« Bill to Aid 401(k) Participants - I DON’T LIKE IT! | Main | Question of the Day Marathon - Day 4 »
A Review of “Achieving Prosperity” by Todd Lipscomb
By JLP | August 3, 2006
Achieving Prosperity by Todd Lipscomb is a pretty good wealth-building primer. It is written in an easy-to-read manner, with short chapters that touch on topics like risk, picking a broker, dividends, picking stocks, and lots of other stuff. At under 150 pages, it can easily be read in one sitting.
What I Liked About the Book
Todd writes in a conversational manner. I thought the section on setting appropriate goals, in which he asks the reader to decide which type of retirement they prefer, was kind of funny.
Upon retirement, there are something like six levels of sustainable living standards:
A) Trailer-park/poor
B) Cheap condo/lower-middle class
C) Paid-off house/safe-middle class
D) Condo with partial ocean view/middle class
E) Dual-home, do as you like/upper-middle class/lower rich
F) Obscenely rich, spend whatever you please/upper-fun class
Now, there’s nothing at all wrong with living in a trailer park, it’s just that most people would probably prefer to live elsewhere if given the choice. The point of this is that we all have to set goals so that we have something to work towards. If you don’t set goals and simply live paycheck to paycheck, the chances are good, you’ll be in situation A or B when you retire.
I also enjoyed the chapter on risk, in which he lays out some of the different risks investors face:
There is a risk of buying too high.
There is a risk of not selling when the price has become high.
There is a risk of missed opportunity if one just keeps the money in the bank.
There is a low risk of implosion of a specific company such as Enron.
We all know this stuff, but sometimes it is good to take a refresher course.
What I Didn’t Like About the Book
I didn’t care for Chapter 1. A Brief History from Barter to Buyouts. I thought the chapter was out of place and I didn’t see how it tied in with the rest of the book. Nothing against the author but Chapter 1 reminded me of when I was in high school and I had to write a paper that was a certain number of pages. When I didn’t have enough pages, I had to “add” stuff in order to fill it out. Anyway, I was happy to find out that the rest of the book wasn’t like Chapter 1.
The only other thing I didn’t like about the book is that I really didn’t read anything that I hadn’t read before. This is probably due to the fact that I read a lot of books and that in the field of personal finance and investing, it would be hard to find a book that doesn’t already say what 100’s of other books have already said. That’s one of the reasons whyI haven’t written a book. That doesn’t make this a bad book. It’s a great book for someone who is unfamiliar with investing and wants a good primer to help get them started.
August 4th, 2006 at 10:38 am
Amen about not writing a book b/c it’s all been written before (or we’ve read too many!) Suze Orman squashed my dream…and, of course, Michael’s (at IYM) favorite, David Bach!
August 4th, 2006 at 6:31 pm
[...] JLP reviews Achieving Prosperity by some dude who didn’t ask me to review his book. [...]
August 6th, 2006 at 12:04 am
[...] All Financial Matters reviews Todd Lipscomb’s Achieving Prosperity. [...]