Review of: The Millionaire Within

The Millionaire Within – A guidebook to money, relationships, and creating a vision for your unique path to success, by Walter Wisniewski, CFP and Allison Vanaski, CFP.

Summary

Written by a Father/Daughter team of financial planners, this book addresses things relating to your relationship with money.

The main thesis is that the way you think, feel and act about money has more to do with whether or not you will be affluent than the actual methods you use to handle money.

One of the chapters lists several ‘biases’ and defines them, such as a ‘Confirmation Bias’ – the tendency to pay attention mainly to information that supports what you have already chosen or believe. In all, 14 biases are defined. Each one is well described, but no mention is made as to where the information originates and little in the way of actions to take because of the bias is given.

Chapters recognize the influence our family and upbringing have on our financial behavior, synchronicity and its effect on behavior, human capital (nourishing your ability to earn), improving your luck by adjusting your attitude and using meditation to do so, ignoring the media noise involving your finances, stories about people who left assets alone too long and contradicting stories about how well a portfolio did when left untouched for years, choosing financial advisors, a sales pitch for their firm, why you should diversify your portfolio and not keep everything in bonds and finally a nod to the growing financial independence of women,.

What I liked

Father and daughter viewpoints were listed separately – making it interesting to see the difference in approaches not only between men and women but also between generations.

Many of the concepts they tried to teach were told through stories.

What I wished for

Although the first few paragraphs of the book claimed that the reader would “learn fundamental techniques that we’ve taught others to overcome the stress and anxiety about managing their money”, but in my opinion the book was short on solutions to the many ‘issues’ they identified with the way people relate to money. I wish they had been more direct in stating how to overcome the issues listed.

Some of the concepts and terms presented seemed to derive from other sources and I wish they had been noted individually.

After reading the book, I had no clear action plan to address the many behaviors they illustrated to ‘find my inner millionaire’

Favorite quotes

“…people tend to succeed or fail with their finances based on their perceptions, behaviors, biases about money, not because they choose the right stocks at the right time.” Preface p. I.

“Our perceptions may convince us we are experiencing reality, but they often mislead us”. Chapter 3, p. 18

“The greatest money making idea you will ever have is to invest in yourself”. Chapter 6, p.52