At the recommendation of the Wealthy Blogger, I bought the Automatic Millionaire by David Bach (US, Canada), and read it off and on for the past few weekends. It’s not very long but I just didn’t have attention span to finish it all at once. I blame TV.
Seriously, that usually means that the writing isn’t very interesting. That isn’t really true for this book, though. Even though the advice seems simple, I learned a lot about managing money from the book. My parents weren’t very good teachers when it came to money, so a lot of it was new to me. Essentially, Bach says Pay Yourself First and Make It Automatic! I might owe him a few bucks mentioning that, since he repeats those phrases so often I suspect they’re trademarked. He has a few other pointers, but it’s mostly centered around making it all automatic so even those who suck at saving can do it.
So what was the problem? I think it was the repetition. Pay Yourself First! Make It Automatic! Every chapter. Gawd! If he was on TV, it would have be very informercially (that’s the technical term). Now that I consider it, the text is very conversational, almost as if he transcribed one of his seminars. The repetitive catch phrases would probably work if I saw him live, but as book, it doesn’t really work. Granted, a literary masterpiece should not be sought in personal finance; the advice, the important part, is very good and essential if you suck at saving or charge everything on the plastic. Recommended.
P.S. Yay! 100th post. A significant milestone since I suck at posting frequently. More significant than a year blogging, which passed last week.