This book made me rethink all my views on money. It was also the impetus to get me focused financially.

This is very good basic material that I wish I had paid attention to when I was a young man just getting started. It would have put me decades ahead in life financially.

Not a bad book. The only thing that I have against it is that it's so repetitive (especially for the first 3/9 chapters). It will give you a few tips on how to save your money automatically so that it's easier for you to retire early with no/minimum debt. I will also say that this book is more targeted towards Americans because it has a lot of tips and resources for the U.S. financial system.

Keep it simple stupid

Financial freedom has never been simpler with this book. It is a basic finance book without the financial mambo jumbo. I can't wait wait to get started to become debt free and an automatic millionaire.

A very easy read. The target is definitely the financially unsavvy, not for those looking for the extra push... Although, I did learn a few tidbits, like SEP IRA for business owners and got me thinking about government bonds.

It fits with the title, but I can't count how many times he said "Now make it automatic". I guess that's another point that I haven't really done, which is set it and forget it (though that hasn't stopped me from saving in the past, I just haven't been consistent)

I’m just not sure how to review this book. It wins at providing some good and simple financial advise in a very readable format. I initially planned to have my two teens read it after me because I thought there was some good advice and they wouldn’t get bogged down or bored in reading it. It’s readability and basically sound advice are why I did give it three stars.

There are, however, several areas where it loses me. First of all, the original automatic millionaires he tells us about made just over $50,000 in his example. The author called this “Not bad. Not rich, to be sure, but a decent income.” At a guess, based on the authors age and the details he gives, this story happened in the 80’s. If I give him the benefit of the doubt and assume this wage was paid in 1989, this means an equivalent salary today would be over $100,000. That may not be celebrity rich, but it is 3 times more than the average salary in America right now. I think it shows a huge disconnect from the wages his readers may be making and undermines his claim that anyone can become rich by following his method.

Second, he really poo-poo’s budgets. I do get why, but this shows yet another significant disconnect between his standard of living and mine. As a single mom of two kids, I have to budget. It is a necessity. I do not have the luxury of not doing it. Again, I understand that many people don’t do it. I understand that for folks who do have a bit of a spending buffer it is easy to spend it, rather than save it, based on just willpower. But I think to completely disregard the fact that some people may truly need to budget is narrow-minded and even irresponsible.

Finally, there was just nothing new here. I am already doing what he suggested for savings and I don’t have debt, so there just wasn’t any real meat. If you have never read a book on finance, you might learn something, but I would absolutely recommend Dave Ramsey over this. Very similar concepts and not quite such a condescending delivery.

The author took a short, bulleted list and turned it into a book. I think this is the best lesson of the whole book- that you can make a lot of money writing a book about anything, even the simplest list. The concepts are ones you hear everywhere, or could just as easily learn with a simple internet search on how to build wealth.

To save you time, here is the list of his advice that somehow spun out into 240 pages:
1. Save 10% of your income (or the first hour of pay per day) into a retirement account, make it automatic with payroll deduction.
2. Save enough to cover 3 months of expenses into a money market account or savings bonds. Make it automatic with payroll deduction of bank transfers.
3. Stop renting, buy a home. Automate your payments and pay extra, either through biweekly payments or adding 10% to monthly payments.
4. Get out of credit card debt. Automatically pay 50% of what you would have saved in #1 towards debt with payroll deduction or bank transfers.
5. Donate or tithe 10%, do it automatically with payroll deduction or bank transfers.

I did find the information on bonds interesting, I've never considered buying bonds before and didn't know about them. That's a whole 2 pages in the book though and he tells you to go to treasury.gov to learn more.

If you are american, you'd probably enjoy reading/listening to this. If not, you can skip this one. The only rule applied to us europeans is that you should pay yourself first, and that's pretty much the only thing you will learn from this book.

I would recommend this book to the complete novice, if you want to learn some very simple things that you can do to help you secure your retirement then read this book. If however, you want to really understanding investing, and finance this probably isn't the best book.

The book has a few good tips that work for everyone:

1: Pay yourself first (A common recommendation)
2: Pay your mortgage bi-weekly (could reduce it by 5-10 years)
3: Put away 10% of your money
4: Tithe
5: Always save some, even if you have debt, while debt reduction should be a priority, having a little cash will help to avoid future debt.

The book also some tips that I don't agree with:

1: Buy a home (This book was pre-bust) not all people benefit from home ownership and it's not something to be undertaken lightly. While there are *many* benefits, sometimes renting works for certain types of people and areas.

2: Pay your credit cards with the lowest amount left first... While this is great psychologically, I would argue that you should probably pay the one's with the largest interest rate first. What if your lowest card has a 0% rate and the one with the highest balance has a 20% rate? You'd be much better off chipping away at that 20% card :)

3: His assessments on when you will be a millionaire on $5 a day is based on 10% annual return, which by the way is better than the stock market (based on the S&p 500 avg for 50 years) long term average which happens to be arguably the best long term investment in terms of returns. How does he suggest you do this? Mutual funds... small problem being that somewhere in the 85%+ range of mutual funds _fail_ to even meet, much less beat the market. Even the ones that do often charge an annual fee as well as front/rear loads that can chip away at that rate. More importantly, just because the fund earns 10%, doesn't mean you will :) That's the money the fund earns *before* all of the costs. According to Warren Buffet, and Charlie Munger, and John Bogle (He's biased as he did create it...) the best investment for someone who doesn't want to learn, would be an S&p 500 index fund that simply tracks the market. These tend to have the lowest fees possible and essentially guarantee roughly the same rate of return that the overall market returns.

In summary, this is a good book for someone who wants an easy way to guarantee some retirement and move in a more fiscally responsible direction. This is not, however, in my opinion the bible on this subject, nor is it the final word. While I do like his automatic payments structure, and do agree with that logic, I think the investment strategies need a little more depth and experience.

ONE OF THE BEST FINANCE BOOKS I’VE READ!

Its good book for beginners in this field but for me, a guy with a little more experience on this topic , its all already familiar things, he didnt teach me anything new. Best things from this book are copied from Scott Carsons book: richest man in Babylon.

Pay yourself first!
Donate some of the money you earn.
Latte effect-money you waste
Close the credit card debt
Own a home
Emergency fund + 6 months of life expenses in case you get fired.
Invest rest.

For someone who is wanting to know finances 101 in a palatable and realistic way, you really can't beat Auto Millionaire! Now I'm off to read Robbin's Money, Master The Game and then some Suze Orman. FYI - Bach has some fabulous videos on Youtube...