Book Review: Secrets of the Millionaire Mind

Repeat every day out loud to yourself "I have a millionaire mind" and touch your head when saying that. That sums up the advice of this book. (It made me wonder whether it would work if I said instead "I have a Nobel laureate's mind".)

For the life of me I cannot figure out why this is a best seller. It follows the familiar pattern of "change-your-life" self-help books with much common sense advice that is repeated in so many other places. Principles like pay yourself first and rich people manage their money well will hardly shock or surprise. Eker's advice is not wrong or stupid, it does make sense, but maybe it's my age, I seem to have read this all before.

Those who would expect biographies of rich people and how they think will be disappointed. The only rich person whose thinking is examined, is Eker himself.
The "resources" at the end consist of five pages of further seminars offered by the author. The text is peppered with references and exhortations to those seminars. Several testimonials as to how the seminars have changed people's lives are included. At times the book reads like an infomercial (Eker is merely following his own advice that rich people aren't afraid of self-promotion.) The style is what may be described as heavy with exclamation marks, like so! The writing approach is to post quote-like sayings in centered bold print then to tell little stories to explain.

The annoyances and limitations aside, I did enjoy some of the content. My favorite quote from the book is "Money will only make you more of what you already are." Another passage that made me smile is where he interviews a financial planner seeking to sign Eker up as a client. He turns the tables and asks for the planner's current portfolio to measure the planner's abilities. Yes indeed, "if you"re so smart, why aren't you rich?" Wouldn't it be great if that were a mandatory disclosure for mutual fund managers?

Bottom line: it's a quick read at 192 big print pages, so if you have a quiet Sunday afternoon with nothing urgent to do, by all means go get it at the library.