Three Fascinating Books I Read This Year
Toilet paper, hand sanitizer, and Clorox wipes were all in short supply this year. One thing that was not – time. And with that time, I was able to read quite a bit more than I normally do. I wanted to share a three books that I found particularly interesting.
Factfulness (Hans Rosling) – A realistic look at the world’s progress and problems using objective data as a guide. We live in a world of intense media interruption that tells us everything is getting worse. That is just simply not true. You’ll learn facts like - over the past 20 years, extreme poverty across the world has fallen 50%. It will encourage you to digest information you hear and then think critically about it and develop your own opinion.
The Psychology of Money (Morgan Housel) – Investment success has less to do with what you know and more to do with what you do (or don’t do). This book drills the point home by sharing fascinating stories of success and failure through multiple generations. It will tell you more about why you make the decisions you do, how to create an investment plan within that framework, and how to stick with it over multiple decades.
Scarcity (Eldar Shafir and Sendhil Mullainathan) – Scarcity is the sense that we need more of a resource, like money, time, or energy. When we experience scarcity, and we all do, we become absorbed by it and it lends itself to poor decisions elsewhere in our life. For example, someone who has financial scarcity has to make 15-20 hard decisions per day - Should I eat out or not? Will this check bounce? Pay my credit card or water bill? Having to make these decisions all day long is exhausting and lends itself to mental mistakes elsewhere – for example, not reading disclosures closely on a mortgage application. This book helps you identify areas that might be a place of scarcity for you and then strategies to overcome them.
Thank you for reading,
Alex
This blog post is not advice. Please read disclaimers.