Content Synopsis:
One of the most frequent sources of discord in marriages is financial difficulties. David Bach’s bestseller in 2001, Smart couples end up rich, is dedicated to helping couples find financial security while strengthening their relationships. Bach is a financial planner and has taught financial planning on his own PBS special.
In this book, he looks at why smart couples discuss and plan for their financial future. It presents basic facts about financial planning and exposes some myths about couples and their money. Like most financial planning authors, he asks couples to determine their true purposes and goals in life and how they want to use money. He teaches them the importance of planning together, as a couple.
Bach offers his “café au lait factor,” a description of how much money a couple can waste spending daily on luxuries like lattes. He shows how by saving the $5 or $10 a day that a couple might spend on expensive coffee drinks, lunches out, or other pricey snacks, the couple could invest that money and, in the long run, turn it into a veritable stash of savings.
Perhaps the most important and valuable advice Bach gives is twofold: (1) couples should take control of their own financial future and cannot trust anyone else to do so, and (2) couples should pay themselves first. through an automatic and disciplined savings system. program.
Bach tells couples to build their retirement basket and security blanket. The first is about IRA, 401k and other retirement instruments. In short, he stresses the need to save until he hurts, especially if you start late, in order to build a nest egg adequate for a comfortable retirement. The latter is about building some reserves to protect you in the event of a job loss or other financial disaster. The final chapters discuss how to save for your dreams, or what he calls a dream basket, as well as how to avoid common financial mistakes and how to increase your income by 10% in 9 weeks.
Bach’s book is good. In many ways, it adds little beyond what other popular financial planning books offer, and I still maintain that no book is better for investment planning than The Smartest Investing Book You’ll Ever Read by Daniel R. Solin. However, Bach’s book goes a bit beyond investment advice, offering some common-sense financial planning advice for couples with average or above-average salaries. This book is about the basics. It is well organized and a good reference for some basics that he can return to as he plans year after year. For most Americans, this book should be part of their financial planning library, and in a world without job security and economic fluctuations, understanding financial planning and investing is a very important area of knowledge. Everyone should have a library of investing and financial planning and learn the basics and something beyond the basics to protect themselves.
Readability:
Like all Bach books, this one is an easy read. It is well organized and does not contain overly complicated investment language. He uses real life examples to illustrate his principles.
About the Author:
David Bach is a financial advisor who has published eight popular books on wealth creation, including The Automatic Millionaire. She has appeared on various television shows and speaks across the country.
Overall book rating: Very good