Introduction
How I Invest My Money is a personal finance book rather than an investment book. It is a collection of personal stories of financial experts. The editors hope that the readers could learn from this book and feel more confident in managing own money. I found this book being recommended in an investment blog and would like to see if my guess of their using mostly low-cost investment vehicles is true or not.
Authors
Joshua Brown is an American author, columnist, blogger (The Reformed Broker), commentator on CNBC, and CEO of New York City-based Ritholtz Wealth Management. He is also a contributing columnist to Yahoo! Finance, Business Insider, and serves on the board of advisors for Brightscope and Upside.
Brian Portnoy is the founder of Shaping Wealth, a financial wellness platform. He has served as keynote speaker, seminar leader, and coach to thousands of investors on topics ranging from portfolio strategy to the connection between money and happiness. For more than 20 years, he has worked in the hedge fund and mutual fund industries as portfolio manager and educator.
They are both editors and authors of their own chapter in this book.
Contents
How I Invest My Money consists of an introduction, 24 chapters, and a conclusion.
Each chapter corresponds to a person. These people are Morgan Housel, Christine Benz, Brian Portnoy, Joshua Brown, Bob Seawright, Carolyn MaClanahan, Tyrone Ross, Nina O’Neal, Debbie Freeman, Shirl Penney, Ted Seides, Ashby Daniels, Blair duQuesnay, Leighann Miko, Perth Tolle, Joshua Rogers, Jenny Harrington, Micheal Underhill, Dan Egan, Howard Lindzon, Ryan Krueger, Lazetta Rainey Braxton, Marguerita Cheng, and Alex Chalekian.
Review
In How I Invest My Money, the editors asked some friends and colleagues about what they do with their own money and why. The why is important because the reasons behind our individual portfolios and investment choices reveal a lot more about us than we might initially think.
As this book contains 24 characters with unique style, I will share some general knowledge before I reveal my favourites.
Money means different things to different people based on their experiences and values. It can serve both chaos and control. The control part is elusive, and playing the odds is about the best we can do. It takes effort and the acceptance of risk to change our circumstances.
It is important to find the purpose of managing our money because it is the foundation of a financial plan. When setting goals, we need to realise that enough from a worldly perspective is an ever moving target, but enough is defined internally, not externally. Remember this advice too: Not only financial investments provide benefits that compound, personal and family investments do too.
The summary of strategies in the book can be found in Bob Seawright’s section. These include simplicity; aggressive saving; a balanced lifestyle; diversification; low costs; a sensible asset allocation consistent with one’s goals, risk capacity, and risk tolerance; smart asset location; careful tax/estate planning and management; and a focus on the power of compound interest.
Now I will move on to some figures that I find interesting.
First, it is Morgan Housel. I have read his book, The Psychology of Money, not too long ago and what he shares in this book is similar to what he tells in his book, if not exactly the same.
Brian Portnoy’s strategy seems to be my style but he is a bit too conservative. Ashby Daniels provides a game plan that can be acted on. Jenny Harrington’s dividend investing is what I aspire to implement successfully. Although Ryan Krueger is practising dividend investing, his section is quite inspiring as he shows the importance of personal and family investments.
Most of the experts featured in this book do not employ elaborate and complex investment vehicles. Thus, my hunch is correct. Using low-cost investment vehicles and passive investing are widely applied by these finance experts and we should emulate them too. But it is up to us to decide our own strategy as everyone is different, as shown in this book. Every investor should select a strategy with the highest odds of successfully meeting their goals. When choosing an advisor, find an advisor that know their clients well enough to know what combination of investments will work for each person.
Before I end the review, I would like to share this reminder: Investing is never about putting something somewhere, and hoping for the best.
Quotes
- Good decisions aren’t always rational. At some point you have to choose between being happy or being “right”.
- Life isn’t always consistent.
- Humans generally lack courage more than genius, and persistence most of all.
- Everyone faces hardship. Some hardships and difficulties are random and out of our control, others are earned by poor choices and poor planning.
- Hope is not a strategy, denial is not a river and cash flow is always king.
Rating
Interested in How I Invest My Money?
You may get the book from through the link below*.
Print from Kinokuniya Malaysia
*Disclosure: The above link is an affiliate link. Thus, I may earn a small commission when you purchase the book through the link.
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