I requested a review copy of Secrets of a Stingy Scoundrel, and the first time the book was sent out, somehow it got lost in the mail.  The publicist contacted me to ask if I was going to review it, and I said that I never remembered seeing it.

They sent me another copy, and looking back, I really wish that I hadn’t responded to that e-mail.

Many of the tips in this book will quickly and efficiently alienate you from your family, your friends, your colleagues, and the businesses you patronize.  Try these tips once, or at most twice, and they will tell you about it, or they may just not want you around anymore.  Try these tips with the wrong person on watch, and you could get fired, or land in jail.

Mr. Villarreal issues this warning in the front of the book:

Honor.  Integrity.  Honesty.  Dignity.  If you live by any of these values, you may as well drop the book right now, because they’re against everything it professes.

Oh boy, is this ever true.  I should have put the book down right there, but I didn’t.  One word that should have been added to that list of nouns is decorum. It’s been a long time since I’ve read anything, or talked with anybody, with as vulgar and self-indulgent a speech pattern, and with such disregard for polite topics of conversation.  (There are only a few people that have permission to talk to me about my wife’s privates, and Mr. Villarreal isn’t among them.)

There are plenty of ways to save money without lying and stealing, but he wastes far too many pages describing these bad ways:

• Saying it’s your birthday (when it isn’t) in order to get free food at a restaurant
• Manufacturing fake price matches for grocery store items
• Taking the five-finger discount with office supplies from work
• Catching a double feature by sneaking into the second movie on the first ticket
• Taking money off the bar that was clearly left for the bartender
• Complaining about a meal when there’s nothing really wrong, just to get reimbursed
• Faking homelessness

And these aren’t lying or stealing but they will make you a problem child very quickly:

• Being just plain cheap with friends on road trips, gift exchanges, potlucks, and splitting the check
• Taking several of every food service supply that isn’t nailed down in a fast-food restaurant
• Actively avoiding tipping of any kind
• Being a repeat problem customer to get free services
• Abusing trial subscriptions and return policies

There were some good tips in this book, but it isn’t worth slogging through pig manure to find a couple of quarters.

Get Wise Bread’s book instead. 100% scoundrel-free, guaranteed.

Hot hot hot money questions at Cash Commons

The author’s marketing company kindly sent me a complimentary company of Bill Schultheis’ latest reworking of his book: The New Coffeehouse Investor.  According to the “about the author” section in the book, Mr. Schultheis is an investment adviser with Soundmark Wealth Management, LLC, a fee-only registered investment adviser located in Kirkland, Washington.

In the preface and in the final chapter of the book, the author outlines the three big points:

• Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.
• There is no such thing as a free lunch.
• Save for a rainy day.
  

The book’s weapon of choice to reaching these goals largely centers around the well-worn merits of thrift and buy-and-hold stock market index investing:

• By “buying the whole market” you diversify and minimize the risk of buying heavily in an overbought sector, or in a bad company.
• Actively-managed stock funds that outperform the broad market are in the minority.
• The fees of actively-managed funds are higher than those for index funds.
• The turnover ratios for actively-managed funds is usually higher than those of index funds, so current tax implications are usually lower for index funds.
• The market wrings out any inefficiencies, so the best response to chasing gains is to say “homey don’t play that.”
• Compounding, compounding, compounding, reinvesting the dividends, spend less than you earn, etc.

It mentions bonds and bond funds briefly, but it’s clear that the book’s primary focus is low-cost index funds.

Would I recommend this book? It depends to whom.  For someone who’s a seasoned investor and uses stocks, bonds, and cash as a starting point for their options, I don’t think that person would be stretched by the investing content of the book.  It’s basic stuff.  (The anecdotes and analogies might be interesting to a person more outdoorsy than myself, though.)

For someone who’s never heard of index-fund investing, it would be informative.  Along with my recommendation, though, I’d also make it clear that this is a starting point and not an end-all, be-all, for the same reason that it’s limited in scope.  This isn’t just meant to pick on this book in particular:  It would be true for any broad-market book on investing that doesn’t stray beyond the cozy confines of stocks, bonds, and cash.  It’s necessary to understand what stocks, bonds, and cash can do for you, but it’s also important to understand what they can’t do for you.  For starters, index funds avoid the problem of “putting all your eggs in one basket” with respect to stocks, but those little baskets can still be all within a bigger basket:  stocks.

Competent investment advisers certainly need to provide advice that match their client’s level of understanding, and (I would hope) encourage them to learn more.  But everyone must start somewhere, and The New Coffeehouse Investor is a good overview of mainstream investment advice with a unique voice.

Hot hot hot money questions at Cash Commons

10. The Semi-Automatic Millionaire: A Powerful Shotgun Approach to Living and Finishing Off Your Rich Friends
9.  The 9 Steps to Financial Bondage: Practical Steps So You Can Worry Forever
8.  Poor Dad, Poorer Dad: What the Rich Teach Their Kids About Money — You Won’t Find Here
7.  The 168-Hour Workweek: Work 24-7, Live in Your Cube, and Hate the Rich
6.  The Pauper Next Door: The Not-So-Surprising Secrets of America’s Joneses
5.  The Partial Money Makeover: A Kinda-Sorta Plan for Financial Fitness, Maybe
4.  You’re Broke Because Someone Else Did It: No, It’s OK, It’s Not Really Your Fault
3.  Beat Up On Wall Street: What You Should Have Already Known To Make Money In The Market
2.  The Complete Profligate Gazette: Promoting Spendthrift as a Viable Alternative Lifestyle
And the number 1 failed personal finance book title is …

1.  Stink And Grow Rich: They May Not Hear You Thinking, But They Sure Can Smell You Coming!

Hot hot hot money questions at Cash Commons

The writers of Wise Bread have put out an important resource for weathering the recession in style with their new book: 10,001 Ways to Live Large on a Small Budget.  There’s something for everybody: from someone just getting acquainted with the frugal lifestyle to someone who was born with a coupon in their mouth.

The book itself is printed on high-quality paper, and the text is easy to read.  The main content of the book covers two broad categories, frugality and personal finance, which are broken down further in the table of contents:

• Frugality
  • Food and Drink
  • Travel
  • Health & Beauty
  • Fun & Entertainment
  • Shopping & Bargain Hunting
  • Green Living
  • Education & Self-Improvement
• Personal Finance
  • Financial Planning & Budgeting
  • Credit Cards & Debt
  • Investing your Money
  • Housing & Home Improvement
  • Career & Money-Making Ideas

I found that skimming through the book was easy.  In many cases, the subheadings were a good summary of the tip itself, so I could see quickly whether I needed to read the rest of that tip.  (I passed on the beauty tips.  Asking the book to work miracles would be unfair.)

Some of the tips I had heard before — I’d better heard of at least a few frugality tips after blogging for four years! — but others were new to me.  I didn’t know that vinegar was a good thing to add to drinking water.  Or cucumbers.  I didn’t know that I could polish my wedding band in beer.  And I never would have thought to hang a ping-pong ball from a string in my garage so that I would know when to stop moving.  (Not that I can actually move in my garage at the moment, but if I ever can, I’ll know what to do!)

I know that there will be at least a few that you haven’t heard of, too.  The few tips you haven’t heard of will make 10,001 Ways to Live Large on a Small Budget pay for itself easily.  Then you get the rest for free!

Hats off to the folks at Wise Bread for putting together this great reference.

Hot hot hot money questions at Cash Commons

I stopped by Borders while I was in town tonight and read part of Larry Winget’s People Are Idiots And I Can Prove It! It took me a little hunting to find it, though.  I started by heading over to the personal finance section — his last book was You’re Broke Because You Want To Be, after all — but it wasn’t there.  It was in the psychology section, which is probably more appropriate for this one.

So, when I came home, I went to Amazon.com and ordered it.  We have Amazon Prime and I had $10 in gift certificates that I earned by searching the web through SwagBucks, so it cost me all of a few bucks shipped to my door by the end of the week.

Anyway, People Are Idiots … is written in his standard “break ‘em down, shake ‘em up, point ‘em in the right direction” style that is his trademark.  He freely admits that none of the suggestions he makes in the book are new.  They’re the same old thing.  To lose weight, you have to eat less and exercise more.  To become wealthy, you have to spend less and earn more.  And so forth.

What’s different is how he goes about motivating people to take his suggestions.  It’s all about psychology.  It’s the same kind of psychology that makes Dave Ramsey brilliant, because if we all did what we knew was right, we wouldn’t be in nearly the amount of hurt we are in now.  It can be a very effective tool to get our emotions involved, either by slaying a little debt dragon, or by getting angry at the mess we’ve made with our lives.

I liked the clarity of what I read earlier tonight, and look forward to reading the rest of People Are Idiots And I Can Prove It! when it comes in.

Hot hot hot money questions at Cash Commons

A marketing company was kind enough to send me a review copy of Peter D. Schiff’s The Little Book of Bull Moves in Bear Markets.  Mr. Schiff is the president of Euro Pacific Capital, Inc., and has earned the nickname “Dr. Doom” for his bearish take on the US markets and the US economy in general.

I’ve been known to be more than a tad bearish in my chatting with friends about where the economy is heading, but some of his predictions are even more so.  He speaks at length about inflation and gives some of the history on how we arrived at a fiat currency, and talks about the perils of where we’re headed with it. 

He then continues with discussion on where to take statistics, facts, and figures with a grain of salt by explaining what he perceives to be conflicts of interest from the entities generating said statistics, facts, and figures.  Whether you want to go so far as to think “conspiracy theory” is up to you, but I don’t think it’s surprising that statistics can be made to say pretty much whatever you want them to say.  I don’t really buy his M3 argument, but I’m in the minority there.

As the title implies, though, he does give a few suggestions for shifting things around in an effort to profit from what’s to happen.  Most of them are some variant of “get the heck out of Dodge.”  Get out of dollars.  Get into real stuff like commodities.  Get into foreign dividend-paying stocks in stable regions.  And, just maybe, get out of the country.  He elaborates on this, of course.  He explains his “top-down” approach to international investing, recommends some sources for doing commodities investing and international equities investing.  The top-down approach is also helpful should one think it necessary to emigrate.

The book is largely geared toward folks with a fair bit of wealth that they are free to invest as they please.  For each main investing area he suggests types of investments that might be appropriate for someone with a lot of money or someone with less than a lot of money.   They’re all fairly broad strokes but with enough detail to get pointed in the right direction with a little bit of study.  (I wasn’t familiar with every type of investment he mentioned.)

The one chapter that everyone can benefit from, though, is Chapter 11: A Decade of Frugality.  I talked about this in another post and its advice is consistent with the rest of the book.  Things will be tough in this country for quite a while, and frugality will make it bearable.

Overall, I was glad that I read The Little Book of Bull Moves in Bear Markets.  I have a lot of new investing terms to learn about, and new ways of thinking about where the economy is headed.  It’s also a good starting point for investigating what kinds of investments to make in the coming years.

Hot hot hot money questions at Cash Commons

The Prosperous Peasant by Tim Clark and Mark Cunningham, subtitled “Five Secrets of Fortune and Fulfillment from the Samurai’s Temple School,” is a pretty easy read with a straightforward story centered around traditional Japanese life that doesn’t overshadow the points of the book.

I won’t give all five points away but one of the five secrets struck a chord: Know Your Gift. Know what brings value to your relationships. Know what you can use to differentiate yourself in a good way. This could be good negotiating skills, clarity of thought, creativity that comes from an oblique perspective, or the ability to out-work everyone else day after day.

This and the other four secrets are obvious once you read them; they’re really not secrets at all. They seem to be secrets because few people actually do them. Good advice works only if it’s followed. The secrets have the same “duh” factor as common personal finance advice. Spend less than you earn isn’t complicated, and it’s not a mystery, but those who actually follow this advice do well, and lots of people don’t do it and they don’t do well (or they pay for it for a long time).

I’m not a scholar of 16th-century Japan but (again) the neat thing about this book is that the background adds to the teaching points of the story in a nice way. I enjoyed The Prosperous Peasant and I appreciate the chance to review it.

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I received a complimentary copy of Getting Started: The Financial Guide for a Younger Generation by Brian T. Jones, CFP®.  On the back cover it proclaims: “This is NOT your parents’ financial planning guide.” 

This book encourages young people (and slightly older people like myself) to think about financial planning considerations that don’t really seem immediate, and it was a little bit embarrassing to see that I haven’t taken a number of steps that I should have taken long ago.  I’ll admit that it took me a while to make it through this book.  The first couple of chapters were things that I was already doing (controlling my spending, practicing basic frugality, and staying out of debt) so I lost interest in the book for a while.  Then, as the disapproving stares of the book got too much to bear, I picked up the book and finished it.  Things got serious pretty fast.

The chapters of the book:

1. Cash is King.  This for most purposes is pretty basic — spend less than you earn and be careful about overspending once “real money” starts flowing in with the first job.
2. Debt:  Seeing Red.  Again, this chapter is pretty basic.  Don’t get into consumer debt if you can possibly avoid it.  For additional reinforcement, check out what these folks are needing to go through to get rid of their debt.
3. Saying “I Do.”  The process of getting married is where the pedal starts to hit the metal.  This chapter discusses spending on the wedding, choosing registry items, and figuring out how to merge finances.  (I identified with “scanning my fiancee’s butt” with the laser gun during our registry list assembly.  “I’ll take one of these.”  She thought it was amusing the first seventeen times I did it.)
4. Living with Rug Rats.  This part is where things started to get pretty serious.  Estate planning.  Life insurance.  College savings.  Big serious things.
5. Real Estate.  Eventually the apartment just doesn’t cut it, and this chapter contains a few smart moves on how to buy a home.
6. Retirement Planning.  If Social Security and pensions aren’t enough, and your fortune cookies keep telling you the wrong numbers for the lottery, what do you do to plan for your retirement?  (Hint:  It’s a four-letter word that starts with “save.”)
7. Risk Management.  As in insurance.  Liability insurance.  Life insurance.  Disability insurance.  Homeowner’s insurance.  Auto insurance.  Special riders to your insurance.  If you’re not covered comfortably and you make a mistake — who doesn’t? — then most, or all of what you own will go away.  Or, your survivors will be in dire straits.
8. Estate Planning.  (This is the part that was a little embarrassing because of how little I’ve done.)  The best time to plan an estate is right now, if not sooner.  If someone has an accident, someone becomes disabled, or someone (or more than one someone) dies, the estate plans already need to be in place.  Otherwise, it’s probably too late.  The estate plans should be updated with each new child and each new spouse and each new big change in what you own or what you owe.
9. Divorce.  This isn’t something that anyone likes to think about, but if you are married and get divorced — and the odds are, unfortunately, that you will — this chapter has a number of wise things to do.  Some only take a minute, like updating beneficiaries, while others take much longer.
10. Inheritance.  A number of good things in this chapter, but the main point is “don’t do anything stupid with an inheritance.”

The book started out a little slow but it finished very strong.  I recommend Getting Started: The Financial Guide for a Younger Generation especially if you’re just out of college. Don’t wait until your mid-30s to do some of the things recommended in this book.

I received a pre-release copy (autographed) of Larry Winget’s You’re Broke Because You Want to Be. Mr. Winget is the star of A&E’s reality series Big Spender, a show that delves into the lives of people who appear to be well-off, but actually are very strapped financially. (I’ve watched clips from the website but not the whole show; I don’t get A&E.) I also have not read any of Mr. Winget’s other books.

Mr. Winget’s style is no-nonsense and in-your-face on the show, and You’re Broke Because You Want to Be is no different. He wrote the book for people who are “circling the drain” (page 6) and need serious help because they’re broke. Not poor, but broke; he makes that distinction in the first two pages of the introduction. (His harsh advice is not directed at poor people.)

Some other bloggers have gotten down on gurus and “finance personalities” because they come off as saying they know what your problems are and how to fix them, usually in an insulting, scolding, abrasive, and demeaning manner. It’s easy to say the same thing about Mr. Winget’s style. He doesn’t give a rat’s behind if you get mad. He wants you to get mad (page 19. But for people who are in trouble, this is probably the first time that someone’s confronted them about their problems, told them it’s all their doing, and told them to grow up and fix it, and it’s about time. There are any number of sources that people can draw on to get justification for their choices and postpone or even avoid responsibility, and it’s tiring to hear about people that are being enabled to live beyond their means. Mr. Winget’s take on consumer debt help is a breath of fresh air.

This kind of advice is not for everyone. I’m not circling the drain in my finances so I really don’t need Mr. Winget’s “it’s going to get ugly” full-body-armor assault on the innards of my financial life. Nonetheless, there was plenty in the book that spoke to me:

• I’m not going to be able to look myself in the mirror with any excuses about where I am in life or how I look anymore. (I’m fat because I want to be, too.)
• I’m not going to believe anything I say unless I write it down and take action and do it.
• I’m not going to able to complain about where I am in life because in many areas I lack personal discipline. (Just because the stuff hasn’t hit the fan yet doesn’t mean that the fan isn’t running.)
• I don’t read nearly enough.

A couple of small misgivings about this excellent book, though. There are a few expletives, so be warned. Secondly, from a Christian perspective, he makes some glib statements about tithing, saying that there’s “too much religion associated with it” and that he doesn’t want me to “ever think about or use the word tithe again,” which is something I will not do.

Again. these were small misgivings. You’re Broke Because You Want to Be will really help those who really want to improve their financial situation. It’s not rocket science. The key is to own up to your mistakes and commit to not making them again. And if it takes some crying and anger to get to that point, which is almost always does if it’s a serious problem, then Larry Winget is the guy that you want to make you cry, get angry, and own up to the financial problems that you’ve gotten yourself into so that you can fix them.

I received a complimentary copy — autographed by the author, no less! — of A Million Bucks by 30. This book will be available in stores shortly after the new year, or you can order it on Amazon.com. Alan Corey is a “New York City-based entrepreneur, speaker, writer, and bargain hunter.” The book describes his journey from having very little to have a net worth of $1 million in less than a decade. He set out in his early twenties with his #1 goal of being a millionaire by the time he was thirty, and he accomplished that goal with a year to spare through extreme frugality, a lot of self-education, sacrifice, and aggressive but educated risk-taking.

Overall, I enjoyed the book, and there were a lot of gems scattered throughout. He doesn’t take himself seriously at all; from the introduction: “Read the book any way you want. Read it from start to finish; read just the lessons, tips, and box scores; or, if you don’t really like me yet, read it from back to front and watch me go from a millionaire to being broke.” The book’s audience is by and large for people in their twenties, and the diction is geared toward that demographic. He was unmarried during the time covered by the book; some of his money-making activities were much easier to pull off because he didn’t have to take a wife or children into consideration. There’s nothing wrong with that at all, but married people would find selling some of Corey’s ideas to their spouse difficult.

I’ll get to some of the gems, but I have to get a few reservations about the book out of the way first. (1) There are a few expletives in the book. If this bothers you, look elsewhere. (2) Being extremely frugal is one thing; stealing is quite another. Showing up to get day-old bagels for free or half price is fine, but I don’t care how many black umbrellas are in lost and found. It doesn’t mean that you can ask a clerk if they found a black umbrella and take your pick, knowing that it’s not yours. Buy a $4 umbrella or use yesterday’s newspaper. (3) Jumping in with both feet is fine, but lying isn’t. Saying that you’re interested in writing a book without a book proposal is fine, but fabricating a love drama to get on Jerry Springer — regardless of whether both parties benefited — or pretending to be a magazine publisher to get into a concert for free is wrong.

OK, with those out of the way, there are a lot of good points, and here are some of them:

• Make it very difficult to spend your money. He put money in a checking account that you don’t touch. He made the ATM a walk nearly across town. He pulled out a very large chunk of his paycheck — like more than half — and lived off the rest. He paid himself first and locked it away. He made it a chore to withdraw the money.
• Learn, learn, learn. “No one will care more about your financial picture than you” (p. 28). Corey used very little of what he learned in school through his chosen major and instead capitalized on things he learned on his own time: investing, real estate, IRAs. He attended open houses out the wahzoo to learn his local real estate market.
• Cut your expenses to an absolute minimum. Corey’s dates were usually stay-at-home ones with video games and Excel spreadsheets that showed to the penny how much interest income his date was giving up by keeping cable. He survived for quite a while on $2 a day for food. He lived in the projects for a while to cut his rent. He rarely, if ever, paid full price for any essentials, and got some of those essentials for free.
• Sacrifice and save like a madman. What wasn’t spent was saved. It was put away where he couldn’t touch it. His credit card had a $50 annual fee, but he received 2% back in the form of savings bonds. He lowered his expectations on just about everything in his life to reach his $1 million by 30 goal.
• Get by with less. Living extremely frugally inherently involves getting by with less, but Corey took this a step further in his first real estate purchase when he voluntarily moved into the worst room of the place so that he could rent out the better ones and live there essentially for free and build equity in the property. That’s wise.
• Force yourself to be creative. Despite being unethical, getting on Jerry Springer for the free vacation was pretty creative. Being a human guinea pig for hire was pretty creative. And without any slack in his budget, Corey had to be creative. He had to be creative when he borrowed a lot of money to purchase his own house, and later when he borrowed from friends and family (at 10%) to get a down payment for another. He cut out any room for error, and this necessitated invention.
• Generate multiple revenue streams. He has his comedy routine, his book, his real estate, his stocks and bonds, and his bar. He had all of his eggs in one basket for a while, but not anymore. If one sours, he’s not back to having to eat Alan’s Stick-To-Your-Ribs Breakfast Blend (p. 60) — but he might want to anyway just because he’s a cheapskate.
• Keep your day job until you really don’t need it anymore. This was also wise. All of the extra revenue streams were done in his “spare time” away from his day job. He was able to live off of his day job, and used that security to enable more risk-taking. Only when he had made his million did he quit that day job. He was ready at that point.

Again, I enjoyed this book. It’s quite different from, say, David Bachor Stanley and Danko, but that’s not a bad thing. It’s a breezy read, and I laughed out loud in a couple of places. The people who stand to get the most out of this book are younger (late teens, early twenties) who don’t have much to lose, or, more accurately, have time to make mistakes, and who want to leave the comfort of a nine-to-five job. A Million Bucks by 30 has a lot of good ideas from someone who’s tried them and succeeded financially.