Henry B. Zimmer's Money Manager for Canadians

Aluin Gilchrist is a Vancouver-based Canadian government civil
litigation lawyer.

The subtitle “A Practical Guide to Making your Money Grow” is not quite appropriate. Mr. Zimmer, a chartered accountant who is deservedly well known for his popular books on investments and income tax matters, indicates the function of this book in his usual clear and concise style: “ ... to painlessly do virtually any mathematical calculations that you require in business and investment decision-making” (p.1).

The heart of the book is 119 pages of tables which allow the user to calculate, by simple addition and multiplication on any cheap pocket calculator, to an accuracy of a few tenths of a percent — all without reference to anything that looks like algebra.

Without an applicable example, there’s a problem, because the underlying algebra is left unstated and unexplained. Daily compounding of interest is now very common indeed, but Zimmer gives no tables for that.

Because Zimmer has chosen not to suggest calculation of the effects of a range of estimates of inflation rates, the user may be unaware of any disproportion between upside and downside risks when making a choice in terms of estimates of future value. He does not encourage presentation of choices in terms of today’s money. He does remind us (p. 15) that over the last 30 years inflation has been 7 percent compounded annually, so we have some reason to expect that in another thirty years a cup of coffee will cost $5.71.