Some financial reading.....

I have been reading a few books recently about Investing -- specifically investing in Index Funds. The first book was "Common Sense in Investing" by John C. Bogle, the legendary founder of Vanguard funds. In that book Bogle tries to explain why investing in Index funds (such as the total market fund or S&P 500 Index fund) is the only way to get a consistent return on investments. Interestingly Warren Buffet, also seems to have similar views which he outlined with his example of the Gotrocks family. Vanguard has a number of funds that fall into this category such as VTI (Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF) and BND (Vanguard Total Bond Market ETF). I would highly recommend this book to anyone who has been investing for a few years and has earned not so good returns.

Just finished reading another book --- "All about Index funds" by Richard Ferri. Although this book deals with the same topic, it attempts to explain the concept of Index funds, various types of Index funds, etc. It also deals with various methods of Indexing and the big players in this arena.

Currently I have three more books on Finance, one on Forex trading which I am reading right now. I also hope to read another book that I have borrowed dealing with Asset Allocation. I have been dealing with stocks and bonds for quite some time but Forex for me is a completely new topic.

However, the book that I just borrowed and the one that seems most interesting is "Green with Envy". It essentially deals with the 'Keeping up with the Joneses' mentality i.e. looking at your neighbors and comparing your standard of living with them. Unfortunately, many of us too often fall for this mentality and in trying to keep with our neighbors, end up spending a lot more on things that do not contribute to our long term benefit. I will post a review of this book once I am done reading.