ATTENTION!

This is one of my favorite personal finance books! 

Discovering Humanity in the World of Risk and Return
By Mihir A. Desai
Review by Steve

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🧭 Why This Book Matters

I read The Wisdom of Finance not once but twice—and I’d still welcome a book-club discussion. Desai attempts something few authors dare: connecting the world of risk and returns with the world of love, meaning, uncertainty, luck, and story.

Finance meets the Humanities.
Spreadsheets meet Shakespeare.
Quant meets Qualitative.

It’s bold. It’s overdue. And it might be where the future of financial literacy is headed.

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💡 What the Book Tries to Do

Desai argues that finance is not just numbers—it is a human story filled with:

• uncertainty

• luck

• greed and restraint

• love and partnership

• failure, redemption, and humility

Two worlds trying to speak the same language:

“Finance is a life-affirming idea—if we let it be.”

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📍 Context: A New Kind of Investor

The internet has created a DIY investing revolution. Forums, books, index funds, robo-advisers—tools once reserved for Wall Street are now available to ordinary people. Yet at the same time, most of the public wants nothing to do with finance.

Desai asks: Why?
And more importantly—at what cost?

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📖 Key Chapters + Personal Reflections

Below are the chapters that resonated most with me, paired with reflections from 25+ years of investing.

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🔄 1. Wheel of Fortune — Life is Uncertain

Randomness rules everything. Markets. Storms. Health. Love. Uncertainty is not a bug—it’s the operating system.

Deny uncertainty, pay the price.

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🎯 2. Risky Business — Know Your Risk Tolerance

Modern Portfolio Theory still stands. Diversify. Stay balanced. Avoid chasing returns.

The only free lunch is diversification—always was, still is.

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💎 3. On Value — Humility Over Hubris (My Favorite Chapter)

This chapter argues that:

• skill is overrated

• luck is under-credited

• humility protects investors more than intelligence

As a cancer survivor and late-bloomer DIY investor, luck lives all through my story. I worked hard—but I was fortunate too.

“The lesson of finance is humility.” — Desai

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🏛 4. Becoming a Producer — Capitalism Has Evolved

We moved from family shops to multinational machines governed by short-term profit incentives. Jack Bogle warned us of this decades ago in The Battle for the Soul of Capitalism.

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💍 5. No Romance Without Finance — Money + Marriage

The Medici. The Rothschilds. And me.

Two public school teachers with aligned values built far more wealth than either of us ever expected. Shared purpose compounds like savings.

Partnership is an investment vehicle.

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⬆ 7. Failing Forward — Failure is Tuition

Failure teaches better than success. I learned that when I flunked 2nd grade…and again when I lost 70% of a booming tech-heavy portfolio in 2000.

Mistakes hurt.
Mistakes educate.

Failure is not a verdict—it’s curriculum.

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😬 8. Why Everyone Hates Finance — The Tolstoy Chapter

Desai uses Tolstoy to reveal why finance inspires fear and resentment. Greed ruins people. Risk feels dangerous. Loss stings more than gains thrill.

We distrust what can break us.

But we also need what can empower us.

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📌 Where the Book Stumbles (A Missed Opportunity)

I was surprised not to see Jack Bogle referenced—father of index funds, champion of low-cost investing, author of Enough. His life’s work is the clearest bridge between human values + financial structure.

His absence doesn’t weaken the book, but his inclusion would have strengthened it.

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⭐ Final Verdict

A challenging, original work that pushes finance toward empathy and meaning.

Not a casual read. Not a spreadsheet manual.
But a bridge—still under construction—between two long-separated worlds.

Humanity + Money.
Risk + Love.
Luck + Responsibility.
This is the wisdom Desai wants us to see.

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📦 Quick Summary Box for Readers

Read if you:

• enjoy philosophy, history, or psychology

• are a DIY investor seeking deeper meaning

• want finance to feel more human

Skip if you:

• want simple investing rules

• dislike metaphor or literary analysis

• prefer pure numbers, charts, and formulas

Most valuable takeaway:
Finance is not about defeating risk—it is about living with it.

Click here if interested in purchase.

Stephen A. Schullo, Ph.D. didn’t set out to become a retirement-plan advocate. He was just trying to be a good teacher.

Steve taught in the Los Angeles Unified School District for 24 years and, like so many educators, he trusted that the retirement plans offered at work were designed to help him retire with dignity. Instead, he discovered something very different: layers of high fees, sales commissions, confusing products, and a system that seemed to benefit everyone except the teachers it was supposed to serve.

That discovery changed the direction of his professional life.

Working in the classroom by day, Steve began learning everything he could about investing at night, eventually earning a Ph.D. from UCLA in 1996. He started writing retirement articles for the United Teacher newspaper, helping colleagues untangle the maze of Tax-Sheltered Annuities and 403(b) vendors. Over 13 years, his writing reached tens of thousands of educators across the Los Angeles Unified School District.

Along the way, he co-founded 403bAware, a teacher self-help group where colleagues met after school, asked questions, compared statements, and learned how to recognize high-cost products. He became part of an online community of thoughtful investors, contributing more than 7,500 posts since 1997. His advocacy has been featured in the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, U.S. News & World Report, and he has testified at California legislative hearings. His union honored him with its “Unsung Hero” award for retirement-plan advocacy.

Steve’s personal financial journey is also a love story. Together with his late spouse, Dan Robertson, they wrote the book Late Bloomer Millionaires, a candid account of how two ordinary public educators, after years of being sold high-cost annuities, finally discovered low-cost index investing and built financial independence later in life. The book is part memoir, part roadmap, and fully a testament to partnership, perseverance, learning, and grace. Dan’s optimism, wit, and steady presence remain at the heart of Steve’s work today.

For 19 years, Steve has served as a volunteer “Member-at-Large” (and former co-chair) on LAUSD’s Investment Advisory Committee, which oversees the district’s 403(b) and 457(b) plans for more than 55,000 current and former employees. Today, those plans hold over $3.8 billion in assets, and the committee continues to push for transparency, responsible stewardship, and low-cost investment access for all employees.

Steve launched this blog in 2012 to share what he learned the hard way:
• Teachers are not “bad with money.”
• The system was built to confuse us.
• When educators help educators, we change the outcome.

He is part of a small but spirited national network of teacher advocates who gather at 403bwise.org, where we support one another, share resources, and work toward reform.

Because every educator deserves a retirement plan that honors the work of a lifetime.