Smart Couples Finish Rich by David Bach – Book Review
Contents synopsis:
One of the most frequent sources of discord in marriages is financial difficulties. David Bach’s 2001 bestseller, 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 discusses why smart couples discuss and plan for their financial futures. 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 the money. It teaches them the importance of planning together, as a couple.
Bach offers his “latte factor,” a description of how much money a couple can waste by recklessly spending daily on luxuries like latte. He shows how by saving the $ 5 or $ 10 a day that a couple could spend on expensive coffees, lunches or other expensive snacks, the couple could invest that money and, in the long run, turn it into real savings.
Perhaps the most important and valuable advice Bach gives is twofold: (1) couples must take control of their own financial future and cannot depend on anyone else to do so, and (2) couples must pay themselves first to through automatic and disciplined savings. Program.
Bach tells the couples to build their retirement basket and safety blanket. The first is on IRA, 401k and other retirement instruments. In short, it emphasizes the need to save until it hurts, especially if you start late, to build a suitable nest for a comfortable retirement. The latter is about building up some reserves to protect you in the event of a job loss or other financial disaster. The final chapters talk about saving for your dreams, or what he calls a dream basket, as well as avoiding 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 provide and I still maintain that no book is better for investment planning than The smartest investment book you’ve ever read by Daniel R. Solin. However, Bach’s book goes a bit beyond investment advice and offers some common sense financial planning tips for couples with average or above average salaries. This book is about the basics. It’s well organized and is a good reference for some basics that you can come back to as you plan from year to 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 financial and investment planning library and learn the basics and some beyond the basics to protect themselves.
Readability:
Like all Bach books, this is an easy read. It is well organized and does not contain overly complicated investment language. Use real life examples to illustrate your principles.
About the Author:
David Bach is a financial advisor who has published eight popular books on wealth creation, including The automatic millionaire. He has appeared on various television shows and speaks across the country.
Overall Book Rating: Very Good