Managing Your Money, The Expat's Guide

Author Robin E. Wells has adopted a conversational and easy-to-follow language that steer the reader through the complexities of mutual funds, insurance and retirement planning. Above all, this is a commonsense guide without a sales pitch.

Indeed, Mr. Wells urges expatriates not to buy the first financial product they are offered. How many have bought a 20-year savings plan from a man in a pub, only to cash it in for disappointing returns many years' later?

It is interesting to read how school fees can be planned, and with a careful selection of mutual fund the savings will be almost double the amount paid in by the time the fund is employed. There is nothing more miraculous than the compound interest of regular savings.

A more flamboyant US best-seller, 'The Automatic Millionaire', demonstrates very much the same principle. However, Mr. Wells has his own expatriate twist to add, and the absence of taxation can make a big difference if correctly applied.

Many years ago one old hand in the offshore financial services sector told me that policies sold to expatriates were usually such a rip-off, that it was usually better to buy an onshore product and pay the tax.

From what Mr. Well says things have come some way since then, but you still need to be careful what you buy and who you trust.

He also relegates property to the back of his book, and gives a sober assessment of property as an investment. He highlights the illiquidity of bricks-and-mortar and the importance of secure rental income.

There is also an impressive reminder of the UK property crash of the late 1980s and early 1990s which has been almost forgotten in the extraordinary and probably unsustainable price gains of recent years.

Finally, Mr. Wells reminds readers of how Warren Buffett, the world's most successful investor chose to do nothing in the early 1970s except learn how to play bridge. The message is that doing nothing before a market collapse is an excellent strategy.

After the stock market collapse of 1974, Warren Buffett bought stocks at unbelievably low prices. Perhaps that is what investors today should be waiting for.