Yes, You Can Get A Financial Life!: Your Lifetime Guide to Financial Planning Reviews
by david on Monday, January 16th, 2012 | 3 Comments
Yes, You Can Get A Financial Life!: Your Lifetime Guide to Financial Planning
Life is not lived all at once—it’s lived in moments, days, months, years, and decades. This means that the financial plans and actions we all have to take to meet our responsibilities sensibly must be organized by years and decades. Ben Stein wrote the original guide to this subject almost a quarter century ago. Now, Ben, along with Phil DeMuth, the eminent financial planner and writer, have gotten together to update the book, incorporating the massive changes that have occurred in the econ
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A wonderful guide to what you can do during each decade of your life to help yourself financially,
Judging by the quality and helpfulness of the books they write together, Ben Stein and Phil DeMuth are a great team. If you are interested in money, and everyone is, you will certainly benefit from their books. They have shown how, given enough time and discipline one can "time" the market (not by day trading), how to become a successful income investor, how you can get from wherever you are to a comfortable retirement, and now they provide us with a book for young people beginning their work lives. The financial life they describe begins with understanding what the workplace is about and how salaries should be viewed.
They begin by helping the reader view their income and expenditures (consumption) as a lifetime cycle. When we are young, we consume more than we make, but we are consuming our parents' resources. At the mature end of our lives, we also want to consume more than we make because we want to retire. To make that happen, something has to happen during our working years other than buying everything we think we want or suppose we need. The authors point out that we cannot wish life would return to the way our parents knew it or as we dream it should becomes. ". . . we have to plan for life as it is today, not as it was yesterday."
Once we can see the future as an economic life cycle, the authors give us some insights on how to maximize lifetime wealth. It is about getting an education in a marketable field that will keep you in demand rather than indulging yourself in an expensive college education (both in dollars and in years) that will not lead to gainful employment. Graduate school might even make some sense, if you use your education wisely. It has to do with being a good employee, of making and keeping great connections in life, of keeping your reputation and character in order so people will admire, trust, and recommend you to their friends and employers.
Stein and DeMuth then take us through life in decades. They take us through what work life will likely entail in one's twenties, thirties, forties, fifties, sixties and provide a series of chapters on each decade. Then they provide a chapter on what one's investment considerations are likely to be during that specific decade including the positives and the pitfalls. They also provide chapters for each decade on life as a married (with kids) or as a single (never married or divorced).
As they point out often, and they should, the key to having a real financial life where one can sleep at night and feel good about one has done for his or her family, is to get control of your finances early in life and to be disciplined about saving, spending, and work. Savings put aside early has the power of compounding and can weather the changes in the economy more easily than the same amount of money put aside later in life.
Learning to consume (spend) not only within one's income, but within a realistic life economic plan will bring great rewards. Not only will you have the money you need, but as others see how you live they will admire you (yes, some will be jealous, but they won't really matter that much), and employers will trust you. You will reap many dividends beyond the interest and capital gains your savings earn.
The chapter on how to have babies is particularly useful, because it deals with the whole parenting experience as it impacts your finances. Yes, we want our children to have the best life possible including the best education. However, there are serious implications about when your expenditures on their education will have the biggest impact on their life and your later life. Unless you are very wealthy, the authors recommend living where the public school system still works rather than spending their college money in k-12. And they view college as an earning asset that the child should have a share in paying for since they will be getting the benefit. One should not impoverish one's later years when one will need money in serious ways and the child will likely take their schooling more seriously if they have a share in paying for it.
I also appreciate the way Stein and DeMuth talk about the way income likely will occur during your working life and what happens to most people in the workplace as they make changes to have children, as they age, and as their specialized knowledge that made them value becomes obsolete. This is material everyone needs to read and understand as they begin their career and as they go through these changes to get a handle on what is actually happening to a career they thought was on a one way ride to the stars.
The advice the authors give on retirement is quite sound. I also recommend that one get their "Yes, You Can Still Retire Comfortably" if you are far enough along that this is a serious consideration for you. These two books are quite powerful when read together…
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|Great guide to your personal finances.,
This book is a little different than other books on personal finances. Instead of a rules and budget sheets it teaches principles on what to do and not to do to be successful financially. It guides you through each stage of your life from college age until deep into retirement. I would recommend reading this book and adding it to your personal finance library at any age. Below are the top ten principles in this book:
1. First increase your human capital by getting a solid education and developing excellent work habits, making connections, and cultivating a pleasant personality.
2. Then start saving for retirement as early as possible. Fund your 401K aggressively.
3. Next start saving for a house down payment.
4. Get and stay married to a sensible person.
5. Don't try to show off by what you own, expensive cars, vacations, etc.
6. Work full-time, year-round, and acquire seniority; don't hopscotch from one unrelated job to another unless you're jumping a step up.
7. Don't make any financial moves that will contribute to a divorce.
8. Make your children pay for their own college education. It is their asset they should pay for it.(Unless you are wealthy).
9. Don't expect that you have a right to a certain lifestyle. You can only afford to live as well as your finances allow.
10. Don't swing for the fences with your investments. Use low expense index funds. Stay invested through thick and thin.
This book would be a great gift to a high school or college graduate. Or to some one who just needs to get back on the correct financial track.
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|Good solid info,
I buy a lot of financial books and use the info to fit MY life and lifestyle. Ben Stein is a favorite of mine because of his no nonsense style and the fact that he doesn't mollycoddle his readers. Yes, he says, life can be hard, expect to suffer some financial blows, don't be devastated by financial (or other) setbacks and…get on with it. Learn from your mistakes and keep upping your learning curve. This book certainly will help you gain some solid info.
This is the type of book that SHOULD be read by younger readers as well as those who are old enough to realize that they've made some financial mistakes or aren't saving as much as they thought and need to make changes. Unfortunately, the younger readers aren't getting the basics in school (Financial Literacy ought to be a required course – don't get me started on that) and are subject to the usual mistakes of youth (consumerism and buying expendable items) but this book can certainly help all readers, if they have the sense to buy it – and at whatever stage of life they're at – 20s, 30s, midlife, etc.
One final tip – If you use a credit card to buy this book or any books , pay off the debt as soon as possible, before you forget about it. Don't end up paying high interest rates in order to try to gain financial "freedom". I've noticed a lot of people seem to get in financial trouble and then spend a lot of money trying to "learn" how to get out of it. Avoiding credit cards with high interest rates as well as avoiding spending yourself into a huge hole of debt certainly helps. Just a thought.
But DO buy this book. It'll pay for itself.
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