Today we review JL Collin’s influential book The Simple Path to Wealth. This is a must read for anybody looking to take the low-maintenance road to financial independence. Let’s see why this book deserves a spot in your reading queue.
If you are thinking of taking this FIRE (Financial Independence Retire Early) route, then this is the book for you. If you are on the fence about it, this is still the book for you.
Simply put, The Simple Path to Wealth is the roadmap for anyone looking to go down the path of FIRE.
If you’re like me, you’ll want to make it way more complicated then it needs to be. You’ll listen to thousands of hours of podcasts and read innumerable blogposts on the matter.
But in the end, it all distills down to what JL Collins has written in his book.
Collins brings logic, humor, leadership and years of experience to the world of financial independence. This carries directly over to the pages of his book.
He gives heaping portions of wisdom and sage advice throughout his writings. Whether you choose to follow the path he lays out is up to you. Either way, you will not regret having read it.
Let’s start by taking a closer look at one of FIRE’s most iconic figures.
About JL Collins
I’ve never met JL Collins in person. Some day I hope to. He’s one state up from me in NH(I live in MA), so maybe it will happen. More likely it would be through an event that he runs called Chautauqua (more on that later).
The point is, everything I know about him is through listening to podcasts and through reading his various works.
From what I have gathered, JL Collins tells it to you straight. He does not sugar coat or mask his feelings in any way shape or form. If he believes in something, he gets behind it 100% and tells you why. If he thinks someone/something is full of sh#!, he’ll tell you that too.
In my mind, he’s got that natural gift of leadership. Lucky for anyone that reads his book, he’s leading you to greener pastures (in my humble opinion). You can’t say that about every leader.
If you choose to master it, money becomes a wonderful servant. If you don’t, it will surely master you.”
JL Collins (The Simple Path to Wealth)
Better still, he’s calling on years of experience in the financial world, and showing you all the pitfalls that so many of us fall into.
He has a genuine disdain for the financial experts that lead us astray. This disdain mixed with his brutal honesty makes for good reading that is both entertaining and incredibly informative.
All told, reading his book, The Simple Path to Wealth, is definitely a worthwhile venture if you are interested in exploring the road to financial independence.
The Idea Behind The Simple Path to Wealth
If you listen to enough of his guest podcasts, you eventually start to hear Collins apologize for his book/blog’s “genesis story”. Nevertheless, it’s an important element to understand and it lends itself well to a teacher’s busy lifestyle.
Essentially, he explains that his blog (where all his writing began) is a series of letters to his daughter. Collins wanted his daughter to understand the world of personal finance so that she could avoid the myriad pitfalls that so many of us fall into. Much to his chagrin, she was completely disinterested in the topic, even though she knew of it’s great import.
Basically, despite it’s importance, she didn’t want to sink her whole life into understanding it. Finance felt too high maintenance looking and complex to her. So, she simply passed.
That’s when the light went off for Collins. Just because he found it fascinating, doesn’t mean that others did. He enjoyed getting into the weeds. But he, as he well knew, was anything but “normal” in this regard.
Collins understood. If he wanted his daughter to be financially savvy, it had to be low maintenance. It had to be “simple”. And so the blog letters that would eventually lead to The Simple Path to Wealth were born.
This, as I referenced earlier, is why I think this book is such a great fit for teachers. With so little time to spare, this road gives you the peace of mind that your financial future is being secured without the time commitment that can feel so daunting.
But, in order to follow his lead and invest your hard-earned money, you probably want to have a little bit of trust as well…
Trust
Sometimes, as teachers, we know that our students just have to make the mistakes and learn for themselves.
In the case of Collins, he didn’t want to have his daughter to learn the hard way. It could be too costly.
And there are a lot of sharks in the financial waters. He had learned this through years of experience and hard-earned wisdom.
Collins writes the following in his introduction. “Unfortunately this benign neglect of things financial leaves you open to the charlatans of the financial world. The people who make investing endlessly complex, because if it can be made complex it becomes more profitable for them, more expensive for us, and we are forced into their waiting arms.”
That excerpt gives a feel for Collins’s honesty mixed with his disdain for the “financial experts” that lead us adrift.
His candor and logic lead me to trust him. Then, throw in the fact that he has very little to gain from you following his advice, and the trust only deepens.
In the end, apart from buying his book(s) (which he’ll happily tell you to take out of the library), or visiting his blog, he has very little to gain from these ventures. He recommends Vanguard and VTSAX + VBTLX as your two funds. He does NOT get any income if you choose them.
If he wanted to, he could probably ask you for a fee and invest your money for you. He doesn’t do it. Then, maybe he’d feel just like the people he warns against.
All told, I trust in his leadership and believe his motives are pure. I believe you will too once you read The Simple Path to Wealth.
JL Collins Resources
The Simple Path to Wealth, he explains, is simply a streamlined edition of his blog, jlcollinsnh.com. Give it a look to get a feel for what he’s about. His “stock series” is probably a good place to start.
It took me a while to get his book out of the library. It’s still in high demand I suppose… If you want to own it yourself here is an affiliate link that doesn’t cost you anything more, but supports what I’m doing.
You can also search for used versions by clicking my affiliate link at Better World Books. I like their mission of saving books from landfills and using the profits to help promote literacy world-wide.
If you’re interested, JL Collins also has another book that I’ve never read called How I Lost Money in Real Estate Before it was Fashionable.
Finally, JL Collins helps spearhead an event bringing people in FIRE together for a week. It looks fun but it books up fast (fingers crossed for me for anything in the coming years). The event, Chautauqua, can be seen by clicking that link.
The Simple Path to Wealth – In Summary
The book, the path Collins lay out, and my parting words will all have something in common. They are simple.
I said it before and I’ll say it again, The Simple Path to Wealth is the road map you should consider following if you are interested in saving your money and having the potential to retire early. In this blog, I am directing these messages towards teachers because I believe in them. But all my information comes from leaders like JL Collins.
He keeps the path low-maintenance and easy to follow. That way, you can focus on other matters with the knowledge that your financial future is being taken care of.
So, if you want the simple investing ideas from all these blogs, podcasts, and movies boiled down into one place, go get yourself The Simple Path to Wealth, by JL Collins. You won’t regret it.
Thanks for reading everyone. I started my site in February of 2022 after becoming a casualty of the teaching profession. I found myself burnt out with no idea what direction I would go in my career. Then, I found FIRE and wanted to share these ideas with fellow teachers in case they found themselves in a similar situation. Now, I feel much more secure in my future and have a plan I believe in. If you want to come along for the ride I encourage you to subscribe and get posts hand-delivered to your inbox. In the meantime, be well!
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