This is review of the book I have just completed reading How to be Your Own Financial Planner in 10 Steps: Master Your Financial Life 2 by Manish Chauhan of JagoInvestor.
This is review of the book I have just completed reading How to be Your Own Financial Planner in 10 Steps: Master Your Financial Life 2 by Manish Chauhan of JagoInvestor. I have also reviewed his Jago Investor book on Personal Finance.
I like reading books by Manish Chauhan because of the simplicity of putting things together and this 150+ page book is no different. It is written in very simple and easy to understand language so anybody from non-finance background can grasp the concept of how to be your own financial planner.
The Review
The book focuses on the introductory aspects of how to plan your own personal finance and so I think this book is for people who are just starting with the financial planning and don’t want to be paying fees to financial planners to help them get started.
As the title of the book suggest, the book is divided into 10 chapters as 10 steps with 1 bonus chapter.
Chapter 1: Optimize Life Insurance Policies → This chapter focuses on making your insurance policy portfolio and then gives you a comparison chart with return on your policy compared to dumping your existing policy and then opt for term insurance and invest the rest in some fixed deposits and PPF. If you want to be reading about why every financial blogger says something bad about investing in Insurance, you can read
Chapter 2: Optimize an Clean Up Other investments → Second chapter of the book focuses on cleaning up your bank account, credit cards, mutual funds, and stocks. After reading this chapter I realized that I just manage too many credit cards and bank accounts. I have planned to close on the ICICI Bank account as I had that account solely for ICICIDirect and I am not using it any more for long time.
Chapter 3: Health Insurance → Third chapter deals with health insurance aspect of life and what you should be looking into your health insurance provider. I think this is something that I have been avoiding for quite some time now but I think it is right time that I plan for health insurance ASAP. The calculation shown in the book suggest it is better to opt for health insurance early and definitely before the age of 45 and so though I have some time now but will do it ASAP.
Chapter 4: Emergency Fund Planning →Chapter 4 focuses on needs for emergency funds as well as where you should and should not park your money for emergencies and what should be your ideal amount in crisis situations.
Chapter 5: Short/Long Term Goal Planning →Talks about your future financial goals and how to go about achieving them. Manish has explained things with example like if you would like open a restaurant after n years and what should be your plan or planning for a down payment for your house. According to me this chapter is too concise and should be more elaborated with how to plan for various expenses like planning for your marriage or planning for buying a car etc.
Chapter 6: Start Your Retirement Planning → As the name of the chapter suggests this chapter deals with how to plan your retirements and have charts to help you plan your retirement based on your expenses currently and what they will be later. Depending on your requirements for funds, suggests where you should be investing as well.
Chapter 7: Estate Planning → No this is not about planning Real Estate Investment but it is about planning smooth and hassle free transfer of one’s assets, properties and also liabilities into family members as you want. This chapter explains about importance of nomination, Wills as well as clarifies lot of misconception among retail investors about nominations and wills. This chapter covers almost every basic aspect of nominations and will.
Chapter 8: Be ready with a Great Credit Report and Score → Credit score is being used these days for Credit card and loan approval and so it makes much sense to be having a good credit score but then this chapter focus more on what is credit score and not about how you can get a very good credit score. This chapter gave me the idea about how to get a great credit score topic that I will soon be writing.
Chapter 9: Debt Repayment → Debt repayment is one of the bigger aspect of financial planning and financial freedom and only 10 page on Debt Repayment is something that according to me does not cover most aspects of debt repayment. Points like high interest debt compared to short-term debts as well as moving your debt from high interest like credit card loan, personal loan to low interest like making it a home loan or secured loan.
Chapter 10: Organize your Financial Life → Talks more about bookkeeping for your financial products and how to organize your financial documents.
Bonus Chapter: How to Be Ready for the future → This chapter focus on helping you choose better financial products which I think should have been part of the main chapters.
Final Thoughts
This book is more about introduction to personal finance and is ideal for those who are starting to managing their personal finances.
Update: The book is available at 34% discount rate. Grab your copy now at FlipKart.com.
Update: Manish has agreed to give one free copy of his book to my blog readers. To grab your free copy of the book share your views about this review in comments below and I will select one reader in the next 24-48 hours from the comments who get his/her free copy delivered at his/her doorstep.
Winner of the Free Book Contest is Sushil. I would like to thank everyone who have participated.
Sir
Thanks a Lot. I m very much excited to read the book after knowing that i hace won
Thanks again
The pleasure is all mine.
I have not read the book yet, but the thought which are coming to my mind that there is no need to read such books, but just subscibe to Sir Shabbir Bhimani’s DIY(I am yet not subscriber) and apply just little common sense, when you make money, automatically to will come to know how to manage your money. I have read only sample chapters of DIY and ready to make money ( certainly not in trading but in investing).
Harinder Singh, glad you liked the sample chapters.
I love your writings and your ideas about stocks analysis. Jagoinvestor of Manish Chauhan too is my favorite blog. Your review of the book gives complete idea about the book. I would love to read book written by Manish.
Regards
khalid
Khalid, I also like your blog as well.
Dear Shabir,
good reveiw. I(had not read any manish book ,but through ur reveiw I have come to know this is a must read book
Glad to see you liked my review RAJ KUMAR
Dear shabbir,
I have gone through the reviews about financial planner thoroughly. I wonder what else has been left out for effective financial planning for individuals.
It is amazing and even a common layman can understand things properly.
I think If read properly, no need of financial advisor for making investments .
Hats off to you.
Exactly.
Though I am yet to read Manish’s book(s) I am a regular follower of Jagoinvestor blog. Since I started working I have gained lot of information from Manish’s writings. I have been contemplating buying his book sometime. This new book seems to the book I must go for. Already simple book has been become much simpler with your review! Keep up the good work.
Yes Manish’s blog is awesome.
mr shabbir
thanks for the financial planning book you gave a brief review (always read your blog for the simplicity as you try to make complex structure simpler, for a novice learner just like you did for the stock market technical analysis, which i benefited from by reading your blog), currently i am also doing my CFP and CFA, and also recommend your blog to others and look forward to get the best out of this book to help myself and others.
keep going
Glad you like my blog and also recommend it to others for CFP and CFA. Being from non-finance background I take that as a big big complement.
Hi Shabbir,
The chapters are arranged in a good manner to give complete picture of finance planning for an individual. Really worth to reading this one. Thanks & Regards Anandan
Yes they are Anandan.
The books aims at covering all aspects of financial planning for life, that’s a big plus, but there is no mention of taking stock of things as they stand today, budgeting or day to day journal keeping. Or may be the author has it somewhere in the contents. Also there is no mention of liquid savings for a contingency. Otherwise it seems comprehensive. Its good to see books of this nature coming out more in the market. This should be part of our curriculum @ secondary education level but unfortunately its not. May be the author could approach educators and educate them about this.
No budgeting or day to day journal keeping are not covered in the book.
I am Manish .. Author of the book 🙂
The book does not have budgeting as a topic in the book, but you get a budgeting sheet which I have prepared as part of the book kit when you mail us on a email given insider the book . that should help you a bit with that 🙂 .
Manish
Manish, Nice to see you keeping track of the comments and replying to them as well.
Yea 🙂 . Thats what the blogger has to be keep doing always 🙂
Dear Sir,
Thanks for your excellent book.
Struggling to tame the bull but I am sure one day I will taste the success.
Your book has helped me a lot but Money management part I am missing in your book.
Please share me the Book by Mr. Manish. I hope it will help us a lot.
Thanks.
Chandrakant, glad to see that my book is helping you.
this is good book but i dont think any book is not help fincial palanig without any finacial guru
I don’t think that you always need some financial guru to get you going. You should have the eagerness to manage your finances and then bloggers like me or Manish can always help.
DEAR SIR,
I HAVE READ YOUR ARTICLE. REALLY IT IS USEFUL FOR EVERYONE. NORMALLY EVERYONE FORGOT THE PLANNING FOR EMERGENCY FUND.
THANKING YOU
SURENDRA KUMAR
Thanks for taking time to write feedback about the article.
I like your blogs which was explained in a simple manner. Please send the free complimentary book for further guidance.
would love to share thoughts and views after going through the book.
Regards
NS Iyer
Glad to see the feedback about the blog
Seems to be quite more-than-a-handy tool for new investors. The way you have outlined all the chapters, has given us a lot of insights on the book.
Keep up the good work 🙂
The pleasure is all mine Abhishek.
Nice Article Shabbir,
The review is apt and looking forward for my free copy 🙂
Glad you like it.
The Way in which u have reviewed the book chapter by chapter has increased my urge to read the book…particulary a chapter regarding Emergency Fund planning has attracted me and after reading your review i want to read the book because the Fund requirement in emergency is an important aspect of life but nowhere this topic has been explained. Moreover optimising Life Insurance policies is also an important parameter that i know but i dont know how i can optimise…so i want to read this book to know all this things
Glad you liked the review and yes the points you mentioned are covered well in the book.
Sushil, Can you please contact me with your Physical Address so I can ask Manish to ship the book to your doorstep.
I like the way and the simplicity with which you explain. You do a tremendous job .I like this article very much , kindly consider me for the book .thanx
Glad you like it Abhinandan and sure every one will be considered for the book.
I think this book is a must have for every one. Your review is very simple to understand and good.. Keep up the good work.
Glad you like it Jijesh
There are many books on personal finance now good review from you highlighting what each chapter talks about. I feel all the information needed to master PF is easy to get and understand and master, even your website has enough. The problem is not that, the real problem is being able to implement what you plan in a highly uncertain world. That I find really tough even i sometimes do things i know are wrong but need to do to make tings go smoothly.
Fareedul, I don’t agree with you on the point that you know you have to get wrong things done to make it go smoothly. We are talking about investments.
I am also talking about investments like when I sold the shares at the time when I needed to hold and buy more. Also a time when I went after the emergency funds to take care of stupid hobbies
Fareedul, yes those things are part and parcel of life and glad it happened earlier in your life than later to help you learn something out of it.
I really found all these very useful for a common investor who can not afford investing his time for some personal training and other tools. I think every one interested in managing their investment in a planned way must go through your articles and your blog.
Thanks a lot for such a valuable guidelines provided by you.
Glad you like them Surendra Singh Rathore.
Hi Shabbir,
Your review of the book gives a clear idea of how to benefit from the book. All the readers will surely find answers to most of their investment related issues in the book. I shall be happy if you select me as the lucky reader of the free copy.
Regards,
Mahesh
Mahesh, glad you liked my review and fingers crossed for the competition
As always, the way you explain things are awesome and this review is no different. I got the complete picture about the book before planning to get it. I hope I get it free in the contest but if I don’t get it, I think it is something I should be buying anyways.
Thanks for the feedback Suresh and yes it is a good book to get yourself started on the financial planning path. Fingers crossed for the competition.