Throughout your lifespan, wealth will play different roles at different points of time. Hence, wealth management is something that you need from initial days of your earning life. People often make mistakes by not giving due attention to wealth management right from their young age and they really miss out golden opportunities in life, which they could have achieved if they had saved money at the right time and from the beginning. Wealth management needs professional attention, as Charles de Rothschild says, intensive and proper planning is required if you want to see your wealth grow with time. This kind of planning can be done if you have proper knowledge, or experience otherwise, the wealth and financial planners like GDR Privée could be given the responsibility to show you the proper way of financial planning and help you build your wealth day-by-day.

An insight into wealth management

Wealth management is a broad term. It includes several aspects of financial management such as investment management, legal procedures, real estate planning and implementation, taxation, insurance, fixed deposits, banking, and many more. The focus remains on optimal tax benefits and generating the consistent growth of wealth.

There was a time when high net-worth people used to hire wealth management professionals for proper management of their assets and earnings. These days, many middle-class people are also contacting expert services like GDR Privée for taking care of their assets and earnings. Individuals have the option of investing in mutual funds and equities, lands, real estates, and several other types of fixed assets. A professional wealth management company pay individual attention to their clients because they know that every individual has different financial targets and they need to plan it accordingly to achieve their target.

Research, planning, and execution

The responsibility of a wealth manager is really broad and tough. The responsibility does not end in advising a client but starts from there and lasts for many years depending on the client's wishes and targets. A wealth manager takes note of every asset, financial condition, and aspirations of a client. They then research to find what could be the best investment plan for the client and plan accordingly. They then discuss their plan with the client and make necessary advice. It is a continuous process, a wealth manager keeps account of every change in the market and observes the conditions of the funds to pick the best options for the clients. Thus, availing expert financial consultaion is beneficial for one and all so that you can be free from financial worries and your every major expense is planned well in advance.

I liked the timeline that Inventing a Better Mousetrap lays out in regards to patent models. I honestly hadn’t even known patent models were a thing before seeing the book online. So finding out that there was a very spark-filled history to them was rather interesting. I think it’s amazing that as many have survived as they did, given the sheer amount of times they were besieged by fire. I don’t normally get into history, but this definitely caught my attention!

Inventing a Better Mousetrap was written in a way that kept me coming back to it, even though there were several chapters I wasn’t interested in. It’s written in an accessible way that keeps things easy to visualize and emphasizes their important. They also included information that was fun to file away for “Random facts to bring out at weird times” like the fact that molasses was kept on LaFrance fire engines to pour over the engine to help keep it running as good as possible.

The chapters cover almost everything one could imagine, with various items being collected into chapters. The chapters are simply titled with names like “Steam”, “Home”, “Sports & Entertainment”, and each chapter is given generally a one page introduction. The models are all very nicely lit, and though the photographs are small, they’re large enough to see enough details to be fascinated by them. Some of my favorite patent models were the baby swing, lawn mower, refrigerator, as well as the knitting machine and other textile equipment. My absolute favorite, probably just for the sheer oddity of it, was the Boot Jack and Burglar Alarm.

Inventing a Better Mousetrap also includes a multiple choice quiz to see if you can identify some of the various patent models. It also has a section for patent models you can make. However, in my opinion, none of the patent models given in this section are going to be something that average person can make. You need access to various pieces of special equipment such as a 3D printer, a laser cutter, a Lego Mindstorms set ($150.00 – not a casual buy), and so on. It was fascinating to read everything that went into making the selected models, though!

Overall, Inventing a Better Mousetrap was a very neat book, but it’s definitely more for someone who has a bit more of a serious interest in history and/or models than I did. It’s well organized, contains very few typos, and fascinating in its own way.

Disclaimer: I received a copy of this book from Edelweiss for review consideration.

My favourite fiction reads of 2016 were probably as varied as they've been been.  While once I was a tried and true mystery-or-bust sort of gal, my favourites this year only include 2 mysteries, both historical.  2 were popular fiction, something I almost never read; 1 an almost forgotten classic re-released, 1 Urban Fantasy and 1 collection of comics from my personal comic hero, Berkeley Breathed.

 

I had a lot fewer 5 star, books-I-want-to-hug in fiction but I had a lot more 4.5 star fiction reads this year.  It's been a great year for me reading-wise: while admittedly generous with my ratings, I rarely rate much 4.5 or 5 stars; I usually top out at 4 (something I'd re-read but not gush about).

 

My 4.5 star reads this year were:

Christmas at The Mysterious Bookshop

Lady Cop Makes Trouble

Girl Waits with Gun

Undeniably Yours

Stiff Competition

The Circular Staircase

The Locked-room Mysteries

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children

Goodwood

The Single Undead Moms Club

Dear Committee Members

A Bed of Scorpions

Design for Dying

The Curse of Tenth Grave

The Semester of Our Discontent

The Canterville Ghost

The Folio Book of Comic Short Stories

The Other Side of Midnight

Something Rotten

The House at the End of Hope Street

Marked In Flesh

Fire Touched

Faux Paw

Daisies For Innocence

 

My first love, mysteries, make a very strong showing in the 4.5 star list.  Lots of cozies, of course, and historicals, and lots of UF, but a couple of classics and some great literature are on this list too as well as some YA and a sneaky contemporary fiction.

 

Overall, I'd incredibly pleased with my reading this year; I broke my personal record for most books read, yes, but I'm even more thrilled with how much broader my reading has become.  I even read a Science Fiction book this year!  *gasp*.  (I still don't like SF.)  This is 100% because of this community.  I've said it before, but it bears repeating:  I owe my TBR mountain range entirely to this community.  Without all of you I'd still be reading all cozies, all the time.  So thank you, and keep 'em coming!

For me June was swallowed up by Moonlight Reader's Summer Book Bingo and #20BooksofSummer, and the days just flew by.  I didn't expect to read much this month because of home projects, but the fun of the Book Bingo sucked me in (and my growing apathy for those stupid french doors probably helped too).  My staycation was a last minute bonus (I usually work school holidays), so I crammed some marathon reading into the last few days of June.

 

My final count for the month is 20 books (Previous comments say 21, because I accidentally counted a May book reviewed on the 1st) and the ones listed above were my 4.5/5 star reads.  Quite a few more than I normally have and I like that it ended up 3 non-fiction and 3 fiction.  Serendipity.  

 

My least favourite book of the month was Happily Ever After by Susannah Fullerton which I rated 1.5 stars: .5 star for the few actual historical facts included and 1 star for the illustrations included in the text.  It's at least a pretty book.

 

I'm off now to start priming the trim around those doors, so I can say "Yes, I did make progress..." before plopping myself back on the couch with my books in a guilt-free haze.

 

Happy Friday!

Best character in a novel ever:  The painting in The Improbability of Love

 

A woman finds a long-missing, seminal but lesser-known work of art in a thrift shop and buys it without having any idea of the chaos that will unfold as a result of this small canvas.

 

I loved this book.  Told in the third person, we follow the lives of several people who live and breathe art, the painting itself, and Annie, an almost thoroughly broken human being that in spite of everything just keeps plugging along, wanting nothing more than to cook fantastical feasts.

 

As the painting itself says:

"Let me guess what you are thinking.  Girl finds picture; picture turns out to be worth a fortune.  Girl (finally) finds boy with a heart. Girl sells picture, makes millions, marries boy, all live happily ever after.

 

Piss off.  Yes, you heard me, piss off...

 

Life is not that simple."

 

Neither is this book.  It's a twisty tale and ended up in places I didn't expect, and it was wonderful.  The author had me fascinated from one moment to the next.  People I felt sorry for at the start, I hated at the end, and people I thought were awful I sympathised with as the book progressed.  Not everybody got the ending I'd have chosen for them, but all in all I was satisfied as I turned the last page.

 

I could nit-pick a few things: information I'd have liked to have, or characters that fall off the radar, or the ever-present copyediting errors, but really, I loved this book.  I hated putting it down and I couldn't wait to pick it back up.  Just looking at it makes me smile and that's what a 5 star read should do.  I'll likely forget about most of the characters with time, but the painting, he is a character I'll never forget.

 

(Summer book bingo square for "More than 400 pages long".)