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 18 comments.
Read more articles on Financial and Investing and Real Estate and Uncategorized.

Importance of a Clean Credit Report

The benefits of a clean credit report and score are numerous. When looking to make a significant purchase such as a home or car – having a high credit score can make a huge difference in the interest rate on the mortgage or loan. If you have bad credit you can expect to pay thousands more over the course of the loan as compared to someone with clean credit. And it’s all too easy to go from a good credit score to a bad score – often not knowing why your score changed. Most people understand that not paying on their credit cards, loans and mortgages will negatively affect their credit score – the same goes for making habitually late payments. But, not everyone knows that every time you apply for a credit card – this negatively affects your credit score.

When the time comes that you are ready to get credit help to try and repair your credit – you need to be careful too. There are many unscrupulous companies out there offering bad and costly advice. There are companies that will offer the promise of a quick fix to repair and give you credit help. There are companies that will require payment for information that is readily available for free. It took some time for you to get into this situation and it will take some time to repair your bad credit – there aren’t any legitimate quick fixes.

The best way to begin to clean up your credit is to get sound advice from resources that understand the Federal statutes that are in place to protect the consumer. Also knowing that any legitimate and legal credit repair will take time to complete – but it can be done and is well worth the effort. A bad credit score can be very costly and once you understand how you got – learn how you can fix it.

Written by lizziebean on May 7th, 2007 with 6 comments.
Read more articles on Financial and Site Reviews and Uncategorized.