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A Review of “The Richest Man in Babylon for Today” by Fred Siegel
By JLP | January 3, 2008
Last night I had the chance to read Fred Siegel’s The Richest Man in Babylon for Today
Siegel decided to update the classic because the original was “… disjointed, redundant, and out of date for the 21st century.” GASP! How can he say such a thing about a classic? I read the original “Richest Man” and absolutely loved it.
Regardless of Siegel’s opinion, he does do a decent job of modernizing the classic. Gone are the references to Babylon and the sometimes hard-to-understand language. In their place is a story about two men who are struggling financially. They decide to pay a visit to their rich friend to see if he has any knowledge to pass along to them. Their rich friend agrees and then proceeds to offer them advice over the next several years. In the first year he instructs them pay themselves 10% before they pay any of their other bills. Then, the two friends come back a year later and report their progress and the rich friend gives them another assignment.
Overall, the updated version of book is pretty good. However, there are a few things that bug me:
1. The story doesn’t flow very well. In one chapter the two friends are visiting with the rich friend and then in the next chapter the rich friend is speaking to a group of mayors, which is a little confusing.
2. Given the fact that Siegel thought the original book was redundant, I was surprised to find his version of the story to be the same. I think this is more due to the fact that the story is quite simple and repeating points is a way to stretch it out. The book is small, has only 135 pages, and yet lots of those pages have nothing but a quote on them. In other words, the book is really a long article that was stretched into a book.
3. Finally, I found this passage about insurance kind of humorous:
“Life insurance is your first line of defense if you have other people depending on you. If you are young, you may want to sue term insurance. It is the cheapest insurance but accumulates no value. The cost will also go up as you get older.
“A common recommendation is to buy term life and invest the difference you save over buying whole life. however, very few people have the discipline to ‘invest the difference.’”
It’s humorous in that the preceding 82 pages of the book were all about developing discipline in order to become wealthy and yet these same people aren’t disciplined enough to buy a term insurance policy and invest the difference. That part of the book just felt like it was an attempt on Siegel’s part to sell some insurance.
Other than that, I did like the book and would recommend it to anyone looking for a nice pick-me-up. I still prefer Clason’s version.
Topics: Books, Personal Growth | 2 Comments »
January 3rd, 2008 at 9:28 am
I haven’t read either the old or new version, but it sounds like it is very similar to The Wealthy Barber.
January 3rd, 2008 at 9:49 am
Bobby,
Yes it is similar to the The Wealthy Barber.