Getting The Most Out Of Your Investing Book Collection

We are often encouraged to continue to buy more goods and services. Marketing teams of corporations large and small make it their goal to encourage you to part with some of your cash to fulfil and almost endless lists of wants and desires. 

Although traditional and frankly quite noble, the industry of books and publishers are actually no different. Knowledge is a virtue, but books themselves are often marketed aggressively. For example, the title, cover and other marketing messages of books are often tailored towards a ‘target audience’ and will try to communicate how this book will solve a problem. 

That sounds logical – how else would we appreciate which books may be relevant for us otherwise? Nevertheless, the books are also designed to manufacture or create the very desire which they then feed off. Visualise a fitness book with imagery of the perfect body, or investing books with imagery of palm trees and supercars. 

This imagery first creates a want or desire, and then the title and byline are designed to explain that ‘this’ is the book which will get you closer to that goal. Whether it is or it isn’t, marketers have an excellent way of convincing us that this is indeed the case.

Getting more out of what you already have

The anti-consumerist inside all of us knows that buying lots and throwing lots of way can produce a feeling of gratification but also feelings of emptiness. If you are quick to discard your current possessions in favour of something else and something new, then this gently communicates a sombre message about the quality of your existing life.

This is why I encourage people to press ‘stop’ on the conveyor belt of endlessly buying more and more products, including investing in books. Take some time to really study your current book shelf and ask yourself:

‘Have I really formed a deep understanding of the books I already have?’

If you can barely remember the skeleton summary of the chapters in a book when glancing at its cover, it’s likely that you will have plenty to gain from re-reading that investing book. 

Only when you can recite the core principles and messages of a book in a series of 10 discrete points, can you claim to have fully ‘used’ the book to its fullest. 

How to re-read an investing book

The best personal finance books make for clear and separate ‘lessons’ when you look at them on a chapter by chapter basis. Therefore I recommend that you keep the reading experience novel when reading the best investment books by taking notes alongside your reading.

You should only be recording a few key thoughts per chapter. This isn’t about writing speed or trying to capture as much detail as possible. 

After you read an entire chapter, review the few sentences you have written and decide which is the most important, on reflection. 

This is a very novel way of reading an investing book, because often, we impatiently jump immediately onto the next chapter as soon as we reach the end of the prior. Or we simply decide to bring the reading session to a close by closing the book and walking away. 

Instead, by sitting with your notes and allowing for some time to reflect on the book’s content, you will find it much easier to critically challenge the author’s points and generate a lot of additional insight in the process.