Book Review – “The Intelligent Investor” by Benjamin Graham

This books was listened to during the fall / winter of 2020. The overall text is mostly analytics and investment theory with provided examples. To me a lot of it was common sense information. However the smaller details were life changing and overall helped me get a better grasp on my personal finances and budget. To me some of the information was kind of hard to follow because I was driving and the reader would run through examples with numbers and stats and it was difficult for me not to be able to see it ion paper. I think I would have gotten a bit more out of the book if I would have read it.

The information contained in the book has been proven throughout time. The book remains vital reading into the fundamentals of intelligent investing. I believe this book was written in the 1940’s or 50’s by Benjamin Graham, a renowned and successful investor. The data and stats in this book reflect the time in which they were originally written. It definitely would be nice to have an abridged modern version that would run some of the numbers with modern day stats and inflation and wages. Lets face it the standard of living was much different in the 1950’s.

This book was very informative to me overall. I was currently working a new job and learning about my finances in a more mature light. For the first time in my life I was thinking about the future and making plans for long term savings and investing. Also this was all relevant information to me because a certain security i owned had recently taken on a massive upswing. For the first time in my life I had a stash of “Nest Egg” money that I didn’t know what to do with. More than anything I wanted to learn how to protect my investment and make the most of the opportunity. This book set me on a path of great knowledge and understanding about my personal finances.

The book was great in that all of the knowledge was easy to follow and the examples were real life and not pertaining to billionaires or the super rich. The text is aimed at helping the average man handle his finances better and pointing one in the right direction to start investing correctly and smartly.

My one negative critique of this book was the older examples but it is no fault of the author. This book was written in a different time and money and finances were a lot different. I took the information and applied it as best as i could to my own personal situation was able to learn and take a lot from the book.

I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to better their base knowledge of finances, budgets, and investing. This is not a strategy book, and it doesn’t dive into analyzing companies or anything like that. This book gives some solid metrics on what is healthy savings, what percent of income you should be investing long term, and overall ideas on good financial health. it was a fairly quick book from what I remember.

Great book overall. There are definitely more relatable books out there on this subject that have more modern examples and numbers. In regards to the information in the book it is solid knowledge for anyone to have. I got a lot out of it and if you are interested in finance, or curious about investing you should probably check this book out as a good starting point.

Hope you enjoyed the review. Hope it was helpful. Stay tuned for more. Playing a bit of catch up on my media reviews. haha Procrastination nation!!

Pax