![[Front Cover of Am I Going to be OK? Book]](http://www.canadiancapitalist.com/images/books/Am_I_Going_to_be_OK.jpg)
After reading a note on Jon Chevreau’s blog, I asked the author Francis D’Andrade for a review copy of the book, which is titled after the question most frequently asked of the author. Mr. D’Andrade has written an unusual personal finance book that talks a lot about the emotional aspects of money in a humorous, folksy style and offers a common sense framework for achieving financial security: securing an income, saving a portion of it, owning a home and planning early for retirement.
Though Mr. D’Andrade is a financial industry insider, - he is a founder of RGI Financial and was previously a top executive with Altamira - it is refreshing to read that he thinks average Canadians can have a reasonably secure retirement with real estate wealth of $250,000 and financial wealth of $250,000 supplemented by government programmes. The author has a delightful turn of phrase (”Wealth is about more; prosperity is about enough”, “Pay Yourself Second”, “A Monetary Lapse of Reason” etc.) and I can’t recall the last time I had so much fun reading a book on a dreary subject like personal finance.
The value of any instructional book lies in its capacity either to teach you something you did not already know or to show you something you already know from a different perspective. The latter is my goal for this book.
I’m pleased to report that Mr. D’Andrade succeeds brilliantly in his goal in this engaging, witty and thoughtful book. The cover price of the book is $18.95 and can be purchased through the book’s website.
Rating: 8 out of 10.
Bookmark: del.icio.us Digg StumbleUpon
9 responses so far ↓
1 Sol Veritas // Mar 31, 2008 at 12:58 am
CC - If you had to pay for that book, would you shell out the $20, then read it, then sit back and think, “yeah, that was a good $20 I just spent, I’m glad I did that and I recommend my readers go and read it too.”? Or would you say keep the money and library it, or with the Time Value of Money and it’s inverse, the Money Value of Time, is it worthwhile to read?
2 Canadian Capitalist // Mar 31, 2008 at 7:36 am
Sol: I use ‘recommend’ in the sense that I think it is well worth your time to read the book. For any book (even the ones in my recommended list), I’d recommend
checking the library first. If you read it and find yourself wanting to read it again later, it may be worth buying your own copy.
3 Paolo // Mar 31, 2008 at 9:41 am
Have you read “Why Swim with the Sharks”? It seems to have a similar message: you do not need as much money at retirement as you think you. I found “sharks” a quick read (4-5 hours). The library is not carrying D’Andrade’s book.
4 Phil S // Apr 1, 2008 at 1:00 am
Just like in engineering, predicting the future in personal finance involves a lot of assumptions. Will the government pension system be financially solvent when we reach the age of retirement? Do you want to retire early? Is inflation going to wipe out all of your investment returns like in post-WW1 Germany because a loaf of bread alone is going to cost something like $2500 (I heard stories of where they needed entire wheelbarrow loads of 10,000 deutschemark bills to buy a shopping cart of groceries back then)? Will there be another Great Depression like in the dirty 30’s?
Although catastrophic financial events like the examples I cite are rare, it illustrates the point although whatever inflation or market downturns we experience will hopefully be milder ones than those examples. If I equate it back to engineering analysis, we always like to add some kind of “safety factor” once we calculate what the “minimum” requirements are, in order to hopefully capture any conditions outside of the assumptions that we made in the original design. So, you should always put some kind of “safety factor” in your financial planning, in case something you do not expect happens…
5 Canadian Capitalist // Apr 1, 2008 at 12:24 pm
Paolo: I read and reviewed that book earlier: Link
Phil: Personally, I’d want a margin of safety in my retirement calculations as well. But the truth is with at least two decades to go, I don’t bother with an exhaustive analysis. I figure if we save a bit, invest prudently, keep costs under check and don’t chase investment fads we should be okay.
6 Tony Danza // Apr 1, 2008 at 1:43 pm
Phil S, Just to add to what CC said, if we experience a catastrophic financial event like the ones you describe any extra savings will just mean you lost more money.
There is a great article in last weeks Economist about how to prepare for a systemic financial catastrophe (they talk about gold, equities, real estate, etc…). The gist of the story was that you can’t prepare for those events and even those who do tend to lose everything anyways.
7 Tony Danza // Apr 1, 2008 at 2:02 pm
link to article mentioned above:
http://tinyurl.com/336ht5
8 Canadian Capitalist // Apr 1, 2008 at 2:54 pm
Thanks for the interesting article Tony. I’ll mention it in the Friday round-up.
9 Phil S // Apr 1, 2008 at 7:26 pm
The complete irony of the situation is that today when I got home from work and opened my mailbox, the front cover of the latest issue of Canadian Business magazine says that the current economic condition is almost mirroring the Great Depression. Needless to say, I’m going to read that article with great interest tonight!
Leave a Comment