Showing posts with label Personal Finance. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Personal Finance. Show all posts

26 May 2018

Book Review: The Bank On Yourself Revolution: Fire Your Banker, Bypass Wall Street, and Take Control of Your Own Financial Future by Pamela Yellen

The Bank On Yourself Revolution: Fire Your Banker, Bypass Wall Street, and Take Control of Your Own Financial Future by Pamela Yellen

Anyone who has read our How To Manage Your Monkey blog knows when we review a book on finance, we try to be as fair and balanced with our review as possible.

By now our readers also know that when we find something wrong with a concept, we tell you. We have looked all the way through The Bank On Yourself Revolution: Fire Your Banker, Bypass Wall Street, and Take Control of Your Own Financial Future by Pamela Yellen and we have to tell you we did find one flaw. On page 95 when the author is discussing the alternatives to using The Bank On Yourself method, she says we could face a future where we say, “And would you like fries with that?” The flaw is, the training tells you to say, “You want fries with that” with the tone of a question. It is actually hypnotism at its best. And, it works.

Well, now that you have read that major flaw (said tongue in cheek) we will tell you that this plan just might work.

Like just about every other book on personal finance we have read, Yellen starts out by telling her readers the flaw in most other means of financing a retirement. That part of the book seems to go a little slow. Don’t give up. The book gets much better and the plan really seems to be a good one.

Albert J. Zdenek Jr, author of Master Your Cash Flow: The Key To Grow And Retain Wealth gives us some very sound advice that one should remember when reading any financial plan and that is, “Do the Math.”

It is too late for us to do the math. I was forced to retire 22 years ago. If I had The Bank On Yourself Revolution and not been too hard-headed to heed the advice given, we would not be having to try to make ends meet by eating beans and rice or ramen soup quite so often. Had we known about this plan and followed it the times spent in the nursing home (because that is the only way Medicare would pay for my IV fluids) could have been spent in my own home with visits from home health. With The Bank On Yourself Revolution, my wife and I could have made the choice.

We give The Bank On Yourself Revolution all five stars. It is very well-written and a well thought out plan for maximizing your wealth. We think anyone who plans to retire in this century needs to read this book. You will be glad you did.

We were sent a complimentary copy of this book. We are under no obligation to write any review, positive or negative. We are disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission's 16 CFR, Part 255.  


Notice: This post contains affiliate links. If you click a link and make a purchase, we may financially benefit from your transaction, at no additional cost to you. Thank you for your support.
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Please be sure to visit David over at Random Thoughts and Observations.

I respond to all comments on this blog, ideally within 24 hours.  Please check back here for a response to your comment.  Thank you!
 
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22 April 2018

Book Review: 5 Day Weekend: Freedom to Make Your Life and Work Rich with Purpose by Nik Halik and Garrett B. Gunderson

5 Day Weekend: Freedom to Make Your Life and Work Rich with Purpose by Nik Halik and Garrett B. Gunderson

This 320 page book is more like a course in life management than any we have seen.

If you take Dave Ramsey’s Total Money Makeover, stir in a little of Norman Vincent Peale’s Power of Positive Thinking, add a pinch of The Autobiography of Ben Franklin, and then top it with The Millionaire Next Door, you have the recipe for 5 Day Weekend.


5 Day Weekend: Freedom to Make Your Life and Work Rich with Purpose by Nik Halik and Garrett B. Gunderson takes your typical book on money management and stands it on its ear.

In these pages one will find tons of ideas about how to make more money through active methods so that one can then make more money passively. This is one of those books you wish you had read when you were younger.

Nik Halik has an engaging writing style that makes the book very readable and enjoyable and, if you aren’t careful, you just might learn something. We give it all five stars.

You may be thinking that 5 Day Weekend is just another book on finance; you would be wrong. Instead, it is about living the life you want to lead. Readers learn about goal setting, planning, budgeting, and more.

We were sent a complimentary copy of this book. We are under no obligation to write any review, positive or negative.

We are disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission's 16 CFR, Part 255.

Notice: This post contains affiliate links. If you click a link and make a purchase, we may financially benefit from your transaction, at no additional cost to you. Thank you for your support.
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Please be sure to visit David over at Random Thoughts and Observations.

I respond to all comments on this blog, ideally within 24 hours.  Please check back here for a response to your comment.  Thank you!
 
Please subscribe to David's YouTube Channel. Thanks!

07 April 2018

Book Review: The Race of Your Life: How To Reach Retirement With Cash In The Bank And Fuel In The Tank by Darryl Rosen

The Race of Your Life: How To Reach Retirement With Cash In The Bank And Fuel In The Tank by Darryl Rosen


If you are looking for a detailed manual of how to invest in the stock market, this ain’t it. However, if you are looking for some good, down home advice about how to plan your retirement, The Race of Your Life: How To Reach Retirement With Cash In The Bank And Fuel In The Tank by Darryl Rosen is the right book for you.

We have reviewed investment books that compared investing to baseball, golf, basketball, and other sports but, this is the first to compare planning for retirement to running a marathon. This analogy works very well.

The Race Of Your Life is very well-written and easy to understand. Heck, even this ol’ redneck understood it and I get out of breath walking from my recliner to the supper table. We give it all five stars.

If you have no idea about how to invest, you may want to start with some more instructive books such as Master Your Cash Flow by Al Zdeneck, Jr. or The Financial Briefing by Eric Hutchinson. However, if you need a good common-sense guide to planning for retirement, The Race Of Your Life works very nicely.

We were sent a complimentary copy of this book. We are under no obligation to write any review, positive or negative. We are disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission's 16 CFR, Part 255.  

Notice: This post contains affiliate links. If you click a link and make a purchase, we may financially benefit from your transaction, at no additional cost to you. Thank you for your support.
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Please be sure to visit David over at Random Thoughts and Observations.

I respond to all comments on this blog, ideally within 24 hours.  Please check back here for a response to your comment.  Thank you!
 
Please subscribe to David's YouTube Channel. Thanks!

12 October 2017

Book Review: Keep Climbing: A Millennial’$ Guide to Financial Planning By David Rosell


Keep Climbing: A Millennial’$ Guide to Financial Planning
By David Rosell



We live in a very different financial world than our parents did. Millennials have different hopes and dreams for their lives than generations past did.


Keep Climbing: A Millennial'$ Guide to FInancial Planning by David Rosell addresses this different financial world in a way that would be appealing to many Millennials.

Face it, most books on personal finance are about as entertaining as watching paint dry.  Rosell uses stories from his past adventures to illustrate the lessons he teaches in Keep Climbing

This book is entertaining while at the same time being educating. We live in a world where most young people look at text and respond with “TLDR”.  They do this because saying “Too long, didn’t read” is just too time consuming for this instant gratification generation.

We give Keep Climbing all five stars.  We think that the target audience will find it very helpful to them as they plan their financial futures.

We were sent a complimentary copy of this book.  We are under no obligation to write any review, positive or negative.

We are disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission's 16 CFR, Part 255.




Notice: This post contains affiliate links. If you click a link and make a purchase, we may financially benefit from your transaction, at no additional cost to you. Thank you for your support. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Please be sure to visit David over at Random Thoughts and Observations.
I respond to all comments on this blog, ideally within 24 hours.  Please check back here for a response to your comment.  Thank you!
Please subscribe to David's YouTube Channel. Thanks!

20 August 2017

Book Review: Hard Core Poor - A Book on Serious Thrift by Kelly Sangree


Hard Core Poor - A Book on Serious Thrift
by Kelly Sangree



We have been promoting Hard Core Poor - A Book on Serious Thrift by Kelly Sangree - for almost a year now on our How to Manage Your Monkey blog. We actually thought we had written a review last year some time.


We give this book all five stars.  Hard Core Poor was one of the first books we recommended to our readers on our How to Manage Your Monkey blog.


This book is well-written.  It provides readers many different ways to save money.  Some extreme, others not quite as extreme.

We suggest you read Hard Core Poor, The Financial Briefing, Money Won’t Buy Happiness, Total Money Makeover, The Millionaire Next Door, The Wealthy Barber, Master Your Cash Flow, and Finding Your Money’s Greater Purpose, in that order.  This will provide you with most, if not all, the tools you will need to manage your financial monkeys.

We obtained this book through a KDP promotion where we got a Kindle version free. We later bought a paperback copy of Hard Core Poor to give to our daughter.  We are under no obligation to write any review, positive or negative.

We are disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission's 16 CFR, Part 255.




Notice: This post contains affiliate links. If you click a link and make a purchase, we may financially benefit from your transaction, at no additional cost to you. Thank you for your support.
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Please be sure to visit David over at Random Thoughts and Observations.

I respond to all comments on this blog, ideally within 24 hours.  Please check back here for a response to your comment.  Thank you!
 
Please subscribe to David's YouTube Channel. Thanks!

18 August 2017

Book Review: Money Won’t Buy Happiness-But Time to Find It By Chris Heerlein


Money Won’t Buy Happiness-But Time to Find It
By Chris Heerlein


By now we have read hundreds of books on financial planning and retirement goals. We would have to say, without any exaggeration, that Money Won’t Buy Happiness-But Time to Find It by Chris Heerlein is probably the best all around book on financial planning covering a multitude of income levels.


Don’t get us wrong, we have read some truly great books on personal finance and there are a select few of them that are wonderful in their niche.


Hard Core Poor is great for those of us in the beans and rice level of finance.  Master Your Cash Flow by Al Zdenek is probably the best financial book targeted towards the super wealthy.

However, Money Won’t Buy Happiness is a great general book on finance that will be helpful for anyone at any level.  

We give Money Won’t Buy Happiness all five stars on our scale of zero to five stars.  It is well-written, well-researched, and very readable.  The reader is not presented with complicated formulas or detailed explanations that cause them to zone out.  

We will be adding Money Won’t Buy Happiness to our list of recommended reading on our How to Manage Your Monkey Blog.


We were sent a complimentary copy of this book.  We are under no obligation to write any review, positive or negative.

We are disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission's 16 CFR, Part 255.




     

Please click the images to view the books on Amazon.com.


Notice: This post contains affiliate links. If you click a link and make a purchase, we may financially benefit from your transaction, at no additional cost to you. Thank you for your support.
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Please be sure to visit David over at Random Thoughts and Observations.

I respond to all comments on this blog, ideally within 24 hours.  Please check back here for a response to your comment.  Thank you!
 
Please subscribe to David's YouTube Channel. Thanks!