Sustainable Wealth: Achieve Financial Security in a Volatile World of Debt and Consumption
August 1, 2011 
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A financial planning book for the economic chaos.,
Axel Merk’s Sustainable Wealth is a financial planning book for the Depression-like economic times. This book is a good introduction to sustaining whatever wealth you have left after your wealth was squashed by the economic collapse.
The highlights of this book were the following:
- How public policy is killing economy recovery.
- How social complacency and hubris lead to the slow downfall of the American economy
- Making the distinction between conventional wisdom and true wisdom.
- Getting a grip on one’s expenses and debt and concentrate on building wealth.
This book reminds me of Kiyosaki’s Rich Man, Poor Man from long ago as a financial planning book. Although it spends a considerable portion to the historical events leading up to the economic collapse and somewhat psycho-analyze why people did what they did that contributed to the economic collapse, This book ultimately focuses on modifying one’s behavior to cope with the current economic conditions and build one’ wealth.
The strength of this book is that it attacks conventional wisdom toward investing and stresses to be skeptical of current public policy that is targeted to fix the current economic problem. In other words, don’t buy into conventional mainstream wisdom and don’t rely on public policy to save you. It encourages to keep your eyes peeled to changes in the economic landscape, and consider various ways to preserve one’s wealth. I am glad that this book targets conventional wisdom, complacency, and current public policy, all of which I thought were lacking in other gloom-and-doom books.
This book is quite concise, but it is a good intro to describing to the unsophisticated as to what is going on and what to do think and do next.
If you’re the kind of person who bought a house two years ago, bought a brand new car, maybe took a home equity loan, ignored your chicken-little friend’s warnings two years ago, slowly watched your net worth go into the red, now your chicken-little friend might have been right after all, and slowly realizing that your ship is nearly sunk, this book is probably for you. If you’re having doubts that the economy is not as good as what the mainstream media is leading you to believe, this book is probably for you.
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|One tired cliche after another,
I have been looking for a way to transfer my money out of dollars into some other currency legally and easily which I thought would be addressed in Axel Merk’s new book. He appeared on Fox Business News on Nov. 18 during which interview he advocated investing in a basket of foreign currencies such as the Euro, Swiss Franc, British Pound, etc.
Thinking a method to accomplish this would be described in detail in “Sustainable Wealth”, I rushed to buy a copy. Alas, the book was crammed with endless cliches about invest wisely according to your own needs, be flexible, invest only what you can afford to lose and so on and on plowing old ground over and over. No mention was made on how to invest in foreign currencies, only that it was a good idea to do so.
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|Excellent investment guidance for turbulent times,
I found this book to be very helpful in both it’s broad overview of how our society has arrived at so much debt and financial losses, and also in providing a framework for thinking about personal finance and how it relates to broader economics. Axel does a good job of demonstrating how excessive credit and consumption, along with market intervention and assuming best-outcomes led to the financial collapse of 2008-2009. But he doesn’t linger there, he uses it as a foundation for building better personal financial management habits.
Unlike many commentators, Axel is not on any extreme. He’s just an experienced money manager who questions the conventional wisdom and encourages regular people to participate in their own financial future, not just follow the “experts”. I highly recommend this book.
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