Category: Book Reviews

Investing Through the Inferno

A midyear check-in light on the data, some charts and how it all feels.

There’s no way we’re already halfway through 2025—you’ll just have to bear with me as I run it back to April. You remember her, right? A time before it was 90 degrees everyday, before I thought I would burst into flames right on the concrete.

April was the beginning of my tour, Nick Cave in Boston, St. Vincent in New Haven, pour me another tequila soda. Then May in Texas for one suffocating minute, then the madhouse, then the grave. Just kidding—June was another story, but we did it to death, avoided the rain and the heat almost took us out completely. The Kills killed it three times until we prayed for mercy from the sun. No longer our god, we watched it sink behind the stage while the heat tore through Queens of the Stone Age’s set. We don’t even have to talk about how much my credit card statement was after all that, you get the idea!

Net worth & portfolio in the green

April was also when the tariffs brought everyone to me, asking what they should do with their investments. I told my friends, “Don’t look at your accounts,” and then opened every single one of mine to calculate my net worth as of the end of March. My strategy won’t be stopped by the nonsense! At the end of June, my Charles Schwab brokerage account is not only back to where it was before the announcement, but it has now surpassed that amount. I said, “Everything will be fine in, like, two months,” and thankfully, the numbers didn’t make a fool of me like they usually do!

Despite the ongoing destruction of the Earth and the people who live here, my net worth is increasing and my portfolio is profitable. I haven’t been checking my investments as often because I know it doesn’t matter what they look like now. All that matters is I’m keeping my money in the market so it will continue making me more money.

My portfolio of sustainable exchange-traded funds (ETFs) is performing well. When I checked their grades on As You Sow as of the end of June, almost all the ETFs had A’s and B’s. The Amplify Etho Climate Leadership U.S. ETF’s (ETHO) gender equality grade improved from F to B, removing it from the probation it was placed on after my last review. My Schwab U.S. REIT ETF (SCHH) maintains its gender equality grade of C—come on real estate sector, let’s get that up! One of my latest additions, the Stance Sustainable Beta ETF (CHGX), is now on probation with a gender equality grade of F. If the grade doesn’t improve by my next review in six months, the ETF will be removed from my portfolio. Since no changes are needed, my portfolio will remain untouched until then.

Finance charts? Sure, why not?

I have some new resources to share with you all, in the form of charts! I promise I’ll keep it light, but if you’re looking for a free website to track your investments and their performance, FinanceCharts.com is a helpful place for beginners to start. Here’s the Schwab U.S. REIT ETF’s price over the last year. I can see exactly when the beginning of April sent the holding downward, and I can see its steady climb back up to around where it was in March. I can also see that the ETF has some more recovery ahead if it wants to get up to its last high price from September 2024. The charts are interactive and you can select the time period you want to analyze. I don’t usually do much price analysis with my individual investments, but if I ever need more insight, FinanceCharts.com is waiting.

A line graph showing the price movement of the Schwab U.S. REIT ETF (SCHH) over one year, with data points indicating an upward trend and various fluctuations.

Source: FinanceCharts.com.

A few months ago, I read the book “Stikky Stock Charts” by Laurence Holt. For full disclosure, I was sent this book for free so I would review it. You can read my full review on Goodreads, but I found “Stikky Stock Charts” a helpful introduction to using charts. I was able to understand the purpose of them with very simple descriptions of different chart trends. The book itself is quite image-heavy, with a chart on almost every page. It covers significant historical events, like the meme-stock craze, and how certain stocks reacted at the time. This grounds investing in the real world, where it belongs. “Stikky Stock Charts” will be another resource to consult when I’m looking at a potential ETF for my portfolio.

Putting my investments on snooze

AAII taught me well, I can sleep at night. I don’t think about my money much anymore. Of course, I want to save more of it, but I also have to stay realistic. Everything keeps getting more expensive. My life is expanding, allowing more experiences in. This is the life I’ve been working toward, and I get to see the dividends—both literal and figurative—that are being paid out.

Here’s to your portfolio going up in the second half of 2025. I won’t wait this long to check in with you again, but I will wait for the temperature to fall a bit!

Learn more about my investing strategy:
New Year, New Investments, Same Strategy
PRISM Step 4: Selecting and Managing Your Investments
Midyear Portfolio Review and Finding an ESG Benchmark

Sign up below to be notified by email when I post something new! If you do not have a WordPress account, you will need to create one.

I read this so you don’t have to! Nice Girls Don’t Get Rich by Lois Frankel

This book review exists thanks to former AAII finance writer Matt Bajkowski who fished “Nice Girls Don’t Get Rich” by Lois Frankel, Ph.D., out of a bargain bin for $1, handed it to me and said, “For the blog!” The first thing to know about this book is it was published in 2005, so it’s full of antiquated advice—much of it geared toward married women. However, I thought it would still be a helpful exercise to see what was being touted to women in the early 2000s and if I could learn anything new that I haven’t from the many other finance books that now exist by women, for women.

Frankel covers women and wealth, getting in the money game, taking charge of your financial life, spending your money wisely, learning money basics, saving and investing for future wealth, maximizing your financial potential at work and playing it smart with your money. Chapter one encourages women to define what “rich” means to them. Frankel believes that women are given conflicting messages about money: We are told to spend wisely and save what we can but also be nurturing and helpful to others, creating a “double bind.” To get us out of this double standard, she points out another, “Whereas a woman may be called a ‘rich bitch,’ there are no similarly pejorative terms to describe a man.”

A table in the book presents the differences between how men and women use money. According to the table, men use money to prepare for the future, while women use money to create a lifestyle in the present. Likewise, men ask for “what they want” but women ask for “what they think they deserve.” Though these are a bit absolutist and don’t apply to everyone, I personally think this moment from Mad Men shows the difference even better!


The first chapter also has a self-assessment to determine where you are at on your personal finance journey. Each statement fits into a category that corresponds to a chapter of the book. For instance, #9 is part of the “taking charge of your financial life” category: “I have a plan in place for how to survive financially if something catastrophic were to happen (sudden loss of a job, loss of a spouse or partner, etc.).” Adding up the true statements in each category leads to a total score. My score of 24 landed me in the middle: “You’ve made a good start, but you’re nowhere near the finish line. Focus on those areas where you still have difficulty with becoming financially independent. You’ll find that small changes pay big dividends.”

I guess by 2005 standards, I’m slacking in the personal finance department (probably because I don’t balance my checkbook!). But I’d say a lot has changed since then, even if the low-rise jeans have cycled back into rotation. My higher scores in the “spending your money wisely” and “saving and investing for future wealth” categories signal that I’m on the right track.

It wouldn’t be an early 2000s book without a whisper of “the media” that was beginning to take over our lives. Frankel’s “Sex and the City” reference was a welcome surprise, “If you were to be the media’s ideal representation of the perfect woman, you would be thin, blond, and twenty-five. Kind of like the women on Sex and the City. The only stock you would own would be a ‘stockpile’ of Manolo Blahnik shoes!”

Speaking of women and bad spending habits, the chapter about spending your money wisely has pages upon pages covering the same problem in different fonts: “emotionally driven purchases,” “impulse buying” and “guilt shopping trips.” It almost reads like her publisher wanted her to fill out this chapter with more mistakes women were making to make us all feel worse about ourselves! We have a lot more clarity now around the way women spend money, which practically stimulates the entire economy. Women using their money to create a lifestyle in the present doesn’t have to be a bad thing for personal finance, it just needs to be balanced out with more of an eye on the future.

The discussion I found most fruitful was around giving and how women are taught to avoid being greedy: “Ask yourself whether you have what you want, what you deserve, and what others have. If the word greedy comes to mind, exorcise it from your vocabulary. Women who worry that they’re just being greedy are usually the last ones who should be worrying about it. Greedy people don’t think of themselves as greedy. They simply insist on receiving everything they think is due them—which is usually more than they deserve in actuality, and that’s why we call them greedy!”

As a chronic overthinker who has been told “Wow, you think about a lot of things,” I like to apply this lesson to other aspects of my life. If I’m consciously thinking about something, it means I care about it and I’m willing to allocate my own precious time and brainpower to it. On the flip side, it means that someone who doesn’t think about those things probably doesn’t care or doesn’t have the capacity to handle them. In terms of money, this would mean they are blindly taking advantage of a system that already works for them—they never had to think twice (or even once!).

As a Jewish woman, Frankel also discusses tzedakah and using money to do good: “I’m a huge believer in sharing one’s wealth—whether it’s a wealth of time, money, or resources. In fact, in Jewish households there’s often something called a tzedakah—a small box into which you put money for the less fortunate. Interestingly, the word tzedakah is the Hebrew term for charity … meaning justice or fairness. So it’s not necessarily true that you share money because you are altruistic; rather, you feel it’s the right or just thing to do.”

Despite the overload of anti-shopping advice and some old URLs that no longer go anywhere, I enjoyed seeing how all of Frankel’s ideas fit together. “Nice Girls Don’t Get Rich” emphasizes the importance of financial thinking for women to address the causes instead of the symptoms, but it leans heavily on the idea that women can be rich if they just act a little more like men. I’ve read enough books that discount this idea entirely, so I don’t want to put too much anachronistic pressure on the book itself. If it weren’t for this book and Frankel’s work, women wouldn’t have had this stepping stone to get where we are today in the world of money.

Shop my investing library at Bookshop.org!

Sign up below to be notified by email when I post something new! If you do not have a WordPress account, you will need to create one.

I read this so you don’t have to! Financial Feminist by Tori Dunlap

“This is going to sound harsh, but you literally cannot afford not investing.”
—Tori Dunlap

When I started planning this blog back in 2021, Tori Dunlap’s “Financial Feminist” podcast was the first resource I found that was speaking directly to me. Through her company Her First $100K, Dunlap has made it her mission to educate women on investing and empower them to take control of their finances. As someone with the privilege to grow up with parents who taught her about money (and had enough money to constructively talk about), Dunlap made it her prerogative to take up space as a woman in an industry dominated by men, providing information catered to women. It’s not just a title; by definition, she is a financial feminist.

These days, I tend to consume podcasts more for entertainment, so having access to Dunlap’s brain in the form of the book “Financial Feminist” was exactly what this overstimulated millennial needed. The book covers the emotions of money, spending, making a financial game plan, debt, investing, earning and living a financial feminist lifestyle. I found the chapters on the emotions of money and investing to be the most fruitful, but if you are just starting to get your finances together, this book has everything you need.

In the first chapter, Dunlap discusses how women learning about money is a direct threat to the patriarchy: “The patriarchy realizes that when a woman gains the knowledge to build wealth, soon it will have no control over her life or decisions. Her financial independence is a threat to the status quo. So, the patriarchy demands we tax ourselves. It weaponizes our altruism. Recent research suggests that women are expected to behave altruistically and, given that they disproportionately occupy societal roles involving caregiving and subservience, are punished for deviating from that norm to a much greater extent than men are. Thus, women may internalize altruism as their instinctive response, even at their own expense.”

Even if a woman doesn’t identify as a caregiver, the roles that have been established in the body politic dictate that if she doesn’t pour her life and money into helping people, she is selfish. Meanwhile, there is no expectation for men to fill this role. They are taught to get a good, high-paying job and let the rest fall into place. I wonder if this is partly where my passion for donating came from, this inherent need to … just care about other people? Wow, revolutionary!

Dunlap continues that women “need to challenge men’s gender roles in the process, or we’ll be left with a society of individualistic assholes where no one cares about anyone. Financial feminism isn’t just about a woman’s right to decide what she does with her money, without the current socialized pressure to exist in service of others. It’s also about each of us demanding that the people who have access to the most money (i.e., men) actually start thinking about their existence in service of others.”

Men have taken advantage of women’s physical and emotional labor for centuries. Ever since women joined the workforce during World War II and were given access to “the world of men,” they have been shifting their role in society. No longer are women forced to be caregivers, secretaries or teachers in service of others. Now women can, quite literally, do anything they want for work (while still getting paid less than men). However, men haven’t had any reason to change their societal roles along with us; some men still expect their women coworkers to serve as their secretaries, believing that all women have this need to serve, even if that is not in their job description. Instead of having women “lean in” and act more like men in the workplace, Dunlap believes this should be flipped, and men should level the playing field by doing the emotional labor that women do every day. Now that’s feminism, baby!

In the words of Bobbie Barrett from Mad Men:

When it comes to spending, women are more often shamed for spending money. I’ve seen countless videos of women hiding their spending habits from their husbands, getting rid of the evidence before he comes home, thinking this is peak humor. Instead, it makes me physically ill! Dunlap says, “The real kicker here is that the spending power of women drives the majority of the economy. We’ve been marketed to since we were young girls, a constant narrative to get us to spend money … Women are the most marketed to but then are shamed for spending!”

Not only are women trained from a young age to consume, told that spending money on ourselves will improve our lives, we are stimulating the economy as I write this. Somewhere, right now, a woman is getting her nails done, and I’m sure they look incredible! By doing so, she is contributing to someone else’s living wage. Another woman is buying something overpriced at Anthropologie just to feel something. Me? I’m just trying to finish this blog post, but I’ll probably buy some collagen gummies I don’t actually need at Target later (they taste really good 😆).

But seriously, if it weren’t for women spending money to be respected by society, there would be no $580 billion beauty industry, and there would be no stocks for companies like Target, Ulta or Sally Beauty. These are stocks that I’ve read news about in some of AAII’s model portfolios—men spend money in the beauty industry in their own way, knowing that it’s a lucrative investment, and then women are shamed for carrying the economy on their backs. What’s the difference? Both are investments: Men are making money on that money, while women are investing the money in themselves first, and investing in another person or establishment for those beauty services.

Dunlap does a great job of cutting through the patriarchal, financial jargon in this book to simplify how we think about investing. She says, “When it comes down to it, investing is simply putting money into financial products … with the expectation that they’ll make us more money.” She also squashes anyone’s fear about losing money in their investments, “Investing for the long term—twenty or more years—raises your prospects of seeing a return on your investment to 100 percent … In fact, during every single twenty-year period (yes, even during the Great Recession), investors made money. Long-term investing—steady, patient, consistent—does not lose. It never has.” It was great to see such an important and frank discussion of long-term investing after hearing about it for years at AAII (just a tinge of confirmation bias here!).

So far, I was loving this book, but to my dismay, there wasn’t much airtime given to environmental, social and governance (ESG) investing. Having a sustainable investing strategy, to me, is the most financially feminist thing you can do with your money. Not only did it make investing so much easier for me when I was starting out by narrowing the field of investments I could consider, it also cut through a lot of the patriarchal bullshit I knew I would have to deal with as a woman starting to invest. It gave me the ability to say, “No, I’m not going to invest like every man has told me to. I’m not going to just throw all of my money into an index fund that’s filled to the brim with companies that couldn’t care less about me, my community, the earth and our well-being. I’m going to do things my way.”

As Dunlap says, “We work to increase our income and get paid fairly: for our mental health, our financial goals, and our own stability, and to make society better.” Being financially independent isn’t about making the most money in the world (millionaires and billionaires are gross, and they should definitely pay dividends). Ultimately, investing is about making your money work for you so that you can live your life without worrying about your next paycheck. A girl can dream!

More on Women in Finance

Shop my investing library at Bookshop.org!

Sign up below to be notified by email when I post something new! If you do not have a WordPress account, you will need to create one.

I read this so you don’t have to! Investing at Level3 by James Cloonan

“The failure of others to take and be faithful to a long view toward investing is what provides the opportunity for you. Don’t let it slip by.”
—James B. Cloonan, Ph.D.

It took me a while to feel ready for it, but I finally read AAII founder James Cloonan’s career-spanning book, “Investing at Level3.” When I started at AAII in 2017, the book was already in the hands of many investors and has been updated with fresh data a few times since. Cloonan demystifies and denounces various theories that the financial industry has historically relied on to conclude that the individual investor doesn’t need a ton of bells and whistles to become a successful manager of their portfolio.

I admired Cloonan for his quick wit. One time when we were chatting, he referenced Oscar Wilde’s “The Picture of Dorian Gray.” I’m sure he saw my eyes light up at the mention; I used to carry my laughably large, 700-page copy of “The Collected Oscar Wilde” around the hallways in high school because it was too big to fit in my bag! Though he founded AAII, he didn’t like too much public attention (introverts unite!). I felt a kinship with him in this regard and respected that he didn’t feel the need to fit into a mold because of his title.

In the introduction, Cloonan outlines the book’s objectives: 1) To show how most of the investing analysis used today doesn’t cut it for individual investors’ returns; 2) To provide alternatives to these theories that are based in reality; 3) To define and control “real risk” for the long-term investor; and 4) To create a structure for these ideas and empower the individual to ignore the unhelpful noise from the investing industry.

I’m sure you’re wondering by now: “If this book is about Level3 investing, what are the other two levels?” Cloonan defined Level 1 investing as an investor who is acting purely on emotion and “following different advice at different times.” An example of Level 1 investing is everyone who was using Robinhood during the meme-stock craze of 2021. At least it was entertaining! Level 2 investing is the industry standard: a portfolio with 60% in large-cap stocks and 40% in bonds. Officially, Level3 investing uses reality-based instead of theoretical models to increase the individual investor’s returns and retirement income over the long term.

I found the thread of risk that Cloonan weaved through this book to be the most interesting part. Risk is an investing concept that, though I’ve read about it a thousand times, doesn’t register as anything specific in my mind. It all started to make sense when Cloonan wrote, “Every book and article on investing is telling you how to measure risk and the measures don’t make sense in the real world.” Essentially, volatility can be defined as “‘the likelihood of (returns) shifting quickly and unpredictably,’” while risk is “‘the chance of (financial) injury, damage, or loss.’” Volatility seems to be part of the investing process and is more important to the short-term trader than the long-term investor, but risk is more of a bad outcome of investing.

For the long-term investor, Cloonan concludes that risk doesn’t necessarily need to be measured, “we just have to avoid it as much as possible.” He also notes, “In fact, because volatility can add to the return on investment, it can actually reduce real risk. This is because over time additional return will continually increase the value of the portfolio until even in the worst-case scenario the portfolio will be able to maintain a higher value than its lower-return alternative. This is real risk reduction … In short, the long-term investor has almost no risk.”

Two asset classes that Cloonan believed did not fit the Level3 strategy are long-term bonds and international stocks. His case for avoiding long-term bonds “is that they have lower returns over the long run and they provide no significant risk reduction for the long-term investor.” I was relieved to not have to think about bonds because I still don’t understand what they are anyway 😂! Cloonan wasn’t entirely opposed to international stocks, he just didn’t think they should be used purely for diversification purposes.

“Investing at Level3” solidified many of AAII’s teachings I’ve consumed over the years and added more depth to my understanding of risk—it’s nice to know I have one less thing to worry about for my own long-term investing strategy! There was also great attention given to an aggressive investing approach, meaning a portfolio that is mostly allocated to stocks. Cloonan writes, “Going to a more conservative strategy has significant cost, and that cost must be compared with the likely loss from such a scenario.” With this, Cloonan inspires the long-term individual investor to take more “risk” by only investing in stocks, as long as they can stomach it when things turn sour. Here’s to Cloonan’s decades of dedication to educating investors and taking alternative routes to get there.

Shop my investing library at Bookshop.org!

Sign up below to be notified by email when I post something new! If you do not have a WordPress account, you will need to create one.

I read this so you don’t have to! The ESG Investing Handbook

Back in May after AAII Journal editor Charles Rotblut and I interviewed Larry Swedroe about environmental, social and governance (ESG) investing, publisher Harriman House reached out to us with copies of “The ESG Investing Handbook,” edited by Becky O’Connor. The book features interviews with a variety of U.K.-based asset managers and provides an overview of the global ESG investing landscape.

The book covers investing for the three different components of ESG, the performance of ESG investments, different ESG strategies, regulations and ratings, grassroots and investor engagement and what the future holds for ESG investors.

While there are a variety of opinions shared in the book that sometimes contradict each other, the introduction begins with an air of urgency and uncertainty, saying that “the global crisis is now so critical that only positive impact investments focused on solutions will do. According to this view, we don’t have time to engage with the old-world fossil fuel companies and they must be left behind completely. But in building an approach that seeks to be ‘good only,’ we may also be in danger of creating another fallacy—that positive impact is 100% perfect.”

In one interview, the Baillie Gifford Global Stewardship team discusses how “it is tempting to only invest in companies and funds that already have a positive impact, but the world doesn’t work that way.” Of course, we know that investments are not all green or all brown, and ESG investments’ ratings can change throughout their existence. But personally, I still struggle with the idea that I should be investing in a company or fund because of the promise of more sustainability in the future. It’s like getting into a relationship with someone who says, “Give me like five years to get my shit together.” That doesn’t sound like a good use of my time or money!

My favorite parts of the book are the helpful lists of sustainable companies. I’ll be revisiting these investing ideas when I add more money to my brokerage account in the new year! Some companies include Beyond Meat Inc. (BYND) for reducing its land use and carbon dioxide emissions, HP Inc. (HPQ) for increasingly using recycled plastic in production and Enphase Energy Inc. (ENPH) for its development of renewable energy products. Though I won’t be investing in individual stocks, these examples give me some direction on what funds to look for.

The figure below shows the sustainable development goals that were presented by the United Nations (U.N.) in 2017. The different values show “which of the goals have attracted the most investment—and which goals asset managers have struggled to meet.”

This provides more ideas for sustainable investments, but also shows where we need to do better or are otherwise lacking.

The book also provides some color on the fashion industry and its horrors. Not only do many of the top brands treat their employees like modern-day slaves—certainly not passing the social element of ESG—I learned that it takes “10,000 litres of water to make a pair of jeans” and “two billion people in the world live somewhere with inadequate water supply. The fashion industry relies on 98 million tonnes of non-renewable resources every year.” This is an egregious use of natural resources that are required for humanity to survive, and even more reason to shop second hand whenever possible.

Thankfully, “Regulations elsewhere are beginning to take root. In New York, the home of Sex and the City and Manolo Blahnik shoes, the Fashion Sustainability and Social Accountability Act was presented in January 2022, which could make New York ‘the first state in the country to pass legislation that will effectively hold the biggest brands in fashion to account for their role in climate change.’” When I looked up the status of this act, I noticed that it had yet to be passed. Legislation like this is vital, but the government works so slowly that by the time this act becomes a law, it may already be too late to reverse the damage. Maybe Carrie Bradshaw could pull some strings? 😏

I found the most interesting chapter to be the one about governance, the G in ESG. Prior to reading, I didn’t have much information on what governance really meant for a company. Essentially, governance is what connects the E and S: “How well a company meets environmental and social targets will ultimately come down to the strength of the governance—the ‘glue’ between a business and its stakeholders.”

When asked about how to know when good governance is working, Federated Hermes Ltd. chief risk and compliance officer Keith Davies says, “Ultimately, the key to demonstrating good governance is the success of the firm and its ability to deliver an appropriate strategy effectively, safely and without major issues or events. This includes showing progress on key ESG objectives—with clear and consistent reporting against target milestones.” Governance grounds the ESG strategy in evidence, measurables and actual impact to hold companies accountable for their actions and audit their sustainable progress.

If you are interested in investing sustainably, this book provides a great place to start with your research. I will definitely be returning to it for guidance and inspiration whenever I feel frustrated about my lack of ESG investing options.

Happy holidays, I’ll check in with you in the new year!

Shop my investing library at Bookshop.org!

Sign up below to be notified by email when I post something new! If you do not have a WordPress account, you will need to create one.

I read this so you don’t have to! The Behavioral Investor by Daniel Crosby

“The moral of the story: get a lobotomy and get rich.”
—Daniel Crosby

Since I now have money invested in the market, it’s time to face my humanity. Behavioral finance studies how psychology affects investors, and in “The Behavioral Investor” psychologist and asset manager Daniel Crosby investigates the ways in which our brains interfere with our investing success.

AAII Journal editor Charles Rotblut interviewed Crosby in 2019 and made me much more interested in how investors “ought to drive out emotion at every turn.” Crosby covers sociology, how investing affects the brain, physiology; ego, conservatism, attention, emotion and how investors can overcome all four; and how behavioral investing is rules-based. Each chapter ends with a “What’s the big idea?” section that summarizes main concepts.

Every time I go to check my Schwab account just to take a quick peek at my investments, I hear Vanguard founder John Bogle’s voice in my head: “When you get those regular retirement plan statements … don’t open them. Don’t peek. And when you do peek … be sure you have a cardiologist standing by. Because you will be so amazed at how much money you’ve accumulated over 20 or 30 or 40 or 50 years that you won’t believe it. You’ll probably faint, or something worse, and there will be a doctor there to revive you.”

I saw this sentiment echoed in “The Behavioral Investor,” as I suspected it would be: “Greg Davies shows that if you check your account daily, you’ll experience a loss just over 41% of the time. Pretty scary when we consider that human nature makes losses feel about twice as bad as gains feel good! Look once every five years and you would have only experienced a loss about 12% of the time and those peeking every 12 years would never have seen a loss. Twelve years may seem like a long time, but it’s worth remembering that the investment lifetime for most individuals is likely in the range of around 40 to 60 years.”

I used to think this was a more complicated idea, but it simply means that if you don’t look at your account constantly, you’re less likely to see your account in the red. I’ve read enough AAII articles—specifically on behavioral finance—to know that my emotions aren’t going to change the direction of the market, so why even get them involved? Don’t my emotions have enough work to do already? I’ll save it all up for 20, 30 or 40 years and then let it all out when I see how much money I’ve made!

Crosby also provides a helpful lesson on diversification: “Left to our own devices, we create portfolios in our own image. Americans buy American stocks. Steel workers are overweight manufacturing, while financiers double down on bank stocks. The timid fail to allocate to equities and the overconfident hold large positions in single stocks. Like an old married couple, our holdings start to look just like us, and there is great danger in that similarity.” He also encourages investors to avoid mutual fund manager Peter Lynch’s famous strategy of “buying what you know” in order to combat the tendency to make our portfolios “overweight [in] what we know.” Instead, he counsels us to “put in place a plan that diversifies across geographies and asset classes, both familiar and foreign.”

To really drive this strategy home, Crosby says, “By buying a diversified basket of index funds that covers a variety of asset classes, know nothing investors (who often know a great deal) are likely to beat more than 90% of active managers and have time to focus on pursuits more meaningful than compounding wealth.” I like those chances, especially as a “know nothing” beginning investor! (OK, maybe I know like three things now.)

Though Crosby doesn’t say specifically how often I should be checking my Schwab account, I’ll probably limit it to once a week as I start and then build up to once a month. I still want to know how my investments are doing, even if it’s just to say:

If you’re just getting started in investing, I wouldn’t recommend for this book to be number one on your reading list. I’m glad I worked up to it after reading more books on the basics, because if it was the first investing book I picked up I wouldn’t have been able to apply the lessons as well as I can now.

Stay tuned as I grow my investing library and read more books so that you don’t have to!

Read more book reviews next!

Broke Millennial by Erin Lowry
Financial Feminist by Tori Dunlap
Nice Girls Don’t Get Rich by Lois Frankel

Shop my investing library at Bookshop.org!

Sign up below to be notified by email when I post something new! If you do not have a WordPress account, you will need to create one.

I read this so you don’t have to! Clever Girl Finance by Bola Sokunbi

I found “Clever Girl Finance” by Bola Sokunbi when searching for beginning investor books, and I hesitated before buying it. Though the world of finance is dominated by men, particularly white men, I wondered if financial literacy needed to be gendered at all. Sokunbi answered this question within the first few pages of the book, saying that “despite [women] earning more than ever before, we are paid significantly less for doing the same work as our male counterparts in nearly every single occupation and industry. On average, women earn about 20% less than men … On top of that, we are living longer than men by an average of 5–10 years, which means we actually need more money for our financial well-being in retirement than men will.”

This reminded me of a comment on a video by YouTuber Elena Taber covering investing for beginners:

While reading, I did find it easier to learn from someone with similar life experiences as me. I had a feeling that nothing was being left out that might apply to me specifically.

Sokunbi covers your money mindset, how to get your money organized, budgeting, debt and loans, investing, credit, protecting yourself, making more money and key financial actions. Each section has helpful “Take Action” checklists with activities you can do to understand your relationship to money based on how you grew up, what you want to accomplish with your money, tracking your spending, creating a budget, getting your student loans under control, outlining a retirement savings plan and more.

I was most drawn to the chapter on budgeting and saving, especially how much is recommended to have in emergency savings. Sokunbi mentions budgeting apps as a simple way to start, but cautions “it can detach you from closely monitoring your finances if you don’t make a conscious effort to do so.” She says that you should have “three to six months of your essential living expenses in emergency savings. This includes living expenses related to your housing, transportation, and food needs” and the range is dependent on if you’re partnered (three months) or single (six months).

Regarding where to keep your emergency savings, Sokunbi suggests that they should be “easily accessible and liquid so you can get to it when you need it without having to wait and without having to worry about how financial markets are performing. Therefore, it shouldn’t be tied up in investments like the stock market or in real estate. An interest-bearing savings account or a certificate of deposit are good places to keep this money.”

But what I really appreciated about this breakdown is how Sokunbi highlights the behavioral aspect of saving, “You also want to make sure that you are keeping your emergency savings separate from your other financial goals. Blending your savings goals together can get confusing, and in the event you have to use your savings, taking the money out of a comingled account can make you feel like you are setting yourself back with your other goals as well.”

Though I could take or leave the gendered jokes about handbags and shoes (Carrie Bradshaw would love this book), overall I found Sokunbi’s writing style extremely informative and easily accessible. The “Take Action” sections are the most valuable part of the book, and I’ll be returning to them throughout my investing discoveries.

Shop my investing library at Bookshop.org!

Sign up below to be notified by email when I post something new! If you do not have a WordPress account, you will need to create one.

I read this so you don’t have to! Investing 101 by Michele Cagan

I started reading at such a young age that it feels like I’ve been reading since I came into consciousness. Before I started reading by myself, my dad would read the Wizard of Oz series to me. But it was when he started the Harry Potter series that I took the first book from him one night and said, “I want to read this one.”

There were nights I would go to bed at 4:00 a.m. just to finish a book, on a school night no less! Nothing and no one could stop me, not my mom, my young eyes or the butt crack of dawn on the horizon. Reading is my preferred way to learn new things, so if you’re not a big reader, or don’t have the time for a whole book, you’ve come to the right place because I’ll be reading investing books so that you don’t have to!

“Investing 101” by Michele Cagan, CPA, is a book that my uncle gave me when I started working at AAII. Instead of reading it, I put it in my closet and never looked at it again—until now!

“Investing 101” offers a ton of entry point options for beginners. Cagan covers basic economics, stocks, bonds, mutual funds, exchange-traded funds (ETFs), styles of investing, investing in real estate, currency and commodity trading, education and retirement planning, socially responsible investing, how to create your investment portfolio and advice from professionals. If any of those aspects of investing interest you, Cagan does a good job of explaining things plainly but factually. If you click on any of the links in this paragraph, they will take you to a place on AAII.com where you can begin learning more about these investing ideas.

I was on alert for any descriptions of investing concepts that might help me build a portfolio, and Cagan introduces the concept of diversification. Diversification is an investing technique that acts as a safety net against how the economy might perform: “Different types of industries perform better during specific stages in the economic cycle. For example, some industries take off when the economy is expanding, while others actually profit more when the economy is in a slump. That means that investors can always find a way to profit in the markets, as long as they know where to look.”

Instead of trying to take a wild guess when certain investments will do well, diversifying what you hold in a portfolio means you won’t have to stay up at night thinking about how the economy will affect your investments. Instead, you can stay awake plagued by thoughts about the end of the world!

Some great advice Cagan included that I’m going to follow is to “avoid duplication. It is a waste of your investment monies to own multiple funds with identical objectives. It’s best to own just one fund in any particular fund category.” She also notes, “However, keep in mind that it’s usually not advisable to have more than six or seven mutual funds at a given time, or you can start to counterbalance your efforts to construct a strong portfolio.”

I gravitated toward the chapter on mutual funds and ETFs since investing in individual stocks right now is still intimidating for me. I think I could easily follow these guidelines that Cagan provides and start investing in mutual funds and ETFs. I’ll report back on how that goes!

Shop my investing library at Bookshop.org!

Sign up below to be notified by email when I post something new! If you do not have a WordPress account, you will need to create one.