Mountain resident Karen Cumming says her new book, “The Wealthy Martian: An Out-of-this-World Guide to Financial Literacy for Parents, Teens and Other Earthlings,” should be available on amazon.ca before the end of the year.
Hamilton Mountain author has out-of-this-world take on investing
Karen Cumming says she was inspired to write a book about financial literacy after learning her students were not being taught about money management in high school.
Mountain resident Karen Cumming says her new book, “The Wealthy Martian: An Out-of-this-World Guide to Financial Literacy for Parents, Teens and Other Earthlings,” should be available on amazon.ca before the end of the year.
Karen Cumming says she was inspired to write a book about financial literacy after learning her students were not being taught about money management in high school.
“It’s virtually non-existent in the school system,” Cumming said. “How do I know that? Because I spent 16 years in the (Hamilton public) school system and I witnessed it with my own eyes.”
Last February, the English teacher, journalist and former financial planner with IG Wealth Management started writing “The Wealthy Martian: An Out-of-this-World Guide to Financial Literacy for Parents, Teens and Other Earthlings” and Cumming said the book should be available on amazon.ca by the end of the year.
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Cumming said the Martian angle was inspired by her being part of the Mars One project, a controversial initiative by Dutch businessperson Bas Lansdorp to colonize the Red Planet.
The initiative ended in 2019 when the organization went bankrupt.
This is Cumming’s second book.
In 2019, she and her sister Patricia Milne published “The Indispensable Survival Guide to Ontario’s Long-term Care System” after going through the process of finding a long-term-care home for their 98-year-old mother.
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In the classroom, Cumming said she would ask her students if they felt prepared for life with what they had learned about money management.
“Invariably, they said no,” Cumming recalled. “I saw this gaping hole in the system that needed to be filled.”
Cumming said she wanted to provide an easy-to-read book that discusses ways we can improve managing our money.
“We are taught how to work for our money, not how to make our money work for us,” Cumming said. “In order to be financially literate, we must understand money and how it works.”
The Mountain resident said the book also looks at dividend reinvestment plans (DRIP) as an alternative to traditional investing.
According to TD-Canada Trust, a DRIP is a dividend reinvestment plan whereby cash dividends earned on eligible securities are reinvested to purchase additional shares automatically and commission-free.
“My wish is that people, after they read this, will become aware that the system is purposely not teaching us about money, and therefore we must become our own advocate,” Cumming said.
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The book includes seven basic rules to follow.
Live beneath your means, pay yourself first, write down your goals, build a budget, get off the debt-go-round, purchase insurance when you are young and make a will.
“If everyone who reads the book did the first two things, this world would spin on a different axis,” Cumming said.
The author also offers these five money-saving tips:
Charge your phone and use washers, dryers and dishwashers on weekends, or after 7 p.m. on weeknights to access lower hydro rates.
Repair things whenever possible, instead of buying new.
Don’t throw vegetable scraps away. Put them in a pot of water and make broth out of them and then freeze it as a base for soups and stews throughout the year.
Make your own coffee instead of going to coffee shops.
Test drive books from the library instead of buying them. If you really like a book, you can buy it with confidence.
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