The title is misleading…


I read Invest Like a Pro last week. It’s a short book written by Jesse Mecham, who started the popular You Need a Budget system.

I don’t use YNAB myself, but it seems like a decent system if you are trying to manage your spending.

I was especially interested in Invest Like a Pro because it sounded similar to the previous concept for my personal finance workbook. Mecham’s book is short, simple, attempts to focus on the most important issues, and tries to persuade/inspire the reader.

I think the title is somewhat misleading, because professional investors tend to invest differently to amateurs (they have more resources and less freedom), but otherwise the book is pretty solid.

It mostly works. I found the book an easy read that basically boils down to: you need to invest, and you should probably do it through Betterment. Mecham’s ideal reader is probably an American user of YNAB.

I enjoyed the book, but probably won’t be adding it to our Resources page. Read the books on there first (Mecham recommends several of them in his book!), then if you are interested you might enjoy this too. On the plus side, you can get it for about 100 yen on Kindle 🙂

And stay tuned for the RetireJapan Workbook. It is on its way, although it has evolved beyond the original concept -one reason it’s taking so long 😉