Embarrassing but Worth the Read
Two good books to read - AUTOMATIC MILLIONAIRE and SMART WOMEN FINISH RICH, both by David Bach. Totally embarrassing to have on your bookshelf (quit snickering) but you can always hide them under your bed when your friends come over. Right next to all that other stuff you hide when your friends come over. I read Automatic Millionaire a while ago and on Sunday, I picked up Smart Women. And yes, it is cheezy but I found it totally enlightening and very motivating. I'm terrible with finances and my lowest grades ever were in Accounting. (also in Econ 101 and Econ 102 - so at least I'm consistent) The very word brings back bad memories of a long summer session - three hour classes three times a week. My debit columns and credit columns were never balanced on any given test problem and I was usually off by tens of thousands. Anyway, the whole idea behind these books is not to make you an instant millionaire. It's more about how to save some money and invest it properly. It applies to people who make practically no money to people who make tons. It's also really simple to understand. Even though I took all those classes, I never knew the difference between bonds and mutual funds and all that good stuff. Or if I did, I forgot by test day. But now I do. After reading Smart Women, I looked up my bank statements (the ones I never bother to look at) and discovered my friggin' savings account was paying me interest at the rate of .1%!!! My dad pointed out that was pretty much as bad as hiding it under your mattress. So yesterday I opened up an ING Direct money market account that has a 2.2% APY. Needless to say I'm very pleased with myself. Definitely worth reading if you can get past the title and the cheezy writing. (and ignore the part where he talks about Tony Robbins because...well, it's Tony Robbins...need I say more?)
posted by S at 1:49 PM
6 Comments:
Hehe, I want to borrow those books because I am pretty much retarded when it comes to finances and investing. I have reached the point where I have become responsible enough to pretty much keep track of purchases and deposits in my checking account, but that's as far as I have gotten, and that's only after I became engaged and starting feeling like I had to think about the future and crap. Oh, hey, I want to make a blog. Can you think of a screen name for me though? (I'm going to make you guess who this is, but I'll give you a humongous hint--my wedding is in 66 days.)
umichgrad? dimsumdiva8888? annarbor1978? see...i'm bad at user names. how about TheMissus? i STILL can't believe you're getting married!
definitely do a blog! your family will think it's a awesome - i bet your mom will end up checking it religiously. maybe something like weddingcountdown4julie.blogspot.com plus you always have funny stories to tell.
btw, i thought you were pretty good with finances. i remember seeing you balance your checkbook in college - i didn't even know ANYONE back then who kept a running total in their checkbook.
p.s. i'll totally lend you the books. btw, david bach also has one called SMART COUPLES FINISH RICH. that might be even more helpful.
you could always loan out those books to people like me...then we can save you the embarrassment of having them on your shelf and we can suffer our friends' wrath when we're carrying them around, reading them at Starbucks.
Julia--that's a fabulous idea. Then we could also save her the embarrassment by having them on OUR bookshelves....
I'm happy to loan them to anyone. They're just too embarassing to have anywhere but under the bed.
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