The only way to get rich with a 'get rich quick' book is by writing one..

The next time you find yourself in a second hand bookstore, head to the personal finance section and see if you can count how many books there are on making ridiculous amounts of money in an incredibly short amount of time. Unless they're running short on shelf space, you're going to run short of counting fingers, toes and various body parts long before you run out of get rich quick books to count. And they're range from buying 800 houses in a year to predicting the next stock market boom with just a measly ten bucks in your pocket.

So why are there so many there then? Two easy answers:

A) The people who benefited from the sage words of advice from these books made such ludicrous amounts of money that they had no need for such wise words anymore and sold the secret to their success to the nearest pawn store so other people could be incredible wealthy, just like them. And if you believe that, I have an exciting development on Mars that could really do with your financial support.

Or, more than likely..

B) The original purchasers of these books realized that the authors financial and life situations and their own were two completely different things entirely and that ultimately, the key to wealth and riches that was being spouted was either highly unrealistic or completely out of reach. Disappointed (and undoubtedly frustrated a little too), they sold their copy to the nearest book store to recoup some of their spending.

Which means there's only two people who win from 'get rich quick books' - the guy who wrote it (and their publishers) and the person who runs your local second hand book store (providing someone buys it the second time around). And unless that's you, then those books aren't helping at all are they?

To test the theory that I could not get insanely rich in an unrealistic span of time, I bought a selection of random 'get rich quick' books from local garage sales around my local area and proceeded to read...and fight the oncoming rush of sleep induced coma symptoms.
The first told me that I could become a billionaire if I bought and developed businesses and sold them off within two years before buying more...which would be possible if I knew how to run a business (it didn't show how), knew what to buy (again, no help there) and if I actually had the money to actually buy a business. (Which begs the question, if I had the money to buy a business, would I really be reading get rich quick books instead of...I don't know...building up the business instead?)
The second suggested a lazy $30,000 in a cross platform share portfolio. Which the average person on the street doesn't have. It failed to mention that saving a cool lazy 30K is almost impossible when you have a mortgage, bills, a normal paying job and life expenses. Given the recent crashes and the risk involved in such a venture, there's probably quite a few of these books taking up shelf space too.
And the third? Investing in rare commodities such as Emu and Ostrich farms and 'rare earth metals'. Lets just leave that one right there.

So three completely different tacts and one thing in common - you actually have to have a bit of money on you to actually follow their advice. Which ideally would put you in the 'paid off the house, all debts and have money to burn' category which few of us are. I know I'm not. So I did the only thing I could think to make money from my garage sale purchases - I sold them off on Ebay and made a couple more dollars than I originally spent.
There's a fair chance they probably ended up in either a second hand bookstore or another garage sale down the line.

Authors: 1 Readers 0 (unless you sell it for more than you bought it)

So does that make most personal finance books irrelevant for most consumers then? The ones that give you unrealistic expectations in an incredibly short time frame, certainly (unless you're ahead of the eight ball financially when you read it). But there are plenty of useful books if you're part of the 99% in the same boat as the rest of the world. They're the ones who write about budgeting, eliminating debts and setting up emergency accounts with ten percent of your salary. They ones that suggest contributing extra funds to pay off your house quicker or boosting up your superannuation.
You know, rational advice. It won't make you a millionaire overnight, but you might get close to it one day. And you won't have to buy a single damn emu egg in the process.

And you'll know it's worth buying and following if you can't find a single copy on the second hand bookshelves anywhere...