By: Mike Piper (ObliviousInvestor.com)
I had the opportunity to meet Mike at the first FINCON in Chicago last year. He’s a thoroughly nice guy. I knew him from his blog and website, but for some reason I hadn’t known the extent of his authorship. I found out at FINCON that he’s written several books (9 of them if I count right) on personal finance. They mostly lean towards the topics of investing, but even encompass Social Security and business structure. After meeting Mike, and learning about his books, I made it a point to pick one of them up to read and review. Well, over a year later, I finally made it to the reading and reviewing part.
Since I’m not much of an investor, I thought that it would be a double good idea to pick up the Investing Made Simple title he wrote. I can review something he’s written, while probably learning a few things along the way. Investing made Simple is an excellent book. It’s short, which makes it an easy read, and the writing style is light, without all the technical investing jargon that’s typical to an investing book.
It’s not an in depth book on investing, but it wasn’t intended to be. What it is intended to be is a short (100 pages or less) book that will give anyone the basics of investing while setting them on the right track to a successful investing portfolio. I think he accomplished that.
I think one of the things that many beginning investors, including myself, get bogged down in is that the world of investing is a pretty big world. There’s all these different ways to invest in something. There’s shorts, longs, calls, margin, options, commodities, ETF, bonds, and the list goes on. And on. But, when the beginning investor, who knows little to nothing about investing goes looking for information to get them started, it’s a whole lot of overwhelming. Piper lays it out simple and easy. He gives you the meat of what you need to successfully invest for the long term, while quietly informing you that you’ll likely be better off ignoring most of the stuff that’s confusing you.
What you end up with is a book with all the basics of investing in a small package. But, you also end up with something that, for most people, is also a complete investing manual. Keep it simple, and invest wisely is the order that I took away from reading Investing Made Simple. I think it should be recommended reading for all beginning investors.
Such a complicated area as investing needs to be be simplified wherever possible. The amount to which the average person/investor doesn’t understand the notion of risk is saddening. Keep bringing light into this area.