By Tim Grant
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
As one of the world’s most celebrated life coaches, Tony Robbins is best known for helping millions of people improve the quality of their lives in many personal and meaningful ways from losing weight and improving their relationships to overcoming some life-changing tragedy.
But in his first major book in nearly 20 years, Robbins goes a step beyond the emotional aspect of self-help and asks his audience to begin taking control of their lives in a different way, by embracing the complex world of finance and setting a goal to retire comfortably rather than die broke.
The high-energy style of teaching Robbins is famous for shines through in “Money: Master the Game: 7 Simple Steps to Financial Freedom.”
He asks lots of questions and uses lots of exclamation points! And he is a big believer in taking immediate action.
“What if you don’t have a retirement account, a place to put your dedicated savings?” Robbins asks in the chapter on saving. “Simple: stop right now, jump online, and open up a savings or retirement account with a bank or financial institution. … Go ahead, I’ll wait …”
At 689 pages, “Money: Master the Game” is not the kind of light, leisure reading you would carry to the beach for a lazy weekend. This book is for serious readers who are inclined to take notes and action from start to finish.
Robbins delves deep into the topic of money, touching on the psychology of wealth, what holds people back from achieving financial success, and some cures, which include a systematic plan of saving a portion of one’s income in a “financial freedom fund” and allowing compound interest to work its magic.
While Robbins is not a financial adviser, his credibility as a financial author comes from his sources of information, 50 of the most successful investors in the world from self-made billionaires to Nobel laureates who shared their timeless wisdom with him in interviews over a four-year period which he used for the book.
“Money: Master the Game” provides a hefty dose of the psychology and the science of personal achievement Robbins is famous for. But at its core, the book distills a seven-step action plan that Main Street readers, from college graduates to pre-retirees, can use to build a better future for themselves and their families.
The man many people first came to know as the “smiling guy with big teeth” on TV has sold more than 50 million audio and video programs and attracted more than 4 million people to his live events around the world over his 37-year career. He also is the author of the best-sellers “Unlimited Power” and “Awaken the Giant Within.”
He says his latest book was inspired by the pain he saw people experience during the darkest days of the Great Recession and his obsession with finding ways for people to take control of their money and fight back against a system rigged against them.
Part of that includes pulling the cover off dirty little secrets in the financial services industry, such as the fact that most mutual fund managers don’t even invest in their own funds, and the vast majority of financial experts don’t have a legal responsibility to serve your best interests.
Finance is a topic that torments many people. But Robbins promises if you stay the course with him and follow the seven steps in his book that have been extracted from the brightest minds in finance, you can win the game of money, a game nobody can afford to lose.
“Money: Master the Game: 7 Simple Steps to Financial Freedom” by Tony Robbins; Simon & Schuster (689 pages, $28)
