A different kind of business book.
08 December 2011
I found Amy Cortese's Locavesting: The Revolution in Local Investing and How to Profit from It to be kind of a nice, straightforward, useful business book.
This places it squarely in the .01% of business books that aren't tired rehashes of management theories, comparisons of business to war and military figures, and crackpot books on personal finance that may or may not be advertisements for the author's own financial business. (See: Safe Money Millionaire --but don't buy it!)
It's not a book to read if you're looking for very basic investment ideas, or if you're looking to get rich quick. What it is is an interesting consideration of various ways that people are starting to invest, financially, in their own communities. The suggestions range from the basic, like putting some of your money in locally or regionally owned community banks, to the more advanced, like forming a community investment organization. Each chapter provides examples and definitions, and ends with a very succinct rundown of the pros and cons of the investment type (community development loan funds, for example, may return slightly more interest than regular CDs, but are also NOT insured by the FDIC) and information on how to get started making such an investment.
Even if you don't have much to invest, it might give you some ideas about community investment options for a day in the future when you might want to give it a go.