David Bach’s “Start Late,Finish Rich”

On our recent trip to the Outer Banks, NC(OBX), I read or picked through David Bach’s “Start Late, Finish Rich” book. This book really applies to me, because other than several small retirement accounts while teaching, I have zilch. I had a 401K, but needed to liquidate it several years ago when I was faced with hard times.

Recently, I came across Trent’s review of “ The Automatic Millionaire” on The Simple Dollar, and much like Trent was I was initially disappointed when I started reading “Start Late, Finish Rich”, because of similarities with “The Automatic Millionaire”, which I also reviewed, but no where near as extensively as Trent. I too was a little disappointed at first, however, then instead of reading the book cover to cover, I decided to pick through the book and read chapters that I thought looked like they might benefit me.

Some Things I got out of “Start Late, Finish Rich”.

• Like the simple idea of buy a house and live in it for two years, buy another house, rent the first, and do it again. (pg 249)
• Going to 100 open houses within a ten mile radius to get a feel of the Real Estate market in your area. Due to this advice, Lizzie and I are going on the first round of open houses.
• Love the idea of taking advantage of the homeowners $250,000 for single or $500,000 tax free profit break. Makes sense to not live in the same house for 30 years and only be able to take advantage of it once.(pg 268)
• The Perfect Pie Approach(pg 118) is an approach to managing money, which is a three part portfolio. The first third is Real Estate, which includes but is not limited to your house(What it is worth minus what you owe). The second third is stocks, and the last third is bonds. David goes through each of the pieces of the financial pie and gives some suggestions on how to develop each of these sections. Lots of great info in this section.
• One particular bit of vocabulary that I was first exposed to in the “Perfect Pie Chapter” was the term REIT or Real Estate Investment Trust. This is a company that is in the business of owning, managing,and running real estate. David suggests investing in REIT’s to help build the real estate section of your three part portfolio. David also lists a couple of resources to start out your due dilligence before investing.
• David also poses a challenge to the reader(pg 168) in the chapter entitled “Who Says You Can’t Make More?” to reread this section of the book at least once a month for the next year. If I do this, David believes that I can increase my income from 10% in the next 30 days.
• Also liked Chapter 23 “You Started Late…But Your Kids Don’t Have To” where he gives us parents some advice about teaching our kids about finances.

Overall, I am still very pleased with “Start Late, Finish Rich”, even though there are many similarities to “The Automatic Millionaire”. But I suppose, if it was a good read once, it should be a good read twice.

Don’t be surprised to see more posts about events that will be derived from reading about these books, especially if Lizzie and I buy a new house within the next couple of months.

If you would like to benefit from David’s financial advice, visit my Amazon store and order a copy of “Start Late, Finish Rich” by clicking on the text link or by clicking on the picture of David Bach’s Book above.

Written by Pixelhead on June 3rd, 2007 with 22 comments.
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