Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I shelled $[...]+ bucks on this book and now I regret. This book basically talks about 2 things: 1. Buy a house early, and separate the equity from the house by taking a big mortgage or refinancing often. Now invest the equity in some "side fund" which earns a bigger return than mortgage interest. The priciple works, but it largely depends on the appreciation rate of the house. In boom time earlier this century, it was very feasible. That's probably why Doug's 2 sons (co-authors of this book) made a million. This advice is not universally applicable because real estate appreciation is very much location and time sensitive. 2. One investment vehicle exceeds all the others because contribution/accumulation/districution are all tax-free. Sounds attractive? Definitely! The first 7 chapters talk so much about this myterious "side fund" which is low risk and high return. I held my curiosity and discovered in the end that it's MFTA (max-funded, tax-advantaged) life insurance contract. "If it's properly structured", the authors say, you can be tax-free in all 3 phases mentioned above. I've found the description of this cash value universal life insurance (indexed or fixed) very confusing. Looks like it's not very straighforward to implement, and, we never know how future legislation will affect this strategy. For a common investor like me, I wouldn't try this strategy without a complete understanding of it. Also, the book is not very well structured. Lots of repetition of the same stuff (guess there are 3 authors writing it). Sometimes it over simplifies financial matters by summarizing everything into 3 rules. One plus is, you can access on-line resources for free: [...]. However, lots of links are still unavailable. All in all, it doesn't contain solid financial advice that I was expecting and it largely hinges on past performance (e.g. real estate appreciation rate shoots through the roof) rather than focusing on future possibilities.