My focus at Blue Tree is to help parents teach their kids about money. From time to time, I get asked ‘Am I planning on doing “Blue Tree for adults”?’. My answer at the moment is ’No’. I want to keep focusing on helping parents teach their kids about money.
If you want help looking after your own money then there a lot of great resources out there for parents, if you know where to look. This brings me to the topic of this blog. I was recently given the privilege of beta reading a new book by Robin Powell and Ben Carlson called ‘Invest Your Way to Financial Freedom’. I believe this a great starting point for all adults who want to change their financial future for the better.
Before I go into the book, I just want to provide a bit of background on one of the authors, Robin Powell, who I have been following for a long time.
Robin’s mission to promote simple investing
We live in a world where people don’t know how to invest their money as it’s not a topic taught in most schools. Therefore these people seek help from professional financial advisors. Some of these professionals recommend complex investment solutions as they make more money (commission) from selling these complex solutions.
A complex solution would be fine, if the complex solution provided better outcomes than simple solutions. However, that is not the case. Over the long-term, 80% of the time a simple solution will do better (i.e. get higher investment returns) than these complex solutions, especially after you allow for the high costs of the complex solutions. I won’t go into simple vs complex solutions here.
Robin is one of the most proactive people I’ve seen in terms of shining a light on those professionals that are charging people very high fees for complex solutions. He is also very proactive in promoting the benefits of simple solutions (despite no direct financial incentive for himself).
If you’ve read any of my blogs about investing, you’ll know that my views are very aligned to Robin’s and that ‘good’ investing should simple, cheap and pretty boring.
Now let’s talk about his new book.
Invest Your Way To Financial Freedom Review
Firstly, I agree with views and recommended actions from this book. They are very much aligned with my book to help kids learn about money, Grandpa’s Fortune Fables. That is to make sure that when it comes to money you save, invest and be patient.
As the title implies, the focus is on helping people learn that saving and investment money is the key to becoming financially free.
I love that this book is short and to the point. I actually sat down and read it all in one sitting ... which I think is the first time I've done that for a 150+ page book.
The book provides actions; examples of the benefits of these actions and real-world stories to make the points super easy to understand and appreciate.
I loved the real-world examples such as the Nike Air Jordan's when talking about spending vs investing. In most cases, people are happy to spend money on trainers but are scared to invest that same amount of money investing in Nike (example only). However, those that did invest in Nike saw their money grow and grow over many years.
Whilst the book can’t provide specific investment advice, I feel that a newcomer to the investment world could understand how to invest in a manner which will outperform most professional investor (by keeping it simple, not overreacting and being patient) over the long-term.
The book is now available and you can buy from here.
Thanks for reading!
Will
p.s. for the avoidance of doubt, I have not in anyway been financially incentivised to write this review. I’m just very keen to promote the work of others who have the same values as myself when it comes to money. I really do believe that if people follow the actions set out in this book, then it will make a difference to their lives.