Friday 11 June 2010

I Will Teach You To Be Rich

I considered myself fairly knowledgeable in personal finance before picking up Ramit's book but I still felt like I learned quite a few interesting (and even innovative) tips. In particular, I liked his conscious spending plan and automatic distribution system. Also, Ramit is up-to-date on many of newest and latest tools available on the net and shares his recommendations. Based on these points alone, I recommend his book as money well spent, but it offers much more too.

At the same time, there are several flaws in the books that I find annoying. Ramit characterizes himself as the personal finance guru for the 20-something and is not shy at all in disparaging the old guard for flawed outdated thinking...yet he is also guilty of falling into the same trap.

Two areas that stand out to me most are his strong recommendations of online savings accounts and his mantra that stocks return 8% annually. As of today, one of his strongest recommendations for an online savings account is returning a whopping 1.1% (still better than traditional banks). His claim of stock returns is also somewhat dubious since over the past decade, the market has returned a total of 4.7% (that's right, the decade).

Certainly, he is not to blame for the interest rates, but I think readers should be careful not to get too excited because of Ramit's enthusiasm. See more here >>

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