How To Use This Book
Outside of friends, family, and our beliefs, few things have a greater impact on our lives than money. Not surprisingly, the world of finance is also among the most complicated and least understood concepts we attempt to tackle.
The vast majority of people hire professionals to help them address the tricky worlds of tax preparation, insurance planning, investing, among many others. These are the people who don’t figure out the hard way that “a doctor who treats himself has a fool for a patient.”
While I don’t believe there is a true alternative to hiring an expert, there is certainly an incredible amount of knowledge passed down from our family and friends. This book is dedicated to grandmothers and grandfathers who, through their own unique style, taught us invaluable lessons about finance, possibly without us even knowing it.
The original ideas featured in this book belong to my dad. Curt Munson began his journey as a financial advisor after he retired from the Marine Corps.
The lessons he taught me represent four core principles in this book:
Don’t put all of your eggs in one basket.
Rome wasn’t built in a day.
You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.
A doctor who treats himself has a fool for a patient.
This “stump speech” was powerful in so many ways. Through the years, both in his career as a financial advisor, as well as in mine, we utilized the core ideas of that stump to create a two-minute answer about the basics of investing, or a 30-minute podium hijacking.
In fact, one of my fondest personal memories about the core four ideas was when a friend of mine, Joan Bruns, asked me to chat with her sons (Aaron, Michael, and Paul) about the basics of investing. I prepared a PowerPoint presentation, complete with pictures I found on the internet, and we went over those key tenets to becoming a successful investor. Here we are about 15 years later, and wouldn’t you know it, those boys are now men forging their own lives, and they are all active investors.
Sure, I’d like to take credit for putting them on that path, even if only partial responsibility is due, but either way, they are investors and that means something.
Since those early years of the Things Your Grandparents Taught You, I have added a few, and just like those core four ideas, I think these concepts are easy to digest, and are incredibly important to developing the mind of a long-term investor.
Thank you, Dad, for all you’ve done. Thank you, Drew, for being the exact brother and business partner I’ve needed all these years. I simply can’t imagine it another way. And, thanks to Josh for creating this brilliant visual masterpiece.
To you the reader, thank you so very much for taking the time to read this book. As is true for so many people, getting published is a huge dream to fulfill on my bucket list. Who knows, maybe this book will inspire you. I sure hope so.
