| Publisher: Juggernaut Books (Hardcover) Originally Published: 2021 Pages: 246 Author: Deepak Shenoy |
Deepak Shenoy’s Money Wise is a delectable read. It is one of the finest personal finance books I have read in recent times: insightful, and entertaining throughout.
Invaluable for the newbies, this book teems with information that can be put to use right away. Deepak’s epigrammatic wit and genius humor also make this book a joy to read.
Even if you are a pro, you would find something or other to take away from this book. Until I read Money Wise, I thought I was doing okay on my financial planning, but Deepak’s book lifted the fog off my clouded mind.
Deepak Shenoy
Founder and CEO of Bangalore-based wealth management Startup Capitalmind, Deepak is no ordinary mind and his book reflects the wisdom attained over his two decades of wealth-creation experience.
He is also a superb storyteller. Nowhere is his craft more evident than in the umpteen cases he uses throughout the book to impart important financial lessons.
The book runs to 246 pages and comprises five chapters. I will go out on a limb here. I think if you are a total newbie and are only superficially aware of the financial products, Money Wise can serve as a great primer. You can profit from Deepak Shenoy’s acute insights into personal finance, without having to pay a huge fee for his services.
Instead of presenting a cut and dried subject matter, Deepak lightens things up with interesting and insightful case studies. The idea is to make the reader relate themselves to various scenarios that can unfold in their lives. Also, there are a lot of illustrations – charts, tables, graphs in the book – that you can use as a ready reckoner for your planning.
He exhorts you to increase your leverage by building productive assets and investing is one such asset. Deepak states that active investing can increase your leverage if you are good at it.
But before your invest, you have to save. He stresses setting up an emergency fund before you take the plunge into equity.
“Until you have enough for an emergency fund, you should not be investing in anything else.“
Deepak Shenoy
The book also explains technical phrases that could bamboozle newbies. This is demonstrated especially, in the chapter on Mutual funds where Deepak deciphers SWP, STP, XIRR, CAGR, etc.
His withering criticism of gold and home as investment-grade assets may not go down well with many. Forthcoming and blunt in his views, Deepak shares many such incisive insights throughout the book.
Those who know the author or follow him on Twitter would buy this book to get a piece of his wisdom on Stocks. And, as expected, he doesn’t disappoint. In fact, he shares some of his own stock-picking strategies in the book.
One particular piece that struck the chord with me is that he screens companies with consistent revenues and growing profits. Of those, he shortlists those whose PAT is growing at 15% per year with a PE multiple of less than 15.
The section on stocks abounds with several pearls of wisdom such as this: “Great businesses are likely to give better returns if you invest regularly in them, adding more shares when they fall, rather than investing at one time and forgetting about it” and, a few words of caution like this one:
“A high PE is an indication of overenthusiasm and the stocks in question rarely recover after a steep fall.”
Deepak Shenoy
Additionally, he addresses confounding questions such as why investing in promoter-holding companies should be avoided, why you should prefer studying cash flow statements and balance sheets to Profit and Loss statements, why portfolio returns are more important than individual stock returns?
Conclusion
I am of the opinion that if you want to judge a book, you judge it on its ability to hold your attention…until cognitive fatigue drowns you.
And, on that particular parameter, Money Wise is bang on the money. It covers a vast range of subject matter, all bolted together with Deepak Shenoy’s pertinent grasp of relevant facts and figures.
Succinctly speaking, reading Money Wise improves your Personal Finance quotient. You would come out wiser and better prepared to take on your financial challenges after having read this book.
The only criticism, I think, that can be built against the book is that it doesn’t take a deep dive into any of the topics discussed. While that is correct, this book never tries to be a detailed guide. Its purpose (though unstated) is to be a useful compendium about personal finance and at that, it succeeds superbly.
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