Great advice that easy to follow and quite realistic. Gave me some good ideas on how to invest my money right.

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.

Although the writing is repetitive and long winded, the message is clear and incredibly sensible: automate your savings at 10% or more, automate your debt reduction, automate your giving, don’t buy on credit, don’t rent. Automatic millions are doable, but there’s no such thing as a “get rich quick” scheme.

The statement on page 80 sums up the author's philosophy, "-you need to have a system that doesn't depend on your following a budget or being disciplined."

This personal finance book is less about shaming you and your irresponsible money habits, and more about how to take an hour or two and straighten out your finances. The book revolves an example of one main family who exemplifies the topics of each chapter. (It's refreshing after reading a Dave Ramsey book with hundred's of letters from families). Bach isn't interested in why you are in a certain state, he just wants to talk to you like a college professor who's just pointing out the way the money you have is going to be ok to work with. He's not going to yell at you to get three jobs and watch your budget intently. I'm pretty sure that Bach knows that if his clients needed to get a second job, that they would just do it.

The book is designed thoughtfully, and each chapter gives you the homework to do list at the end. The first couple of chapters might seem like a sales pitch (including the obligatory opening page about how if your reading this in a book store you should buy it.) I would encourage you to keep reading the rest of the book to get some clear advice and instructions on how to get wealthy with your current income.

Very helpful when it comes to getting into the mindset of how to save money. I never would have thought to save money by not buying lunch everyday at work. I could save a lot more by making something and bringing it in or eating leftovers. This is only one of the many tips I learned from this book.

Best way to not have to be disciplined and budgeted is to make everything automatic. If it's automatic you don't have to think about it and it's just running in the background. Even saving 5% of your pay will make a huge difference in the end.

Although this is a departure from my usual reading, we are approaching an age where we really need to get our ducks in a row with our retirement savings. 

I have heard great things about Bach's book and thought I would spend a day reading this to make sure we were on the right path with our savings. 

This book tells the story of a couple, that David was providing financial consulting to, and their journey to becoming millionaires. David is completely astounded that they have saved this much because the couple seemed like the typical middle-class family who didn't seem like they had a lot to save.

Their story, he reflects, is the template we all need to achieve the same financial freedoms.

The idea of automating things is an easy one to implement, especially in this era of technology. His template to remove the "latte factor," pay off your vehicles, pay off your house, possibly do another property ownership, pay down debts, and then save are pretty straightforward.

The idea of being aggressive with retiring and how to make your savings work for you is where the meat of these lessons worked for me.

One of my tasks this week is to do some of these ideas for automation and we upped our retirement contributions since we have worked hard to put a safety net in place.

If you are trying to pay things down and looking for a strategy to begin, I think this is a great one for learning beginner skills to grow your savings and retire comfortably.

Although I hate to plug my own book, I do think there are some additional lessons you could discover in my book. Bonus, it's priced at just $4.99 on Kindle.

read the first chapter (motivational and eye-opening if you haven’t ventured far into the personal finance realm), skim the rest.

Inspiring & Interesting

I would give this book a percentage of my savings but sorry David, I have to pay myself first. ☺ This book was truly inspiring and such an easy read. If you're like me, new to the world of finance, it can be intimidating and frightening. David has written a fantastic book and provides a valuable blueprint to make anyone, yes - ANYONE, a millionaire. While reading this book, I did not feel as though there were any gimmicks or get rich quick schemes. There was only value advice and amazing knowledge. Highly recommended for anyone that wants to make their income work for them and to whoever wants to enjoy retirement.

Slightly dated, but a lot of really really good financial advice.

Instructions for a wage slave to become a millionaire before his death.

1. The Latte Factor (or in my world, the Chocolate Pastry Factor) - Small payments every day add up; by the same token, small savings every day add up. The book challenges you to pay yourself 1 hour of your pay every day. Maybe this is $10; maybe it's $100. When you try it, you'll be surprised at how much you can save.

2. Pay yourself first. The government does it with our paychecks, so why shouldn't we adopt the same tactic? Otherwise you will likely not have the discipline to "pay yourself" later. How to do it? Automatic payments...

3. Use automated payments for disciplined and simplified investing. The author recommends automatically setting aside 10% of your pay. Most companies allow you to do this very easily (two separate checking/savings accounts). People who think saving 10% of their income is difficult will be poor their whole lives. This book is not nearly as aggressive as "The Millionaire Next Door," which advocates saving at least 50% of your pay. If you take advantage of pre-tax savings (401k, IRA for husband and wife, Employee Share Purchase Program, 529 Plans, Health Savings Accounts, etc., many of which employers contribute to if you do, and that is on top of your base income), it is easy to save well over 10% of your income. I suggest trying to save substantially more. By saving 10%, yes you'll become a millionaire, but you'll probably be in your 60s by the time you achieve that goal. What I don't like about the book is that it doesn't go far enough or inspire people that they can retire early.

4. Max out your tax advantaged savings. As mentioned above, some of these are 401k (with employee match), IRA for husband and wife (if you have a retirement plan at work, you can't contribute to a traditional IRA in addition to the 401k; but if only one spouse works, you can contribute to your spouse's traditional IRA), Employee Share Purchase Program (many companies have a plan that allows you to buy company stock at a 15% discount, up to $25,000 every year (IRS rules), or $12.5k every six months; that's an easy 15% return on a simple, automatic investment; if this is available to you, just bite the bullet for 6 months and use that portion to effectively pay for the next 6 months, and on and on), 529 Plans (some states have huge tax incentives for contributing to a 529 plan; for example, contribute $5,000 and receive a $1,000 tax refund (in Indiana)), Health Savings Accounts (many employers will contribute to these; IRS limits are $7100 for 2020; your contributions are taken out pre-tax, you can invest the funds and earn a return tax free, and you can spend the money on health-related expenses tax free, a triple win!); etc., but these are the major ones.

5. Use automatic payments to set aside a rainy day fund. Set it aside and don't touch it! Put it in an account that you don't use other than for your emergency fund.

6. Own your home; don't rent. You'll be surprised at how much lower your taxes are each year. And you might even benefit from appreciation. One funny thing in the book is that he says there never has been a housing bubble. It was published before 2007. What the author says is right, however, that any downturns are short-term (years?). If you stay in your home for several years (at least 5 years), you are likely to see appreciation.

7. Pay your mortgage bi-weekly. You might need to call or pay an ongoing fee to arrange this with your lender, but it's worth it because it could knock off 5-10 years off your 30 yr mortgage.

6. Automate tithing payments (10%). If you're religious or generous (as everyone should be), this will be easy to do because you're likely already paying 10% of your income for charitable purposes. And no, this doesn't count as the 10% saving above.

I don't think this was emphasized enough in the book, but the best thing to do is save as much as you can (20%, 30%, 40%, or more). And do it in an organized way. Identify how much you want to save in a particular year, then break down where those savings will come from (Automatic setting aside of 10% of regular pay, your entire Bonus, 401k contributions, IRA contributions, HSA contributions, ESPP contributions, 529 contributions, side gigs, overtime, gifts, etc.).

We can only invest with what we save. To quote Adam Smith from the Wealth of Nations: "As the capital of an individual can be increased only by what he saves from his annual revenue or his annual gains, so the capital of a society, which is the same with that of all the individuals who compose it, can be increased only in the same manner."