With young Indians now making more money in a month than their parents did in a year , there’s a boom in personal finance writing to guide the wayward youth on saving and investing. But Scott Adams, Dilbert’s creator, famously compressed everything you need to know about personal finance into 87 words. Therefore, the problem with a lot of personal finance writing is that it is generic, technical and repetitive.

‘How to Invest Right and Prosper’ from AK Narayan, former President of Tamilnadu Investors Association and a wealth manager with three decades of experience, stands out as a practitioner’s guide to personal finance with none of these flaws. It is based on the author’s real-life experiences in tackling the financial problems of his clients. Going beyond usual motherhood statements on starting soon and saving a lot, the book offers very specific advice that helps put your financial life in order, whether it on writing a Will, not committing more than 35 per cent of your income to EMIs or paying down debt by age 40. The author eschews jargon and writes in accessible language.

The first 50 pages are devoted to concepts like inflation, goal-based investing, asset allocation and the rule of 72 and may appeal to beginners. But the insights for seasoned investors lie in the later chapters that delve into individual asset classes — be it stocks, mutual funds, gold, real estate or alternative investments. Here, the author recounts financial decisions that cost his clients dear. The chapter on Portfolio Management Services (PMS) tells the story of a bed-ridden 94-year old who sank ₹50 lakh into a PMS in his eagerness to double the money, only to lose 95 per cent of his nest-egg. There’s the moving story of a friend who expended all her financial resources to sustain a critically-ill spouse, while neglecting her own health insurance. There’s another family which spent lakhs just tracing the investments of the father, who died intestate.

There’s an entire chapter dedicated to NRIs, where there’s the anecdote about a 75-year old client who was distressed by his NRI son suddenly asking him to shift to the city’s outskirts, because he couldn’t find tenants. The author highlights the folly of taking home loans at 10-11 per cent interest to ‘invest’ in apartments which earn a rental return of 2-3 per cent. The breadth of personal finance issues covered in this 283-page book makes it a great guide.

The only complaints that I had about the book related to its flow and structure. While the content is organised into byte-sized chapters, the author’s tendency to switch between plain prose, bullet points and FAQs impede the flow. Oft-used quotes from Buffett, Lynch and other investment gurus come as speed-bumps too. In fact, one much prefers the author’s own one-liners. Like his comment that while 5 per cent of Indians invest in the stock market, the other 95 per cent give market views. Or that investing directly in stocks is like swimming in the ocean, while MF investing restricts you to a safer swimming pool. FDs are safe if held for one year, but dangerous if held for 10 (because of inflation risks). Overall, this is not a book that contains the secret sauce to becoming a billionaire. It is instead full of the common-sense steps that you need to take, to not have to worry about money. As books go, this is a difficult one to take on a vacation. But it’s a good book to gift to your millennial acquaintances. If you own it, you can be sure of referring to it whenever you’re in a financial tangle and in need of expert counsel.

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