The Only Investment Guide You'll Ever Need
Mark Cuban mentioned this book in one of his recommendations (cool fact, Cuban went to the same high school as I did). The book is a wide collection of advice and importantly, useful tips on how to save and invest. I found Tobias extremely witty and funny, and not in a contrived way. This made reading through the book a fun time instead of a studious ordeal as it were for some other finance books I’ve read. One of the earlier chapters talks about all the ways people can save money, ranging from cars and travel to buying toothpaste – the sheer amount of useful, wise, even miserly tips are worth the price of the book for pretty much anyone. The book doesn’t emphasize what to invest, but rather how to invest – and I find it to have the same long-term, value-based mindset like Ben Graham in his The Intelligent Investor.
One of the most important takeaways I got from the book was the price of habit. Many sing praise about the long-term value of starting and keeping a good habit, and while that’s definitely true, the downside of bad habits is just as powerful. Some financially bad habits we don’t even consider – for example, I would get food delivered on Sunday evenings when I would chat with my parents, so I could eat and chat at the same time in my residence. However, the extra cost of delivery per week is almost $15 more compared to dining hall food, and over the course of a school year, it amounts to almost $500. My habit of getting delivery has a price not of $15, but rather $500-a-year – I could definitely use $500 more to spend on smarter, more deliberated decisions, investing in quality items in parts of my life I care more about. Similarly, the price of Starbucks isn’t $5 a cup, but rather $5 a day for 365 days, a $1,865-per-year habit. Seeing prices like this made me take a step back and reconsider all the habitual things I spend money on, and whether I could cut those costs in my life – and in the case of food delivery, I’ll be pocketing that $500 to buy something I really care about.
% grep -i "the only investment guide you'll ever need" quotes.txt2 matches
on greed
“In the financial marketplace, you get what you pay for, if you’re careful. If you try to get more, you get burned”
— Andrew Tobias, The Only Investment Guide You’ll Ever Need
on dishonesty
“Annual reports are organized very simply. The good news is contained up front in the president’s message and the ensuing text; the bad news is contained in the footnotes to the financial statement”
— Andrew Tobias, The Only Investment Guide You’ll Ever Need