Remember when I said I was going to read and return all the books that have been loaned to me over the years? And then that went out the window? Well, last month I got back on the wagon and finally got around to reading this book by David Chilton that was loaned to me two or three years ago.
You can see why it took me so long to get around to it. In addition to the constant problem of too many books, too little time, this one didn’t exactly strike me as a page turner. And it’s not, but it does have some very useful information. That said, it was originally written in the 1980s (I read the 3rd edition, which was apparently updated in the late 1990s), so a fair amount has changed since then, but the basic principles still apply.
I already knew a fair amount from this book, such as the value of compound interest, the uselessness of stock brokers, and the value of proper insurance, but I still learned some useful information that I will definitely be implementing. I think my only complaint was that it largely dismisses the value of a Rainy Day fund. It explained everything from mutual funds to retirement funds to the different kinds of debt, but it glosses over the importance of regularly putting money into a savings account to be used if your house suddenly needs an expensive repair, or you lose your job and need a way to pay your bills for the next six months. The explanation is that no one needs tens of thousands of dollars lying around in a bank account, but given the pandemic-induced shutdown our economy has been experiencing for going on 16 months now, I can’t help but disagree. What if you lose your job and it takes you months and months to find another one? That happened to a lot of people in 2008, many of whom were surprised to find it took them longer than 3-6 months to find another job.
My other complaint about this book is the writing itself. While I appreciate that Chilton wrote the lessons as a series of conversations between a barber and some of his customers to try to make the content more interesting and relatable, it wasn’t very well executed. There were way too many adverbs and times when a character would ask for clarification as an obvious stand-in for the reader so the reader wouldn’t have to feel stupid if they didn’t know what a certain financial term meant.
So, as a work of fiction, I can’t recommend this book. But as an Intro to Financial Literacy, I think it’s a solid read for beginners.