Smart couple plan their future together

“Smart Couple Finish Rich: 9 Steps to Creating a Rich Future for You and Your Partner” by David Bach

It’s almost the end of year, holiday mood already sets in, and I’ve reached my yearly goal to read 50 books minimum. What else can I do to enjoy the last month of the year? (No, not taking a break from reading a book, are you mental?)

Instead, I’m doing the second best, having a semi-break while reading some of the fringe books that I have purchased over the years. You know, just to get them over with. They are those books that I bought on a whim from an algo recommendation (during a price drop under $2-5 at Amazon), which on hindsight I should’ve double checked first before buying and piling them up. This is one of those books.

The book is written by David Bach, a financial consultant for couples; so it is a book written by an expert on his field, which gives early credibility to the book. And some of the messages are actually pretty good, which can be summed up more or less into these 12:

Smart couple plan their future together.
How you spend money has nothing to do with how much you love each other.
The two of you were most likely raised differently when it comes to money.
The two of you probably value money differently.
The two of you probably spend money differently.
Most couple don’t have money problem, they have spending problem.
Your life values should determine every life decision that you make.
Our financial behaviour should match with our value circles.
Figure out what the purpose of money in your life.
You can’t plan your finances if you don’t know where you’re starting from or where you want to end up.
In order to stay on track from your starting point to your destination, you have to monitor your progress.
You need to clean up the mess before you can move forward.

Indeed, the “couples stuffs” in the first few chapters of the book are actually sound. The Purpose-Focused Financial Plan story, in particular, with the example of Bill and Kim is actually a great insight into how to merge a husband’s and a wife’s different values into one. Jerry and Lisa’s story is also sobering, how a couple with little money can retire relatively young at 52 with 2 houses and several cars, by just planning them out since they were 20 years old and had the discipline to save up and pay the mortgages on time.

However, Bach elaborates a little too much on these main 12 points or so, with many repetition and unnecessary gibberish along the way that makes the book extra long to read.

And after the initial 30ish% of the “couple stuffs”, the rest of the content of the book are your typical personal finance books, which are filled with the technical stuffs that only applicable for US readers – with advices such as how to navigate the 401(k) plans, the IRA, and the likes – which seems like a content from his other book focusing on individual finance and less so on couples.

Moreover, in the getting rich part, Bach presented the usual formula: Set aside 10% of your income for investment (just like the advice from the book The Richest Man in Babylon). Bach then told the story of his grandmother who did exactly this, setting aside 10% of her husband’s income and invest it where the investment eventually turned her into a millionaire. But Bach didn’t elaborate on which financial instruments she invested in, and instead he wrote what his grandmother said “if we were going to get rich, I was going to have to learn how to get rich! I needed to take classes, read books, study the stock market, and make friends with rich people.”

Yeah ok, it’s not necessarily the “what” or the “why”, but when it comes to getting rich the most important part is often the “how.” The “how” is what’s lacking in this book (other than putting your money in a mutual fund or ETF index).

And instead of focusing on the technical know-how of investing, Bach is focusing more on “becoming rich is nothing more than a matter of committing and sticking to a systematic savings and investment plan.” I mean, if you consistently committing to set aside 10% of your income and put it in Enron’s stock in the late 90s, you’ll get wiped out. Put it in Apple? You’ll get rich. Smart investing also being able to determine whether put your 10% investment money to Google instead of Yahoo despite Yahoo being the bigger company back then. Even mutual funds and ETFs were down during a bear market or a market crash.

To be fair, had this be the first personal finance book that I’ve read, I’d probably gain more value from it. But instead, I’ve read my fair share of them over the decades, from the questionable Think and Grow Rich, to the British version Think Yourself Rich, The Millionaires Mind, Tony Robbins’ weird venture into personal finance (I read 2 books – both awful – but his earlier works are masterpieces), an ancient Japanese financial wisdom (the Way to Wealth), to the best one in the genre for me the Psychology of Money, and many more, including The Opposite of Spoiled (a parenting book that teaches about money to kids) and of course the dozens of books on investments from Market Wizards series, to Money Masters of Our Time, to any book by/on Warren Buffett, Jim Rogers, George Soros, Charlie Munger, Benjamin Graham, etc.

And if I learn anything from these books, those who are truly successful in finance won’t tell you their “secret formula” at its entirety, those who are successful and do write about it won’t package it as a way to get rich (instead the money is only a result of their main focus: their craft), and hence those books that have “rich” in the title is usually nothing short of a get-rich-quick kind of scam.

Just like Rich Dad Poor Dad whose author, Robert T. Kiyosaki, had 2 failed businesses and only became rich after writing the book in 1997, with the “rich dad” character turns out to be fictional (read: fabricated, fake). And he became rich after riding the housing bubble in late 1990s early 2000s, but has since publicly made many predictions wrong and ended up having 1 of his companies being bankrupt and he himself (a millionaire) is actually $1.2 billion in debt and using the debt to speculate in the market. But yet he still has cult followers, especially in the multilevel marketing scene. I should know, since I used to be one of his eager followers when I was a teenager.

Not saying that this book is similar to Rich Dad Poor Dad and its kind, since Bach looks like a legit personal finance advisor, whereas Kiyosaki himself stated in Rich Dad Poor Dad that he is a best “selling” author and built an empire from that (implying that he’s only a salesman). But this book does have this borderline misleading feel to it, as it’s not really a book about couples’ finances (only a slight repackaging from his usual personal finance stuff), one that lures you into wanting a quick fix simple solution in the road to become a millionaire without giving you the proper tools.

Hence, a little grain of salt is needed when reading this book, but overall it’s still can make your money’s worth if you’re new to the personal finance genre.

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