Goodreads blurb: Do you obsess about money and yet not talk about it with parents or friends – and barely enough with the spouse? Do you worry about how much you have, how much you need, what you need to do to get more of it?
The world of money is bewildering. The biggest investment you will ever make is towards your financial education – and this easy-to-read guide provides just that. It answers vital questions such as:
– Where does money come from?
– Why do prices go up every year?
– How do I get out of debt?
– Should I invest in the stock market?
– What is the value of gold in our financial system?
– How do I make my investment portfolio shock-proof?
Practical, fun and straight to the point, Money Wise will equip you with the tools to manage your money with confidence and competence.
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In all my years of reading books (and that’s more than quite a few years I must say) I have developed a steady aversion to the ‘self help’ genre of books for more than few reasons. The primary one among them being that the authors rarely tend to personalize advice and instead resort to generalizing and universalizing the concepts explained and the advice given. It’s almost as if the ‘one size fits all’ approach supersedes everything else in this genre of books. And to be honest, I don’t blame the authors and publishers for such books, because after all they do target the mass market and in such markets there is hardly, if at all any, personalization that can be done in books of this genre. It is in such a scenario that Money Wise: The Aam Aadmi’s Guide to Wealth and Financial Freedom comes as a breath of fresh air.
Coming from the stable of Sharath Komarraju whose earlier works in fiction I have thoroughly enjoyed (read my reviews of his books at this link) I simply had to read this book and the fact that Sharath is a friend of mine (virtual only, mind you) and offered a free review copy meant that I went ahead and read it. And as is the norm with him, he didn’t disappoint me one bit with this book.
Given that Sharath himself has quit his IT job and has been engaged full time in authoring books over the past four years gave this book a lot of credibility in that he actually has personal experience when it comes to talking about money and how to manage it successfully. Plus, the fact that I actually know all the concepts that he has talked about in the book meant that it served as a good reminder of all of them and got me thinking about how I could take some simple steps to ensure that I manage my wealth better.
While the book itself deals with the basics of personal finance and gives us pointers on the various asset classes such as real estate, gold, bonds, stock and cash itself, what I found particularly endearing about it was the fact that the author chose the simplest of terms to explain all of them and that too in a conversational manner. Particular care has been taken to ensure that the book doesn’t get too technical or jargon heavy and is clearly targeting the layman reader who at this point in time is probably even hesitating to take baby steps towards the direction of managing his personal wealth. I am quite sure that all readers of this book, be it a hardcore finance professional or a complete newbie to finance, will surely have something positive to take away from it.
The first few chapters of the book deal with money, putting it in perspective and the basics of personal finance and are dealt with in an extremely light-handed fashion, ensuring that readers are not put off by the sheer depth of information that the rest of the book contains. And Sharath goes on to tackle the tricky parts of personal finance, portfolio allocation, the various asset classes and related information in an extremely easy to understand manner, and this to me, is where this book scores high compared to the countless others in this genre.
To me, the last chapter about ‘The Permanent Portfolio’ struck a chord which prompted me to give a serious re-think about what I was doing with my money. If you want to find out what Sharath is talking about in this chapter, go on, buy the book and read it in its entirety. Trust me when I say this, this book is truly worth the investment of time, money and effort you put into it and I personally guarantee manifold returns for this investment.
Click here to purchase the book from Flipkart [Link] or Amazon [Link].
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Disclaimer: A review copy of this book was provided to me by the author in return for a honest and unbiased review.
