Rich and poor are concepts, representative of a number of factors, including luck and thought process. A lot of books cite the differences between the successful and the unsuccessful. It does us very little good, success comes in many forms, from a variety of sources, and studying people that have attained wealth in order to promote their chosen path as the common persons way to wealth is distracting. There are many ways to succeed, limited only by our thought process, the next batch of millionaires wont arise from studying millionaires, they will arise from discovering things, and implementing their experimental ideas in the marketplace. In other words, theyre wealth will arise from things or thoughts that arent in the minds of the already rich. What they bring to the market is off the mainstream radar, and they may obtain financial rewards for things that simply havent been thought of or acted upon. Books about creating wealth from studying the efforts of the already rich miss the point they talk about real estate because a traditional mentality thinks real estate builds wealth due to some people having had success with it as a method to generating passive income. Second Life, the online community, changed my ideas about income generation, there are people in Second Life that bought virtual property within the game and now rent it out to other players. If this is producing all the benefits of stable income generation without actually having all the traditional problems of real estate then it is a superior method of income generation. Real estate, like anything else, is for fools and misguided individuals when there are supremely better alternatives. Real estate works because of a combination of leverage, tax breaks, depreciation, and the ability to borrow money to obtain it. Almost anything is a good investment if you can borrow money and put it into something reliable that earns you a higher rate of return that what it cost you to borrow. And the fact that information, when properly used, produces income seems to elude most people. There are businesses that people started that dont seem to require a lot of capital, and yet, some of these individuals are earning a great return, above real estate, above traditional investments, and going where current millionaires have yet to go or are even knowledgeable about. Thats how ordinary people achieve extraordinary success.