A clearheaded and invaluable walk-through of how to handle money and make it work for an investor.
A short, comprehensive coaching manual explains the intricacies of personal investment.
Baranowski places his debut guide to money and investing on bedrock factors that are psychological rather than financial: the human desire to grow and innovate and the human weaknesses of insecurity and greed. This underscores the broad-based aim of his book, which is plainly aimed at young investors and which opens with sentiments so obvious as to be banal, things like “Find something you like doing, get paid for it, save, and invest that money” and “Over time, good things will happen.” Or “aim high, go for it, and be a little smarter today than you were yesterday.” Even his more specific advice and strategies often retain a refreshing relativity; in these pages, Baranowski consistently tries to avoid prescription in favor of encouraging his readers to break step with the crowd and follow their own instincts. The principles he lays out for the most part are very basic (although, as he rightly points out, that doesn’t stop most people from failing to follow them): spend less than you earn, avoid debt, save, let your money work for you, etc. He advises investors not to overthink things: “Shamelessly go for the easy picks,” he writes. “If it is too difficult, it is likely not worth it.” He gently admonishes investors who chase fads, urging them to have a distinct purpose behind each choice: “What you want is a nice, clean, focused portfolio.” Deftly combining the lessons of financial self-help books, Baranowski stresses the main enemy of personal wealth remains inactivity; inflation will inevitably erode even the largest fortune if the owner simply sits on the money. The lucidly written book’s second half takes the reader calmly into the deeper waters of business-investing complexities, all explained in a clear, accessible voice and illuminated with many real-world examples. Beginning investors—especially those who’ve come into some kind of sudden windfall and need to know what to do with it—will find a great deal of useful information presented here.
A clearheaded and invaluable walk-through of how to handle money and make it work for an investor.Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5227-3301-0
Page Count: 226
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: March 10, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.
A helpful guide to working effectively with people from other cultures.
“The sad truth is that the vast majority of managers who conduct business internationally have little understanding about how culture is impacting their work,” writes Meyer, a professor at INSEAD, an international business school. Yet they face a wider array of work styles than ever before in dealing with clients, suppliers and colleagues from around the world. When is it best to speak or stay quiet? What is the role of the leader in the room? When working with foreign business people, failing to take cultural differences into account can lead to frustration, misunderstanding or worse. Based on research and her experiences teaching cross-cultural behaviors to executive students, the author examines a handful of key areas. Among others, they include communicating (Anglo-Saxons are explicit; Asians communicate implicitly, requiring listeners to read between the lines), developing a sense of trust (Brazilians do it over long lunches), and decision-making (Germans rely on consensus, Americans on one decider). In each area, the author provides a “culture map scale” that positions behaviors in more than 20 countries along a continuum, allowing readers to anticipate the preferences of individuals from a particular country: Do they like direct or indirect negative feedback? Are they rigid or flexible regarding deadlines? Do they favor verbal or written commitments? And so on. Meyer discusses managers who have faced perplexing situations, such as knowledgeable team members who fail to speak up in meetings or Indians who offer a puzzling half-shake, half-nod of the head. Cultural differences—not personality quirks—are the motivating factors behind many behavioral styles. Depending on our cultures, we understand the world in a particular way, find certain arguments persuasive or lacking merit, and consider some ways of making decisions or measuring time natural and others quite strange.
These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.Pub Date: May 27, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-61039-250-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: April 15, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2014
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.
“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.
It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
