"Automatic Wealth for Grads ... and Anyone Else Just Starting Out"

"Automatic Wealth for Grads ... and Anyone Else Just Starting Out"
Michael Masterson
John Wiley & Sons, Inc., $22.95





Michael Masterson makes it sound like it is SO EASY to become a millionaire and retire by the time you are 30.

If only he were right.

In "Automatic Wealth for Grads ... and Anyone Else Just Starting Out," Masterson explains the different ways you can make money with little effort — basically by putting a little more effort into everything you already do.

Masterson makes some good points, such as attempting to save at least 15 percent of your income and buying off-brand to save money. Find a job that you love, and your career (and paycheck) will blossom with your enthusiasm for work. Those are pretty simple ideas, and I'm guessing most grads already are buying off-brand and still living with the romantic notion that what they have studied for four (or five, or six) years will help them achieve a job they love.

But he also talks about the benefits of owning real estate, starting your own multi-million dollar business and investing in the stock market. And how many recent grads posess the knowledge to do all of those successfully?

Wealth just doesn't come as easily to everyone.

Maybe I am just bitter because my salary is significantly lower than the average of recent grads, and the average is what Masterson uses when showing how much one would need to invest at what percentage to achieve a certain amount by a certain date. I am already starting out behind in every one of his examples.

Maybe I am just bitter because his suggestions to help increase salary can't really apply to me because of the type of job I have and the type of place I work. The nature of jobs I am interested in doing will never allow me to suggest to my supervisor that he or she double my salary — to make an investment in me — because I will make the company more productive and ultimately make a higher profit.

Instead of seeing Masterson's book as a way to get rich, I see it as a guide to everything one could do to get rich. There is another element of actually going out and doing it for any of his advice to be significantly helpful, and even then, unless you already are educated about any of these areas, you probably will need to go somewhere else — a professional, a specialized book, a Web site, Mom and Dad — to make the smart decisions to help you accomplish something such as successfully investing in real estate or the stock market.

Masterson is very eager to share how he gained wealth and how it has affected his life, and that is motivation for anyone to try to do the same. He doesn't forget where he came from and everything he did to get where he is now.

And in the last chapter, Masterson really tries to illustrate how wealth has changed his life. But it gets annoying. He dedicates an entire section to explaining how to taste wine and throwing dinner parties. The point of the chapter is to show that even if you don't have wealth yet doesn't mean you can't start feeling like a million dollars now. But he loses focus. He tries to cover too many topics in detail instead of giving a general overview. The detail was necessary in his earlier chapters because he was talking about specialized topics. But to explain what wine to put with what meal? Overkill. If I want to learn about putting together wine and food, I'm going to find a different book in the library.

Masterson has some good ideas, but it's all just guidelines. Reading the book will give you ideas for what you can do to improve your financial status, but it won't make you any richer.