Category: Reviews

Often I used to read books before going to sleep. What follows is from one of those times. I’m thinking about potentially narrating books when I retire, or starting a podcast. Let me know what you think in the comments. There’s more on the audio as the point to this post was to test out the narration. Here’s the audio:

Okay, I think what I’m going to do is a little test. And let’s see how this goes. I think I’m going to read just a chapter at a time and post it. This is from a really old book that I’ve been wanting to read for a while. It’s called How to Prosper During the Coming Bad Years. It’s probably out of print. I don’t know. It says it’s a New York Times Books. Are you up for me reading it? It looks like it was a gift to either me or my grandmother in 1980. She passed away in 1980. So I’m not exactly sure unless it was given to my mom and then to me. Let’s see when the printing was. It was printed in 1979. So it’s not as old as I thought. Written by Howard J. Ruff. And it says, of course, “All the rights are reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.” So I’m probably not supposed to read a whole chapter. Okay, let me pick out parts of a chapter then and we’ll call this a review.

So, the first page has a note that says, “This publication is designed to provide the author’s opinion regarding the subject matter covered. It is sold with the understanding that the publisher or author is not engaged in a rendering, legal accounting, or other professional service and neither am I by the way, if legal advice or other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent professional person should be sought. The author specifically disclaims any personal liability loss or risk incurred as a consequence of the use and application either directly or indirectly, of any advice or information presented herein.” There are 20 chapters.

I’ll start it this way. There’s an introduction. Then there’s part one, The Problems. Part Two, is The Preservation and part three is The Strategy. Now within part one, there are 11 chapters. There are the watershed year’s inflation, the great transfer tax, a world turned upside down, and put governors on the monitors that sound interesting. The Ponzi chain ladder, east side, west side, the old homestead, don’t bank on it, power to the President. We owe it to ourselves and sin tax SSIN. That’s interesting to know Okay, so then in part two, the preservation there’s an introduction to it, and chapter 12 is about gold and silver coins. There’s personal debt passed on to the old maid. That’s probably talking about the card game I don’t know. But there was a card game named Old Maid preparing for the black market, panic proof. And then in strategy, there’s an introduction. And chapter 17 Is the breakeven or better strategy, the golden calf, a girl’s best friend and Do Thy Patient No Harm. There’s an appendix and an index.

We’ll just do the Introduction. Let me know if you’re interested in hearing more about this. And perhaps I’ll do another by offering a review of each section. How about that instead of each chapter? Let’s see. So that would be four reviews because we’ll review the problems, which probably most of us are already very familiar with the problems the preservation part and the strategy part. So the introduction, I’ll just read a paragraph to myself, perhaps, and then I’ll summarize so bear with me. I’m not a speed reader.

It starts by talking about some time back so they’re quoting November 1968. They went to a meeting and thought they were going to receive some help. And advice from people who managed a company. Oh, it was a speed-reading franchise. I honestly did not read that yet. When I said I was not a speed reader. So that’s funny. They were beginning to emerge from a very difficult few months resulting from a prolonged newspaper strike. And as most of these strikes, do, they come without warning that prevented them from advertising during peak months. I think we’ve all probably been there. We had been in financial trouble. For some time, but things have started to improve on that. Sounds good right? So the author says when he walked out of a meeting, he was wiped out. His franchise had been canceled in the struggle to save the company was over. His business was down the tubes have been her had been notified that his accounts were frozen, but that’s not good. He had $11.36 in his pocket. Yeah, no money, no job, and no unemployment insurance because there isn’t any such thing for small businesses. Who goes broke and that is true? When you’re self-employed, and I know this from both my parents as well as friends, as well as times when I’ve been self-employed as well, there’s no retirement pension. There’s no insurance you have to self-insure for your health and, and life and property, all that sort of thing. And then you have all sorts of business expenses too, which never made sense to me.

One of my friends said, that while she was running her own business, she calculated all the hours that she put in and she was making something like $4 an hour. I mean, that’s why they say you’ve got to do what you love if you’re going to run your own business because you’re not. You could go to work for anybody else and make more than that you can make minimum wage flipping burgers and make more than that. So make sure you do what you love if you are going to run your own business. But back to the book.

He’s talking about a spectacular collapse that had the front page of the financial section in the San Francisco Bay. Area newspapers. And he was invited to resign from a committee of the Oakland Symphony finance committee because I guess he was embarrassing them. There was a terrible period and he says in our lives, so I’m assuming that he’s married. Okay. He says it had only been five months since the accidental drowning of our 21-month-old son, Ivan. Well, that’s very tragic, and sad, I cannot imagine. So he was in the depths of despair, and that tragedy began a chain of events that culminated in his writing of this particular book. His family and he, I guess, decided that such pain, public humiliation, and grief had to be put into some positive purpose. And I’m thinking perspective for others as well as themselves. I feel that it always helps if you’re trying to help someone else that tries to help you through your problems.

He went to work armed with a determination to learn everything he could from the business failure, so that it would never happen to them again. It was then he resolved to apply to his life and future principles that he learned from a variety of sources as well. That’s great and I’ve done the same thing with integrating the spirals. There was, oh, a Mormon upbringing. Okay, that explains why my mom had this book and shared it with me. Which stressed prudence, yes. Avoidance of unsound debt. Yes. My mom was always saying that all the time to us to get out of debt, stay out of debt, and a kind of 19th century rugged self-sufficiency. That’s a quote.

He had been studying economics and either was or studied. Being a stockbroker specializing in venture capital and municipal bonds 25 years as an actor and professional singer had taught him to be persuasive and effective in the use of language in front of audiences. Well, that’s good. And yes, I can see where that would be very helpful if you were going into sales or as in his situation, apparently, entrepreneurial enterprise. So it continues, that he was determined someday to repay every day he had a lot of people say that that get into these kinds of situations, even though his legal obligation was discharged through the legal process of bankruptcy.

My mom and dad went through the same thing. So I understand that. He goes on to say, to right when Jesus preached the virtues of a broken heart and a contrite spirit, which is a quote from the Bible. He believes that Jesus met that people generally do not bring about real change in their lives until they’re traumatized by hitting a bottom of despair and misery, from which there’s no choice but to make basic changes in one’s life and Outlook or follow a path to self-destruction. And from that, bottom in his life came the determination not only to ever, never repeat the same mistakes that I’ve made invulnerable, but help others avoid personal financial difficulties caused by their lack of understanding of the real world. And then something that he retained from that speed reading school collabs was a personal ability to read rapidly.

Well see, that’s fantastic. That’s a skill that I wish I had. And he goes on to say that he can handle a lot of material rapidly and have close to Total Recall, and five hours a day of reading he processes vast amounts of written material and runs across things that most people would never have a chance to get to bits and pieces of information click into place that would not have done so how to not discover too much ground in a short time and can quickly become a walking encyclopedia. Almost anything. I’ve really usually not a jealous person, but I’m somewhat jealous of that.

Maybe perhaps that’s a skill that I can acquire. And once I retire, I do scan a lot which is probably what’s helping me scan these first few pages. But I’m, I do not consider myself a speed reader. And I always got low marks in school myself for comprehension. So it’s something that I’ve had to work on. In fact, in my opinion, I am a slow reader. Because I am always really diving in to comprehend deeply, you know, not just comprehending to regurgitate something in five minutes and then forget about it, but to understand it and incorporate it into my life in some way.

So he goes on, let’s see he’s talking about under-capitalized business ventures, which I don’t understand or know much about. I guess that means you maybe didn’t finance enough. I know capital is money like to start a business with Buddy Okay, so he was successful in one and then one called an advisory service, which was called the rough times are you FF that’s funny, used his name well in that bencher in between, he became interested in flying and developed an obsessive interest in weather and climatology, which is something he says that every economic forecaster should know about. I also became fascinated with the subject of nutrition. Oh, interesting. Well, that’s where we connect again. As well as I worked with an Aeronautical University for 10 years. So I know a little bit or two about flying, not that I ever flew and my dad was a private pilot as well.

So he established a vitamin supplement and food storage distributorship. But then sold the business but that equipped him for his research into food problems and food storage. These events plus long he had a long interest in economics and Kant all came together when he wrote this book that I’m reading the introduction of right now. However, it was the business collapse that gave him perspective drive and the character he says, hopefully, to bring, bring him to the point where he could speak with authority from a pretty good track record as a forecaster. And advisor.

That’s where he is today as of this 1979 Writing anyway. And always has the TV talk show too called the rough house, which is shown or at that time was shown in more than 60 stations. across the US. Then this book was originally conceived as a basic text for subscribers to his advisory service. Okay, and I guess he did some personal planning it’s short-term and intermediate, intermediate-term trends can change so I agree it creates both risks and opportunities and timetables can sometimes use adjustment.

So he wrote a book that could stand alone, but the staff and subscribers could use it to stay apprised of any changes in economic climate or strategy. That explains why there’s that section.

The last section is about strategy. There are alternate strategies for these changes in economic climates and chapter 20. Okay, so some material has been has come from, I guess, his extensive files and information that had gone out in the rough times. That’s the name of it. And then he decided also to introduce and summarize some from his first book.

Okay. So, what we read here should be considered an updated summary and review. And then he explains why he wrote this book before he was an author. He was the father and husband and that’s still, his number one role in life, loves his wife and children. They along with his religion, and an alarmed conscience should form an inseparable whole he’s concerned about the hard times he sees coming and how the family will have to live in that world. We want to prepare them to get through without physical discomfort. And with his fundamental Judeo-Christian values intact, working very hard to see that sound principles of ethics, morality, and economics are passed on to his offspring because when he trains his children, he’s also going to be training grandchildren. Everything I write is in the final analysis, his legacy to them.

Yeah, and I believe that’s the same thing. That motivates me. Because after I had my first granddaughter, I thought I wanted to I sat with that for a long time about how I wish so much that I had some writings from my grandparents on both sides, but in particular migrant my mother’s mother, my maternal grandmother because she was Native American and I wanted so much to understand her background. And, it was a really hard thing to kind of prove to there’s my spiral thought going into the Native American Tribal roles and trying to prove which tribe I’m from and connected to and all that sort of thing. So back to the book, he talks about that he explains how we can panic-proof our life, get our debts under control, how to make certain investments to be the inflationary spiral, interesting, he’s got the spiral there too. And all the things that will make for social and financial stability and keep the world kind safer for your family. He explains why he thinks we’re reading the book and then offers some conventional wisdom in economic forecasting and financial planning. Sacred Cows are outdated, inaccurate, Pollyanna-ish, and unrealistic. I agree.

Another full book, not this old but one I also highly recommend is, Sacred Cows Make the Best Burgers by Kriegel and Brandt. That was an excellent book as well and used a lot of sports references. So for the guys of course or anybody that loves sports–it’s a really good book. I’m not a sports fan, but I still got through it and I learned a lot and wrote a paper about it during time spent working one of my first corporate jobs. Our whole team was supposed to read it, but I took it on like it was a college class.

So let’s see, he ends this introduction with his point of view that he had written for the economic ecologist which was about the study of interrelationships of living organisms and their environment. So I thought that was very interesting too and something that I would like to explore further. And that’s how we come to know to see about the Hippocratic Oath, to which every physician subscribes to, which is to “Do Thy Patient, No Harm.” That’s his objective for everything he’s advising us to do.

He’s says he lives within the limits of his financial resources and is comfortably well-off but not wealthy. Those who will gain the most benefit from this book are those who have some savings or some assets small or large, such as equity in a home . Well, I don’t have that and never did because even of all the three homes that I’ve owned or, or partially owned with a partner, the equity I made on one got lost on the other two.

One home I sold did turn a profit but then I ended up putting that into the next home and ended up losing my shirt so I can’t say that I came out ahead. But he goes on to say you can start your personal and financial survival program with as little as $50 a month for a few months. I’m doing that right now. But it’s more than that.

Everybody can do something even if it’s only to vote fools out of office, and I don’t know what this word means “mount of banks.” So when I get to look up, those who keep digging our hole deeper, surely would not be thrilled about what our national debt is now in the US all these some 40 years later, right?

Throughout the book, you find references to books, publication services, and products with some candid consumer guides, type comments and to assist you in searching for them. He’s listed all of these at the end of the book giving addresses phone numbers and prices where appropriate. When and where appropriate. Each product is listed so refer to the text in the appendix. He will make commercial recommendations but receives no financial rewards from those recommendations.

I’m pretty much on the same while though I do have in my Being Wholly Vibrant blog. That’s my review blog and there are ads that WordPress puts in as well as some of the products I may make a small commission on. I’m in two companies right now but I’m only promoting one because I enjoy and love those products so much. And all the rest of them are like with Instacart–there’s a coupon so you can save money and I’ll save money too on my next order things like that, but nothing that’s you know, gonna make me wealthy from sharing about but there are the honest reviews on stuff I try.

I’ve worked hard over the years to stay brand independent, and the information that I share, because I feel that helps keep me honest. And I learned a long time ago not to use that phrase “in all honesty,” blah, blah blah because that means that you’re not honest about other stuff. You’re only honest about the stuff right after you say “in all honesty.”. Across the board I’m honest. I just think that staying brand independent helps me not present conflicting information or not make anyone feel pressured in any way; not to sway someone to think brand A is better than brand B or whatever. I will give you my opinion as when something tastes terrible. But again, you know, it’s just to me your taste buds are completely different from mine. And so and our taste buds change over time. So that’s just one example of I can tell you that something tastes terrible, but you might buy it and use it and love it. I just do my best to stay brand independent unless I’m truly in love with a product or a philosophy or teaching or such. All right, I will end this for now.

Let me know what you think about the book. And if you want me to continue reviewing it. Thank you for listening or following along with the text!

To buy the version of this book, which is appears the author updated in 2008: https://www.amazon.com/Prosper-During-Coming-Years-Century/dp/0425224325/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1Z2I634RM00FO&keywords=how+to+prosper+during+the+coming+bad+years&qid=1690691870&sprefix=how+to+prosper+%2Caps%2C159&sr=8-1

Transcribed by https://otter.ai and edited using Grammarly

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