Headway

Must read for all ages!!

Being about 5-7 years from retirement (hopefully) I wasn’t sure if this book would have much value to me. While I consider myself to be fairly informed on basic savings and retirement planning, I found the book to be very informative, reminding me of things that I had never done and forgotten or known but not implemented. It helped me to revise and improve my plan by deliberately targeting increasing my savings and paying down my mortgage more quickly. I have gotten a copy of the book for my daughter and am recommending it to family members and anybody else looking to improve their retirement strategy and become an automatic millionaire. Quick read that is interesting and informative with simple ideas that anybody can use!

This was very repetitive. Yes paying yourself first is a must do for all of us. BUT Mr. Bach completley ignores the immense credit debt that the average person carries. We live in a credit society where we all are trained to wanting it now and buying it now wether we have the money or not. SO it's interesting that the author ignores the debt that people have and just focus on paying yourself first. Even if you manage so have a couple of million in retirement savings; it's not going to help you much if you have that much in debt. Common sense.

This book is so valuable, but don't ask me why, I seem to have an affinity for forgetting financial advice.

Better for Americans.

While there is some really great, practical information in this book, much of it feels like an infomercial sales pitch. It feels a bit patronizing and has a lot of "but wait, there's more!" in the beginning that almost made me put the book down. The length of the book could be cut down by at least half if the fluff was removed.

This book basically got me hooked at the title. As I read the few pages, I knew this author was writing to really lure me in. I am good with saving money, but I wanted to take it a step further - and this was the perfect book to do that. I only know how to save and I'm not really knowledgable with retirement plans, investing, money market accounts, etc., but this book was a great starter point. Now I know a little bit of why I should use those tools and how to start. Especially because in the back of my brain, I know my savings are losing value to inflation just by sitting in my bank account. Not anymore! The only thing I disliked about the book is the fact that "everyone" can win in this system, even though capitalism very much depends on a loser. For example, there's a chapter on how we should all try to be homeowners since they're net worth is proven to be double digit times bigger than renters. But the thing is, if we are all homeowners, then what? There's no renters. And why should landlords be making money off of their renters, anyway? As a hater of capitalism, that rubbed me the wrong way. Not everyone makes enough money for a downpayment, as much as his Latte Factor chapter of his book encourages us to save a little bit more by not purchasing our small guilty pleasures. Yes, we can save a little bit more than we think, but there's only so much money we can save up if we don't have enough income. Like why do I have to devote 10% to my retirement fund, 10% for a downpayment, 10% for emergency funds, etc. There's only so much money to go around.

That said though, I was glad to see some of my own personal saving tips make it into the book. I am a tad obsessed with achieving financial freedom and seeing my bank account grow, so honestly, this book came at the right time. I know I just wrote a whole long paragraph about what I disliked, but the book is a really good, encouraging starting point, especially if you have debt or don't know what to do with your savings. The automatic part of the book is key, hence the title, and I appreciate that aspect of the book.

And very useful, fairly short finance book. Definitely recommended, will only take a few hours to read but gives some solid points and strong ideas

I'm a bit of a personal finance nerd, and I love budgeting, being frugal, and paying off debt. I tackled my consumer debt after returning home from a teaching job in Japan, and in about 2 1/2 years paid off about $20K thanks to Dave Ramsey's "Total Money Makeover" and "Your Money or Your Life" by Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin. Between those two, I had all the motivation/information I needed and diligently dug myself out of my B.S. money ways while working full time and going to grad school full time (for free, thanks to my employer- hence the full time work thing).

This long winded introduction had a point... oh, yes. So I saw this book on my mentor teacher's shelves, and my other mentor teacher uses it for her LA IV class, and I decided to check it out to compare to other finance books I had read. All in all, I think it's a solid book. The "automatic" in the title doesn't refer to the timeline of achieving millionaire status, but rather the method of becoming a millionaire by automating all of one's bills so that one doesn't miss the money being diverted into retirement accounts and savings funds and debt payoff. I fully agree with this principle, because humans are in general terrible at wishy washy things like "Motivation" and "Willpower". I believe these are myths. Accept that you don't have the wherewithal to diligently get money and give away 1/3 of it every month to boring adult things like 401K's and credit card payoffs, and just make it automatic so you never see it/never miss it. If people only followed this one bit of advice and were complete nincompoops with investing I think it would serve them well.

Did I learn anything new? No, but nothing in personal finance is truly new and groundbreaking- we all know we should avoid debt, save for retirement, and not fritter away our money on credit card fees and interest, but most people still do it. So there needs to be 31 flavors of personal finance information out there so that people can find what makes them sit up and finally pay attention to basic adult skills of financial responsibility. I think this book would be a great starting point that is more nuanced than Ramsey's "Total Money Makeover" and less New Age-y than "Your Money or Your Life". It's straightforward, easy to read, detailed without getting dense, and makes something very overwhelming seem manageable.

I was forced to read this as part of a finance class in college. Ugh...

Bach's long-winded advice could easily be shortened to about 10 pages. Instead, the reader suffers through almost 300 pages of redundant fluff and painfully corny bits of encouragement, and Bach will beg you to continue reading with statements like, "Just keep reading." Eventually you will trudge through enough filler to arrive at another piece of advice.

He also claims that you will never build wealth without using his system. He says, "Please trust me on this. Nothing will help you achieve wealth until you decide to Pay Yourself First. Nothing." (77). However, Bach has many books of financial advice. Do they all have the same advice? Considering how many times he restates the same point in this book, it's appalling to think of how many times he's recycled this material through all his books while slapping on a shiny new title.

I find it interesting that someone who lived paycheck to paycheck would expect to be taken seriously when giving financial advice on how to build savings. It was his life-changing meeting with the McIntyre couple that taught him the "secret" to building wealth, which he graciously shares with all of us. Spoiler alert: direct deposit 15%-20% of your paycheck into a savings account with interest + forgo small purchases like a daily coffee from Starbucks = wealth. This formula is the essence of the entire book. Congratulations, you just saved yourself from soldiering through hundreds of pages, which would have made you cringe from feeling his desperation to take advantage of desperate people.

A guide with tips on personal finance.
Little by little does the trick.
The author shows how small changes can build big things. Even small savings can build huge capital. The secret is to pay yourself first.
The book is a collection of financial planner lessons for a wider audience. It contains many valuable tips, the reader receives a ready-made recipe on how to automate saving and investing to become a titular millionaire.

I love personal finance. This was a great book