Richards, The One-Page Financial Plan

I don’t review personal finance books, but I thought I should call readers’ attention to the new book by Carl Richards, The One-Page Financial Plan (Portfolio/Penguin). If you don’t know his work, he’s the creator of the weekly Sketch Guy column in The New York Times and the author of The Behavior Gap: Simple Ways to Stop Doing Dumb Things with Money.

In his new book, illustrated with his sketches, he tries to get people to focus on what’s important to them. “Think about your one-page plan as a snapshot, not an instruction book. If you’ve ever put together a kids’ toy, you’ll know that most of them come with a fifty-page instruction manual. Sure, the fifty-page plan is incredibly important—probably vital if you want the drawbridge on the castle to open or the rocket to launch—but what’s arguably most important is the picture on the front of the box. The picture lets you know you’re on the right track.” (p. 14)