Perhaps it was reading Adrian Mole books growing up that makes the prospect of reading a diary so enthralling to me. And when someone on the Amazon feedback pages of Jonathan Maitland's book suggested that "A Millionaire's Diary" was a good read I bought it right away. I'll jump at the chance to read any diary about investing or making money, it's fascinating.
The book arrived on Monday. It is obviously self-published and has a copyright date of 2011. I got started on it over lunch.
The first warning sign in this book that made me think that it probably wasn't going to be a classic was on page 9 where she mentions that her husband is going to try his luck with "spread bidding".
Hmmm, I thought, is that some method I've never heard of? Or has she misunderstood or misspelt what spread betting is?
Not to worry, it doesn't seem to be an important plot point and maybe she elaborates later. I'll carry on.
Come page 22, her husband is now "spread betting" so the earlier mistake was likely poor spelling combined with a lack of editing.
Sadly these errors crop up over and over.
At one point she mentions that her husband is going to join up with a friend they have in the US and trade ideas for him. The husband is out of work and the friend can't trade the system because it needs to be done whilst the UK markets are open. If the system is successful after testing, the friend will pay the husband to run it full-time. This plot point shows promise, I look forward to hearing more about the results.
Unfortunately, that's it. The experiment is never brought up again.
The main story sounds far-fetched and lacking in details. Jessica and her husband apparently borrowed lots and lots of money via loans and credit cards and then invested the lot in one share.
As she puts it, all the borrowed money went into "a small volatile company on the aims market", whatever that is. Does she mean the Alternative Investment Market, or AIM?
More details are given eventually, dripped in through diary entries. Initially they invested in 2003 - fantastic timing as March of that year turned out to be the bottom of the fall that started in mid-2001 - and apparently became paper millionaires in short order.
Fast forward to 2008 and they are now parents to a baby girl, Jessica's husband has been made redundant and they still hold all of their shares. It's been 5 years and the shares they hold can't be sold as they are "too low".
So they've sat back and watched these shares (the company is never specified) collapse, taking all the money they borrowed. The closest Jessica gets to giving any detail about their investment is one sentence a third of the way through the book; "our shares are now down to 10p from £3.20 in July 2007".
On and on the book plods through various different methods the couple are using to try to make money. One thing that is uniform throughout the book is that they never go into any detail about anything they try. It's all skirted over quickly: "A pallet of sledges arrived and people stopped in the street, wanting to buy them there and then".
So convienient! Almost like it never happened and to add any further narrative to it would mean it took longer to finish writing the book.
I completed A Millionaire's Diary within the day. Whilst I was hoping for a fascinating read to capture me over several nights before sleep, I got something that lasted perhaps an hour and left me feeling like I probably got a tenth of the real story.
It ends with what the author must feel is some kind of epiphany - if she sells £5 million pounds worth of something then she'll be where she wants to be.
No frosty, Sherlock.
Sometimes with certain books you get the feeling that an author starts with a lot of enthusiasm and commits to finishing their work yet tires of the effort after a while so abruptly ends it, rushing the completion. This is definitely the feeling I got here. Like a college student who really needs to get some homework done, they power through it and when it's done they sit back and think that should be enough. It's not something to be proud of but it should be adequate and at least it's finally done and I can get back to hanging out with my friends.
A couple of websites are mentioned in the book. The first is millionairesdiary.co.uk where readers are directed for more information about the author. I can't find any trace of it, even in archive.org.
The second is a website that was created to sell their wares. It has a URL of aoneseller.co.uk and from what I can tell it existed for a couple of years from around the time this book was completed. There were half a dozen products for sale on it, one being this book.
If I had to guess, I would say that Mr and Mrs Jones never did become millionaires.
A 2022 follow-up would likely see them in hideous debt, with lots of ideas that never come to fruition. The book has two reviews on Amazon, both from 2011. As I look back I see that the review on Jonathan Maitland's book is also from 2011. Doesn't seem particularly impartial to me anymore but considering there is barely any other coverage of this book online it suggests the promotional efforts made pretty much match the efforts expended in writing the book i.e. "that'll do".
Off to the charity shop it goes.