Book Review: The Only Investment Guide You Will Ever Need

Big talk for such a small book

This book, written by Andrew Tobias, makes a bold claim: this is the only book you need to read about personal finance. That assumes you are not interested in the subject and just want to cover your bases and learn the basic information. If you are in the US, that might be true.

Much like JL Collins' The Simple Guide to Wealth, this is written by an American for Americans. The difference between the two is that The Only Investment Guide You'll Ever Need is written for a more general audience of normal people, whereas The Simple Guide to Wealth is a bit more technical. Both are written in an easy-going style and both are maybe 70% useful for non-Americans.

TOIGYEN is broken into three sections: Minimal Risk (talking about general personal financial principles in daily life), The Stock Market (talking about various products and approaches), and Family Planning (talking about wills, end of life, etc.). There are also some interesting appendices.

I found the first and third sections, and the appendices, quite interesting, and the second section deathly dull. Perhaps because it was full of US-specific information about educational savings plans, etc. I'm sure it's more interesting for people who are in the US and want to save for their children's college fees...

The book is a very gentle introduction to personal finance. There's a section where he tries to make the case for saving 10% of your income and maybe not going out and buying everything to keep up with the Joneses. Mister Money Mustache would be appalled, but for normal people this might be about as much as they can take.

My verdict: this is a readable and comprehensive book. If you are American, or want to give a book as a present to an American, this might be good as a beginners guide. If you follow the advice in this book you probably won't go wrong. For a more technical take on the same thing check out The Simple Guide to Wealth. If you're not American I'd probably recommend Millionaire Teacher instead.

Anyone else read The Only Investment Guide You'll Ever Need?

This post first ran on RetireJapan in November 2016