyer, the claim was settled. The lawyer's fee for filling out and mailing that one-page claim form came to something like $350,000. $350,000! Nice work if you can get it!)
7. Use other people's money (like money-managers)
8. Invent something that everyone wants (like Harry Potter stories)
9. Get into real estate (like the Donald)
10. Live below your means and save the rest (like me!)

Fisher provides a number of examples of people who actually followed one or more of the ten roads, and he describes a number of practical steps to follow (and traps to avoid) for each road. Some of the examples and how-to advice is pretty entertaining. The "how to marry rich" section was particularly entertaining. (This seems like a good time to point out that Fisher doesn't offer any moral judgments about any of the ten roads. All he does is point out that the roads are legally open to the public. Whether you choose to follow one or not is up to your moral code, not Fisher's.)

Unlike Fisher's books specifically on investing, this one wasn't particularly deep, but it was fun to read. And if you want more detailed information about any particular road or roads, Fisher provides a list of additional reading at the end of each chapter.

Great new book Ken - By far, your best yet. Essential and frank details on
exactly How to really make it. The simple (but not quick or easy) steps to
financial and personal success are clear, with your very valuable insights
for each different type of person and personality... Excellent.

Bill G. /Eastern Research & Trading Group

Ken Fisher is the son of the legendary money managwer Phil Fisher. He is a self-made billionaire and is ranked no 271 on the 2007 Forbes 400 list of the richest Americans. In find this book credible and a real pleasure to read and is extremely enlightening.It provides a front row seat to learn from a veteran nmoney manager (Mr Fisher is the fourth longest-running columnist in Forbes's ninety-year history). Mr Fisher even includes controversial but legal ways to make money. I highly recommend this book.


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