• Home
  • About
  • Recommended Reading
  • Disclaimer
  • Privacy Policy
  • Advertise / Contact

Invest It Wisely

Maximizing your EV in life

  • Home
  • Growing Your Wealth
  • Small Business Solutions
  • Healthy Living
  • Miscellaneous

A 20 Minute Guide to Investing

By Kevin

The 20 Minute Guide to Investing, by Barbara Friedberg (Book Cover)I recently read Barbara Friedberg’s 20 Minute Guide to Investing.

This guide is an intro to investing that covers the basics of what you need to know, before you start investing. Barbara covers many topics, including the following:

  • What should I do before I invest?
  • Why should I invest?
  • What is investing, and what are some common ways to invest?
  • What are index funds, and how can they help me increase my returns?
  • How can I set up my asset allocation to serve me best?

What I loved:

  • Barbara tells us that we should take care of our security and feeling of safety first by saving up several months worth of expenses and getting rid of credit card debt before we even start to think about investing. This is a great point, and paying down the credit cards gives you a guaranteed high rate of return.
  • Barbara covers the impact of expenses and fees on returns and makes the case for index funds. These fees can make a HUGE difference over time, so instead of subsidizing your personal advisor’s Mercedes, why not keep some of those returns for yourself?
  • This is an incredibly dense nugget of information. There is more substance in this free eBook than there is in many costly personal finance books.

What I would have liked to see more of:

  • Although Barbara mentioned that the first decade of this century has seen lackluster returns on the part of stocks,  I am wondering what the overall return would have been if you had invested over that period of time using dollar cost averaging (DCA). While the jury is against dollar cost averaging in favor of lump sums if you have a lump sum, dollar cost averaging is an important tool for investing income for the long term, especially if one has an employer match on income saved for retirement.
  • I would have liked to see some more lifestyle stories. Investing and personal finance are there to serve goals in the end, and these goals might include getting out of the rat race. Stories and fables really help to convey these points across.
  • This is an impressive amount of information for a 20 minute guide! While it is very concise and to the point, newbies might be overwhelmed!

Barbara has a passion for investing and personal finance, and it’s not easy to compress that down into twenty minutes! I highly recommend you read her guide and get some free investment advice, and then visit her site, Barbara Friedberg Personal Finance. She is a great writer and blogger, and I enjoy reading her wisdom and advice. I look forward to reading more from her in the future.

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...

Filed Under: Book Reviews, Growing Your Wealth, Investing, Miscellaneous Tagged With: asset allocation, bonds, compound growth, debt, dollar cost averaging, emergency fund, ETFs, index funds, inflation, management expense ratio, mutual funds, rat race, REITs, retirement, stocks

About Kevin

Kevin has left the office, and he is currently fighting the rat race by working on his own business. He enjoys exploring unvisited places around the world and gaining new experiences. He believes that by properly managing our energy and time, we can learn to invest our lives wisely.

Comments

  1. Everyday Tips says

    October 13, 2010 at 1:59 pm

    I also liked Barb’s ebook. It is very easy to read and makes a lot of great points.

    I too am a fan of dollar cost averaging. If I had a lump of money, I would rather put it toward my mortgage then to invest it all at once (unless the market was at all time lows or something. I might be afraid of total collapse then though…Guess I am just not used to have giant lumps of money!)

    Barb is a fantastic writer, and truly a wealth of information.

  2. Roshawn @ Watson Inc says

    October 13, 2010 at 5:44 pm

    Barb is a gift and is positioning herself to do a whole lot of good! Thanks for the review my friend.

  3. Mark says

    October 13, 2010 at 6:05 pm

    Nice review. I will have to check it out. I love to read anything that has to do with investing.

  4. Mike says

    October 13, 2010 at 10:22 pm

    The 20 minute concept is clever and here’s why. How many large investment books do we all have laying around the house, the closet, attic, etc. where we’ve only read the first 3 chapters? I’ve got boxes! 🙂

    Seems like it’s designed to make core points, teach the basics without losing people’s interests. Thus, effective.

  5. Barb Friedberg says

    October 14, 2010 at 10:24 am

    HI Kevin, First, thank you so much for reviewing my book, it was a great overview and very balanced. I especially like the “see more of points.” You raised an important issue regarding dollar cost averaging. Yes, there is definitely some debate in the literature about “dollar cost averaging” vs. “going all in at once.” Although I don’t have the figures in front of me, the investor would probably have done much better dollar cost averaging than going “all in” at the beginning of the decade!
    Thank you so much for the terrific review!

  6. Suba @ Wealth Informatics says

    October 14, 2010 at 2:46 pm

    I got the book too, but didn’t get a chance to read it till today. Your review makes me want to get to it right now 🙂

  7. Andrew Hallam says

    October 14, 2010 at 8:11 pm

    Well done with the review Kevin,

    And very well done with the book Barb. Congrats! You’re doing a great thing for people–and you’re continuing to inspire me.

    Cheers,
    Andrew

  8. Kevin says

    October 18, 2010 at 11:39 pm

    Thanks for stopping by to check the review, everyone. Barb is a great writer and gets right to the point. If her words were in the boxing ring, I’d think she’d knock down Clubber Lang every time… and probably Drago, too.

  9. retirebyforty says

    October 19, 2010 at 1:40 pm

    great review. I’ll have to grab a copy of Barb’s book now.

Trackbacks

  1. Tweets that mention A 20 Minute Guide to Investing | Invest It Wisely -- Topsy.com says:
    October 13, 2010 at 1:01 pm

    […] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Sharon Jones, Kevin. Kevin said: New blog post: A 20 Minute Guide to Investing http://www.investitwisely.com/a-20-minute-guide-to-investing/ […]

  2. Time To Read Some Great Posts! | Everyday Tips and Thoughts... says:
    October 16, 2010 at 2:21 pm

    […] Invest It Wisely does a great review of Barb Friedberg’s book ’20 Minute Guide to Investing. […]

  3. Join the Best Personal Finance Sites at Yakezie | MaximizingMoney.com says:
    October 18, 2010 at 12:03 am

    […] A 20 Minute Guide to Investing – Invest it Wisely […]

  4. Yakezie Round-up: Engineers Edition | Engineer Your Finances says:
    October 18, 2010 at 10:34 pm

    […] Barbara does claim her dad was an engineer so I guess this can slide. Kevin talks about the ebook: A 20 Minute Guide to Investing. And don’t expect a sugar-coated write up, he lays out what he thinks the book was missing. […]

  5. WHERE TO GET A HIGH (?) YIELD ON YOUR CASH: Part 1 | Barbara Friedberg Personal Finance says:
    October 24, 2010 at 9:27 am

    […] Invest it Wisely (Book review) […]

  6. - My Own Advisor says:
    November 13, 2011 at 8:32 am

    […] Kevin from Invest It Wisely gave kudos to Barb Friedberg’s 20 Minute Guide to Investing. Sounds like it’s worth checking out! […]

About Invest It Wisely

Invest It Wisely is about evaluating the choices that each of us face everyday. It’s about investing your time, your money, and your energy wisely, in order to achieve your goals. The end goal is maximizing your life expectation, and exploring the ways to get there.

Subscribe!

Subscribe via RSSSubscribe via EmailSubscribe via TwitterSubscribe via Facebook

Most Popular Posts

  • How to Get Fit, Feel Better, and Get Rid of Your Foggy Head: A Few Simple Steps
  • 3 Frugal Ideas for a Romantic Valentine’s Day
  • What Would You Do with a Million Dollars?
  • The Importance of Opportunity Costs, and Why They Should Not Be Ignored
  • What Do You Need to Get out of the Rat Race and Achieve Financial Freedom?

Categories

  • Avoiding Scams
  • Book Reviews
  • Crypto Trading
  • Currency Trading
  • Economics
  • Financial Freedom
  • General Reviews
  • Growing Your Wealth
  • Healthy Living
  • Insurance
  • Interviews
  • Investing
  • Market Analysis
  • Miscellaneous
  • Motivation
  • Opinion
  • Paying Down Debt
  • Philosophy
  • Precious Metals
  • Reader Questions
  • Real Estate
  • Relationships
  • Saving Your Money
  • Small Business Solutions
  • Stories
  • Uncategorized
  • Weekend Reading

Archives

Invest It Wisely Copyright © 2016
Creative Commons License
This work by Invest It Wisely is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://www.investitwisely.com/contact