Live On The Margin - A Review

When I heard that Pat Schulte was writing a book about how he's been generating income while living the dream of traveling the world, I was excited!  I'd already read his first book about sailing around the world without any sailing experience, Just Looking Out For Pirates, and I've been following his blog, Bumfuzzle, for almost 4 years now.

Over the years, Pat has mentioned a time or two that he trades on the internet for additional income.  I'd always been intrigued by this, since Pat and his wife Ali hadn't held a typical job in years!  They retired in their late twenties and were traveling the world by sailboat, a VW bus, a Porsche, and now another sailboat.  What was Pat doing?!  I love numbers and I think I'm pretty intelligent, but they didn't teach me this stuff in school.  I keep up with the daily activity of the Dow Jones on television, and I often wish that I had the knowledge (and money) to participate.  As I thought it would, the Dow has slowly gone up the past couple of years.  How could I learn this stuff?  I didn't have a clue, until now.

With Pat's writing style, I knew that if anyone could write a book about how to trade options in a way that I could understand ... it would be Pat!  He's got a great writing style, and he's not going to publish a book just for the sole purpose of making a profit.  If he's gonna write a book about trading, he's gonna make sure the content is valid, helpful and easy to understand.  

As soon as "Live on the Margin" became available, I immediately ordered the Nook version (Kindle version here) and started reading it.  Did it disappoint?  This book was even better than I expected!   Before reading this book, I had never heard of stock options.  After reading this book, I now know what stock options are, why they're a better "bang for your buck" than regular stocks, what to look for in making trading decisions, and what internet sites offer the services of trading online.   I now have a whole new understanding of how generating income in stocks is possible and how it all works.  

As the book states, trading is a form of gambling!  The book also covers the psychological aspect of trading, which I think is yet another great aspect of this book.  Our human emotions of fear and loss can greatly affect our decisions, and this book talks about how to deal with these emotions when trading.  A better understanding of human nature provides a better chance of trading successfully.

Since Ken and I are seriously interested in learning how to trade, today I ordered the paperback version.  We want to have this version so that we can easily refer to the book until we get the hang of things.  This isn't the kind of thing you read once if you're a beginner like us.  However, I think that this book provides everything we need to know to get started.  We're excited about our new "business venture"!

                                                                        

If you're not seriously interested in trading, this still might be a book that you'd enjoy.  The first part of the book speaks of a living a different lifestyle and  having a different mindset of what "success" is.  Most of us have been raised to think a certain way and live a certain way.  Pat writes about the "slacker", which isn't exactly what our parents have raised us to become.  However, the slacker doesn't look for entitlements or handouts.  Instead, the slacker is self-sufficient, keeps expenses low, and lives his/her passion with freedom from debt and material "anchors".   Yep, I now know what I am at heart .. a slacker!   

I will also note that Pat wrote this book with another "slacker" that he met through the slacker lifestyle.  The book tells both of their stories of how they've achieved their dreams through just a few days a week (or month) in the trading market.  This book is not only a great learning tool, but an inspiration.  Kudos to both of them for such a great job!

Hasta luego ... until then.  Mid-Life Cruising!