The Quick-Start Guide to Investing: Learn How to Invest Simpler, Smarter and Sooner, from Glen James & Nick Bradley, is packed with expert insights, real-world examples, activities and tips. Photo: Supplied.
We all need a copy of The Quick-Start Guide to Investing: Learn How to Invest Simpler, Smarter and Sooner to set us on the right path so we can achieve our financial goals by being straightforward, but also be shrewder about the way we go about it in a short timeframe.
To go from zero to investing and building the wealth you want, with reliable and sensible advice, is everyone’s wish, especially when it’s accompanied by comprehensive reasoning and evidence. The Quick-Start Guide to Investing is one book by two authors, a “sound investment”, an asset into knowledge, but more importantly, it’s all about investing in your future.
The authors are money experts. Glen James, bestselling author of Sort Your Money Out, and Nick Bradley, host of the popular this is investing podcast, show you just how easy investing really is.
James points out how easy it is to invest: download an investment app and … well, you now own part of 200 of the top Australian companies with only one transaction.
“You have some diversification so your risk is spread, and your record-keeping and tax reporting is taken care of each year,” he explains. “You might want to do this with as much money as you can, as regularly as you can, for as long as you can. And you might try not to sell – consider reinvesting the dividends/distributions instead. Over time you’ll build so much wealth you won’t know what to do with it all!”
According to James, this is one of the easiest ways to own a diversified portfolio of Australian shares.
“But there’s more you need to understand about building a diversified portfolio … and more about why you’re even investing. You see, when it comes to all things money and investing it can be a trap to fall into a solution mode right away.”
Your reasons for investing begin in Chapter 1. James acknowledges the easiest part of investing is the investing itself.
“The hardest part is continuing to be invested and removing yourself from the week-on-week, month-on-month processes, fads and distractions. That is, setting yourself up financially so that once money is committed to your investing account, it stays invested and isn’t withdrawn to pay for car insurance, holidays or other things.”
Bradley is candid about the downside from the global financial crisis.
“My fun run as an upstart investment adviser was met very quickly with a grave lesson from the stock market,” Bradley admits. “A ‘black swan’ event was on the horizon and, looking back, it seemed obvious that reckless spending on multiple mortgages on multiple houses at a time was going to be a big deal.
“In December 2007, everything started happening at once. The stock market was in free fall. In fact, it halted trading for a bit to slow down the panic … I was an investment adviser and I was scared. But we all survived.”
James and Bradley want us to be prosperous, to do it the right way and feel secure as they believe in building wealth for the long term. The authors give us some ideas on how to make and stick to a good plan: seek out solid companies that are liked and ascertain whether they are good investments or a flash in the pan. Then work out how to dig in, get your hands dirty and start building a fortune through the stock market.
On purpose, they have kept away from a deep level of technical and financial information and processes. It may also be one of the first investing books that does not detail “franking credits” for Australian shares and their treatment. They wrote The Quick-Start Guide to Investing for the person who has an interest in investing in shares and ETFs to become wealthy, and those who want a quick start and need a framework to follow.
You’ll learn what apps and brokers are out there, how to take advantage of compound interest, why index funds perform so well, and how ETFs and REITs work. Once you’ve nailed the basics, you’ll discover more advanced tactics – such as how you can grow your portfolio through trading, thematic investing and options.
James is a former financial adviser and creator of the Retire Right podcast, while Bradley is a lifelong investor and self-made millionaire. Their handbook will strengthen your money mindset as you learn to invest from real-world examples, activities and tips and achieve your financial goals faster. Discover how to kick-start your share-investing journey today … one that is … ‘’Simpler, Smarter and Sooner’’.
The Quick-Start Guide to Investing: Learn How to Invest Simpler, Smarter and Sooner, by Glen James & Nick Bradley, Wiley, $32.95
