How to Become Extremely Wealthy
How to Become Extremely Wealthy is an upbeat self-help guide that suggests methods of gaining financial mastery.
James J. Elleyby’s How to Become Extremely Wealthy is an exuberant guide to adopting a wealth-centered mindset.
These comprehensive and enthusiastic addresses cover aspects of building and maintaining personal wealth. Their premise is blunt: when people are poor, it is because they have failed to develop a “wealthy attitude.” Conversely, the book argues, people who want to become rich should find a way to bring value to the world while cultivating self-discipline and gratitude. From this position flows advice of varying usefulness.
The book chapters cover a variety of topics, weaving together practical information about personal finances with nebulous topics like cultivating gratitude, learning to dream, and developing vibrational alignment. Each chapter resembles a self-contained TED talk that studies its topic in detail while promoting optimism and hope. Humorous examples are used to illustrate the potential pitfalls of poverty thinking.
In tone, the essays are gruff, immediate, and personal in the extreme, replete with goofy asides, off-the-cuff analogies, and spontaneous admonitions. Their rhythms and word choices suggest that they emerged in the course of oral presentations. Warnings and pep talks arrive with equal vigor, employing many exclamation points. The language is chatty, friendly, and colloquial, and the audience is referred to in direct terms, as “Champion,” “Champ,” and “kings and queens.”
Valuable advice about growing and managing personal wealth emerges amid the book’s confrontational verbiage. Its classic suggestions include to cultivate contentment with what one already has; to forgive others; and to focus on the good. The book also discourages gambling, stealing, and borrowing in favor of tithing, fasting, and living within one’s means, all helpful cautions for handling temptations. Its recommendations for clean living are clear and thoughtful.
However, the book’s instances of wisdom are often hidden in rants that warn the audience to shape up or stay poor. Further, questionable suggestions, such as to avoid interacting with the poor, are also shared, and the implication that poor people are responsible for their poverty is off-putting. The book’s superficial markers of financial success are a further impediment, as are its unrealistic and tangential comments on physical health. Misspelled words and grammatical errors distract from the book’s message, while the book’s abundant use of bold, underlined, capitalized, and italicized texts makes for choppy reading.
How to Become Extremely Wealthy is an upbeat self-help guide that suggests methods of gaining financial mastery.
Reviewed by
Carol Booton
Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The publisher of this book provided free copies of the book and paid a small fee to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. Foreword Reviews and Clarion Reviews make no guarantee that the publisher will receive a positive review. Foreword Magazine, Inc. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.
