Book Review: Lessons on finances and a happy life

What makes for a successful investor? And more important, what makes for a happy and meaningful life?

According to renowned investor Jim Rogers, the road to financial success and the road to happiness are one and the same.

In his book, Jim Rogers advises young people, from the financially illiterate to the investment-savvy, on how to achieve the financial success they need to live their dreams.

Book: A Gift to My Children: A Father's Lessons for Life and Investing Author: Jim Rogers Price: $16.00; Pages: 106 ISBN: 978-0-470-74268-6 Publisher: John Wiley & Sons Ltd

Rogers co-founded the phenomenally successful Quantum Fund, which in 10 years delivered a return of 4,200 percent. He retired from Wall Street at the age of 37, and he continued to manage and invest his own funds with great success.

A Gift to My Children is his story of how he shared his insights on finances and life with his two young children. Rogers invests and lives by several basic rules.

The first rule is that you have to see the world up close if you're going to understand how it works. Rogers also advises readers to work hard, think critically, trust your own judgment, and work to identify your passions and dreams beyond simply making money.

Another rule is that you must always question conventional wisdom, since many of his most successful investment strategies and ideas have resulted from defying convention.

Rogers is a proponent of the idea that it's essential for young people to study history and to experience the world's cultures first-hand through travel.

Using a mix of stories from his childhood in Alabama, his experiences at Yale, Oxford, and in the army, and also from his investing career, Rogers explains how he has carried these principles through in his own life, and why they have made him successful. Rogers reveals how to learn from mistakes, too, to achieve a well-lived life.

The author uses China as an example of how he learned to trust his own judgment. Rogers wrote that he realized China's true potential in the 1980s, at a time when most analysts were highly skeptical of its prospects for growth.

He uses his own story to explain his other rules for life.

Focus on what you like: Rogers was 5 years old when he started collecting empty bottles at baseball games instead of playing.

Be persistent: Coming to Yale from rural Alabama, Rogers never stopped studying and won a scholarship to Oxford.

See the world: In 1990, Rogers traveled through six continents by motorcycle, gaining a global perspective and learning how to evaluate prospects in rapidly developing countries such as Brazil, Russia, India and China.

The principles of personal success and the philosophy of long-term investment that have served Jim Rogers so well can be followed by anyone with the determination to make it so.

An entertaining and story-driven guide to a successful life in the style of Hal Urban's Life's Greatest Lessons, Rogers' book will have a wide appeal among young people.

It also is a guide that parents can share with their older children to encourage them to begin successful habits to live financially secure and also meaningful lives.

(China Daily 07/20/2009 page5)