This week in episode 24 of the Informed Choice Podcast, Martin interviews author and financial educator Paul Claireaux.
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Paul’s first book, “Who can you trust about money?” offers an explanation of how financial experts can mislead us and also how we can mislead ourselves when it comes to money.
Martin chats to Paul about his new financial freedom workshops which are aimed at younger people. They also talk about books, with Paul suggesting a comprehensive reading list for addressing the financial and non-financial aspects of money, life and happiness.
Ahead of the interview with Paul, Martin talks about his weekend volunteering at the Cranleigh Parish Boundary Challenge.
His weekly recap includes meetings with clients, the Cranleigh Chamber of Commerce committee and his fellow Knowle Park trustees.
In the news summary, Martin talks about the UK economy entering deflation,
Here are links to everything covered in episode 24 of the Informed Choice Podcast:
Cranleigh Parish Boundary Challenge
Cranleigh Chamber of Commerce
Finish Big by Bo Burlingham (book)
Start Up Season Two (podcast)
Weekly Economics Podcast
Meaningful Money (Podcast)
Meaningful University
Informed Choice Client Seminar – Staying Physically & Mentally Fit in Retirement
Paul Claireaux – author and financial educator
Paul talked about lots of books during his conversation with Martin. Here are all of the links you need:
Firstly there’s the irrational side of human behaviour for which Paul suggested:
Daniel Kahneman – Thinking, Fast and Slow
Dan Ariely – Predictably Irrational
A brilliant book by Duncan Watts (A PhD physicist) in which he proves just how much our common sense fails us) His book is called Everything is Obvious: Why Common Sense is Nonsense.
Secondly there’s the (sometimes less obvious) side of human behaviour – where we do operate rationally – and in this area Paul recommended:
Tim Harford – The Undercover Economist and The Logic of Life
Steven Levitt & Stephen Dubner – Freakonomics.
Paul’s third area of fascination is around our misunderstanding of investment ‘risk’ – so this is all about the flawed economics models that led us into to the financial crisis and which are still used heavily by some advisers today!
He says it’s worth noting that we’re not yet out of that crisis yet, with world debt piles being even bigger now. In this area he would recommend:
Nassim Taleb – The Black Swan and Antifragile
Roger Bootle – The Trouble With Markets
Mark Buchanan – Ubiquity and Forecast
George Cooper – The Origins of Financial Crises and Money, Blood and Revolution
Benoit Mandelbrot – The Misbehaviour of Markets
David Orrell – Economyths
Raghuram Rajan – Fault Lines
Robert Shiller – Irrational Exuberance
Finally, Paul is fascinated by the drivers of human happiness, motivation and performance.
He thinks there’s a lot of ‘voodoo’ self-help nonsense written in this area by self-proclaimed experts who often sell ridiculously expensive seminars to some quite vulnerable people. And he really doesn’t like that at all – so he suggests that people go for solid guidance in this area from the likes of:
The Chimp Paradox by Doctor Steve Peters, Psychiatrist and Coach to the British Olympic cycling team
Feeling Good by another psychiatrist Dr David Burns
Engineering Happiness by Manel Baucells & Rakesh Sarin
Anything by Kenneth Blanchard on leadership and management
Changing for Good by Prochaska, Norcross, DiClemente
StrengthsFinder2.0 by Tom Rath
Dan Pink – Drive
Oliver Burkeman’s awesome book The Antidote which Paul says exposes the charlatans in the happy clappy positive psychology movement for what they are. The says this book is pure genius.
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