Book Review - Start Late, Finish Rich

"[I]f you're in your thirties, forties, fifties - even your sixties and beyond - you've still got an opportunity to put your life on the right track financially and stop worrying about the future," says David Bach, financial advisor and author of this book and several others, including The Automatic Millionaire.Like most books of financial advice, Start Late, Finish Rich reinforces the commonsense principles you probably already knew you should be following. Also like most of them, it contains a few of the author's personal and sometimes counter-intuitive ideas.Bach, for example, tells you to pay yourself first - put an hour's pay for each day, or about 12.5% of your gross income, into savings. "I don't expect this is the first time you've heard of it," he says. Well, no. He goes further to say this should be automated by your employer or bank, so that you never see the money in the first place, because most people simply aren't disciplined enough to set aside the money thems
elves. I'm afraid he's right.Bach also advises readers not to borrow money except to buy something that will go up in value and not to use credit to create the illusion of riches. ("You don't want to lease your lifestyle.") He talks about the well-known "Latté Factor" - how much you can save by skipping daily takeout coffee or other small luxuries.He tosses in some less traditional ideas about responsible money management: Don't budget, it doesn't work (for the same reasons dieting doesn't work). Don't devote all your extra money to paying down debt, put half of it in savings. No matter what your financial situation is, buy your own home (and then another, and another, and rent out the ones you don't need).Unlike many similar books, which concentrate on making the most of the money you already have, Start Late, Finish Rich also gets into means of making more - from asking for a raise to selling on eBay.Is it really never too late? This book can get you started on find
ing out. Start Late, Finish Rich, by David Bach (ISBN 0-385-66131-2), is available in U.S. and Canadian editions.

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