Multiple Streams of Income - A Book Review

In his book, “Multiple Streams of Income,” Robert Allen popularizes the idea that a person should not rely on their job alone to bring wealth into their life. Rather, a person should have a job, a career that they truly are excited about, and create their wealth through the addition of several other sources of income. Allen further specifies that these additional streams of income are best if they are residual income.

Allen draws on his 20 plus years of experience at producing residual streams of income to outline and illustrate how a person can also add other sources of residual income to their lives. Allen is a highly experienced book writer with a very clear and easy style that is always interesting and entertaining. The result is a financial self help book that is well respected, often quoted, and has been popular since its initial publication in 2000.

Allen begins each of his 18 chapters with an appropriate quote from a famous person. Throughout each chapter, at the edge of the page, are numerous other quotes, often witty and wise. This is a style that I personally enjoy reading because, in addition to being entertaining, each quote contains the kernel of a much larger thought.

Allen begins his discussions of wealth building with a couple of excellent chapters about money management and the power of regular investing and regular saving. He gives an impressive illustration about how saving a dollar a day and using the leverage of compound interest can make the sum add up to a million dollars in a lifetime. Allen then discusses several money skills, many of which we never think about, that will help a person to achieve financial independence.

The next three chapters of the book are about the concepts of investing in the stock market in various ways. The discussion is an excellent basic overview of the disciplines that one needs to be successful as a stock market investor. His treatment of the subject takes much of the mystery away and helps the reader to realize that the stock market stream of income is quite reasonable and potentially powerful.

Robert Allen wrote the successful real estate investing book, “Nothing Down,” the best selling real estate investing book in history. He draws on his real estate knowledge to write four chapters in this book about various aspects of investing in real estate and tax liens. He uses numerous stories to help build the concepts behind successful real estate investing, and he discusses about a dozen strategies that he has used successfully.

Four different streams of income involving marketing are covered in the next section of the book. Allen discusses network marketing, information marketing, internet marketing, and licensing. Each form of marketing is well covered from basic principles to more advanced principles with good explanations and appropriate illustrations and examples. The chapter about network marketing surprised me the most because Allen calls it “the ultimate money machine” and because I had negative opinions about network marketing which the chapter successfully dispelled. The chapter about internet marketing interested me the most because I have heard so much about the potential wealth that can be generated by the internet that I wanted to learn more.

Finally, the book wraps up the various discussions about building multiple streams of income by discussing ways to protect and shield one’s wealth. Allen also writes a short chapter about achieving balance in one’s life and sums it all up with my favorite sentence in the book, “This is my hope for you: a life overflowing with abundance of all kinds – multiple streams of income, joyful relationships, boundless energy and health, a quick mind, and a strong spirit.”

“Multiple Streams of Income” by Robert G. Allen. Published by John Wiley and Sons, Inc., New York. ISBN 0-471-65578-3.

Multiple Streams of Income - A Book Review