November 23rd, 2008 — Book Review, Personal Finance
Although this is a book by a chess expert, don’t let that fool you. There is some hard hitting advice here that can help you in many different areas of your life. If you are trying to learn more about managing your money and becoming a success, this book is one that definitely deserves a spot on your shelf. It covers, in a nutshell, how we learn and what techniques you can use to start learning more effectively. These same techniques can be carried over to any subject in your life and by following the methods prescribed in this book, you can easily start to achieve anything you put your mind to.
The name of Josh Waitzkin may be familiar to you. His father wrote the book, Searching For Bobby Fisher, and Josh is the chess genius from that book and the resulting movie. As a child, he was able to go up against the best minds in the game, and this book is the story of how he managed to do that. Each one of us thinks and processes information differently, but we can train our brains to some extent, and by sharing his methods, Waitzkin illustrates that we can be taught to be smart and to handle any obstacle in our lives.
The tone of the book is quite engaging, and the read goes very quickly. By taking what he learned from Chess and martial arts, Waitzkin helps you build a mental plan to handle all the facets of your life. The exercises are a bit dogmatic at first, but if you keep it up, you’ll find that you do actually see results. So many people want to be a success, and they want to understand how to make money, but most books fail to address how to get to that point with your mind. This was a refreshing change of pace and we loved every minute of it.
Using the theory of applied human performance, Waitzkin illustrates precisely how to start thinking the smart way, and how to literally train yourself to become more intelligent and more successful. Unlike so many other self help books, the techniques inside can be used by anyone and with great results. It was nice to see that the book didn’t delve into pop psychology or new agey terminology. Much like the author, it is intelligent.
Overall, we found this book to be an incredible resource that was fascinating to read. We appreciated the fact that author came from an entirely different place – not from the financial world – but from the world of chess. In a way, he ended up writing the ultimate book to help you learn about managing your money, because you are learning to manage your mind first. By tackling that, you can do anything. We highly recommend this book to anyone, regardless of their personal interests. It is time well spent, and may just change the way you think.
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November 12th, 2008 — Book Review, Personal Finance, Wealth
Thomas J. Stanley’s follow-up to his well-received book The Millionaire Next Door, follows a pretty interesting premise. It basically picks the brains of millionaires to find out how they got their wealth and how they keep it. It certainly offers an interesting read and I do recommend it, but not as a book that is going to teach you how to go out and make money today. It serves its purpose as a guide to help you understand how the rich think, but if you’re looking for step-by-step advice on how to make more money right now, it falls a bit flat.
This is basically a series of interviews that cover how some people managed to get rich. Unfortunately, it really doesn’t go very in-depth into these techniques. Instead, we get a whole chapter devoted to the process of picking the right spouse. What’s love got to do with it indeed? This rather antiquated view of picking the kind of spouse that will support you and be advantageous to your career is a bit out of place in today’s society. While there is a lot to be said for marrying someone who is going to stick it out with you, it lost me when it got down to bypassing the standard reason that most people do get hitched - love - and boiled it down to a merger.
Next up, the author discusses the importance of picking a vocation that you can truly be passionate about and one that is not already too filled. This is all well and good if you’re just starting out, but the primary audience for this book is most likely already well established and it’s a little too late to start thinking about changing horses in midstream. I would have liked to have seen more discussion on alternate streams of income that can supplement your existing paycheck.
Frugality plays a big role in this book as most real millionaires don’t live high on the hog. If they did, they wouldn’t be millionaires for long. The problem is most of us already get that. We know that if you spend money like water, it won’t be long before the tank runs dry. That knowledge is as old as the hills and about as useful. It is all well and good to teach reader’s about being frugal and not overspending, but this is a concept that most of us over the age of 30 (again, the intended audience) already get.
Due to this reason, this book is best classified as an interesting volume on how rich people think and it is well suited for those who are just starting on their financial journey. For those of us that were hoping for a book that would unlock the secrets of how these people made their money, it falls a bit flat. It’s still worth the read, but only as a reaffirmation of what most of us already know. It certainly won’t show you how many of these millionaires managed to spin straw into gold, and that is what most of us want to know.
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