Contemporary, well-researched and smartly written; a fresh way of thinking about accumulating and spending money.
Dying broke and enjoying it is the theme of this lively debut book by a physician with a penchant for investing.
Riggs, a physician and successful commercial real estate investor, begins his book with a sobering mea culpa: His mother wound up in a nursing home with too much money because “I advised my mother and father how to save, when I should have advised them how to spend.” As documented in his eloquently written book, this became the impetus for Riggs’ developing a plan to “spend down” his assets by the end of his life and to “die broke—insolvent but not illiquid or destitute.” Part 1 is fairly standard fare about assets and liabilities, economic cycles, and generational attitudes toward finances. In Part 2, Riggs issues a warning about retirement plans such as 401(k)s and IRAs, which, he writes, face “planned nationalization.” He also cautions investors to be wary of the real possibility of a U.S. default; still, he contends “it is only the [your name here] economy that really matters. You only need to concern yourself with…building your own wealth.” His prescription for building and keeping that wealth is to focus on “income-producing hard assets” and understand the country’s economic cycles. Part 3 is clearly the most intriguing; here, Riggs contrasts being rich (“earning and spending large sums of money without building net worth”) with being wealthy (“having enough passive income to enjoy the lifestyle you aspire to live and to still build your net worth”). He explains his philosophy of enjoying wealth during one’s lifetime through a fascinating “Dying Broke Converting Curve,” in which he visually depicts how to gradually convert net worth into “meaningful gifting and Fun Stuff.” His conclusion: “Before they take it away and before you die…spend it all.” The author’s prose is both informative and enlightening; throughout the book, he demonstrates his command of investment know-how. Not every reader will be comfortable with the unconventional notion of purposefully dying broke, but Riggs’ argument is certainly persuasive.
Contemporary, well-researched and smartly written; a fresh way of thinking about accumulating and spending money.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2014
ISBN: 978-0991521500
Page Count: 212
Publisher: Monetary Publishing LLC
Review Posted Online: Aug. 20, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
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