Become your own financial advisor. Now that sounds like a great idea. While you should always seek professional advice if you have any doubts about how to manage your money, there are a few basic financial truths that you can practise in order to become financially free.

Warren Ingram’s book Become your own financial advisor could be your ticket to starting the year off on a good financial foot, improving your financial status and being well on your way to financial freedom by the end of the year, if not before.

Ingram is the co-founder of Johannesburg-based Galileo Capital and has been a financial planner for nearly two decades. He was the South African Financial Planning Institute’s Financial Planner of the Year in 2011. He has committed his wealth of knowledge to paper so that more people can learn how to manage their finances themselves.

According to Ingram, being financially free is not about having access to vast quantities of money. Rather, it means you are able to say the following things:

1. You are free of bad debt, which is debt incurred to buy things that will be consumed or will not appreciate in value over time.
2. You have an emergency fund that is equivalent to half your annual expenses, that is saved in a money market or 30-day notice account.
3. You spend less than you earn.
4. Your income-generating assets are sufficient to pay for your future expenses.

As Ingram repeatedly points out in his book, although there are millions of fad diets, books and programmes about healthy eating and exercise, there remains a large percentage of the world’s population that are, well, too large. Similarly, having a number of books about financial health on your bookshelf will not help you if you persistently make bad decisions regarding your money.

The book is aimed at the average person on the street, who has money and wants to know how to manage it well. You would also benefit from reading the book if you have made a few wrong turns and want to know how to sort your finances out so that you are on the right track.

For example, Ingram advises that just as you must make incremental changes to your lifestyle and diet to lose weight sustainably, so too you have to make incremental changes to your budget that you can maintain so that eventually you are spending less and saving more.

The book is full of practical examples, which are easy to understand and can be applied to anyone, whether you are earning R3 000 a month or R30 000 a month. Whether you are starting out at your first job, halfway through your career, or contemplating retirement, this book has value to offer all its readers.

It may seem like common sense to some, but sometimes you need to have a solid blueprint before you set forth. This book can be your financial freedom blueprint.

If you are still not certain about managing your finances on your own, the book also offers solid advice about what you should look for in a financial advisor.

Become your own financial advisor: the real secrets to becoming financially independent by Warren Ingram (Zebra Press, 179 pages)