TV review: At first Money makes you long for a life of luxury, but you soon realise although being wealthy may have its uses, it doesn't make you any happier.
So this is where I went wrong: I went to university and got side-tracked into following a career. If only wealth guru Robert Kiyosaki had been on hand to impart his inspiring message: ‘The idea of going to school and getting a job is probably the most destructive thought in your brain today.’ Why study when you can train your brain to rake in the cash for nothing? Sigh.
Kiyosaki was just one among a bunch of super-smug, super-rich financial wizards who popped up in Money (BBC2), their every pearl of cash-creating wisdom lapped up with evangelical zeal by followers who happy-clapped and did daft dances and dreamed of big bucks. All the while racking up debts as they paid out for the expensive courses run by Kiyosaki and his ilk.
Vanessa Engle’s deftly balanced film was sympathetic but wryly bemused by the British disciples buying into the self-help mantras peddled by the wealth guru industry. Nursery nurse Janice loved her job but began every day chanting ‘ker-ching!’ in order to convince herself her millionaire plan was working. Engle didn’t hammer the point home but, as Janice confessed to how much she’d spent on trying to get rich, it wasn’t hard to see that there was a major scam going on.
But to what end? The gurus needed little prompting when it came to telling us how rich they were but while their mouths smiled, their eyes looked hollow. Had money made them happy? It didn’t look like it, stranded in their massive mansions and their luxury cars, a morally bankrupt breed leeching off the dreams of the poor. You had to think that way – or sign up for one of their soul-destroying seminars.
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