Where to learn all about investing?

[Thriftypreneur]

Recently I've become very interested in learning how to invest my money wisely, but I don't know the first thing about it.

Can anyone point me to solid resources in which I can begin my investing education? If it helps, I'm mostly interested in long-term, lower risk investing, like CD's, high-yield savings accounts, etc--places I can continue to put money that will build compound interest, but I'm also interested in learning as much as I can about other kinds of investing. One can never have too much education and knowledge.

Thanks all!

 

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[DeletedUser394]

Investopedia.com is good

Lower risk investing is pretty straightforward to be honest.

 

[Bossopolis]

Please buy this book. And no I am not getting any kind of compensation...

MONEY Master the Game: 7 Simple Steps to Financial Freedom - By Tony Robbins

http://www.amazon.com/dp/1476757801/?tag=tff-amazonparser-20

Good luck !

 

[DeletedUser394]

http://www.amazon.com/review/R34NR1...nodeID=283155&store=books&tag=viglink20442-20

1,918 of 1,972 people found the following review helpful
A lot of "filler" and unfortunately little new information

By Roman M on November 18, 2014

I realize that this is not going to be a popular review in a sea of readers who are either huge fans of Tony's work or people who are new to investing and I am in no way trying to discourage anyone from buying the book. I just hope that a few people will read this with an open mind in order to make an informed purchase.

I started following Tony's advice back in the early 90s, when I was a teenager, and am very familiar with all of his principles. A couple of weeks ago I saw a post on Facebook about him releasing a new book on finances so I bought it to see if it would be any better than his books and CDs (if you've read any of his books or listened to his CDs, you probably know that he provides very little concrete advice and invites you to attend his expensive "Wealth Mastery" seminar in order to learn more). As expected, the first few chapters of the book consist mainly of motivational material and a description of the issue (i.e. most Americans don't know how to make money in the stock market long-term). You can easily skip those without missing any critical information, unless you need motivation to invest. As I was listening to these chapters on Audible, I was starting to worry that the entire book would consist of nothing more than motivational material...

Then he finally starts going into some specifics. He starts out by saying that the secret to wealth is to add more value to other people's lives. Okay. Then he talks about deciding on a specific percentage of your income that you want to invest (he recommends saving and investing 10-20% of your income). He spends a lot of time talking about index funds (of which many books have been written before, such as books by John C. Bogle) and the exorbitant amount of fees charged by most mutual funds (nothing new there either. See Phil Town's "Payback Time", for example). He talks about dollar cost averaging, re-balancing your account at least once a year, don't invest in actively managed mutual funds, etc.

So far, all of this information is accurate, but if you have been investing in the market for a number of years or even read the free articles on the Motley Fools' website, I'm sorry to say that there is little new information here. But at this part of the book, Tony starts referring to the reader as "an INSIDERS", which I find a bit comical.

In all honesty, if you are new to investing, this is one of many potential books where you can get more information. However, be aware of the following:

1. The book is very long. And sadly, it is not because it is so full of financial wisdom. Although there are some nuggets of useful information found throughout the book, unfortunately, most of the pages are filled with "filler" information. Tony goes on and on listing the names of the "INSIDERS" that he spoke with to come up with advice for this book. The information is very repetitive. He also spends a significant amount of time going into non-financial information from his prior books and seminars (i.e. the six human needs, controlling your emotional states, etc and trying to tie the information to money). Unfortunately, all this filler information makes the book painfully slow to read and was totally unnecessary if you ask me. If you read a book like Benjamin Graham's classic, "The Intelligent Investor", you right away see the difference. It's all meat and no potatoes. Not the case with Tony's book, unfortunately.

2. Although he tells us not to try to time the market, he then proceeds to give us a list of examples of past predictions he made which turned out to be correct. However, he doesn't mention anything about his August 2010 prediction in which he said: "Right now is a time you might want to take some stocks off the table in the stock market. Especially if they are in manufacturing or retail or banking or god forbid homebuilding and housing . . . I would feel bad if I didn't warn you . . . One of the biggest bubbles in history is blowing up now." What happened after he made this prediction, you ask? The market ended up gaining 90%! (See the recent BloombergView article for more information. I will post the link for it in the comments section). In addition, his recommendation to take money out of the stock market directly contradicts information found in the book (which specifically recommends to "wait out" market lows and continue investing every month, also known as dollar cost averaging).

3. A lot of the "financial shortcuts" that he mentions have "catches" (as he finally reveals hundreds of pages into the book, although in the first few chapters -and on the book cover- he only talks about the positives of his methods, making them sound easy and full-proof). Definitely do your research before attempting anything other than the time-tested advice, such as investing in index funds. Even his "All Weather" portfolio might not prove to be as good as his historical numbers suggest (see the link in the comments section for more information).
In fact, as I keep on finding more and more reviews online by financial advisers and financial journalists, I see that many of them have noticed some of the same issues and contradictions that I discovered when reading the book. I'm going to post two more links to articles on the first comment for anyone who cares to read them.

4. The free "app" (which is not really an app since you can't download it as far as I can tell) is nice. It asks you for your current spending on different items (food, mortgage, transportation, etc) in order to calculate how much you will need in order to pay for these things through your investments. However, I am puzzled that it utilizes today's amounts and doesn't seem to take inflation into account. So it gives people the false impression that they will reach their goals much sooner than expected but that seems like a critical mistake to me. Let's suppose that you had achieved financial security back in 1984 (20 years ago) and back then you needed 4,500 dollars a month to pay for your basic needs. According to USinflationcalculator, today you would need 10,754 dollars in order to pay for the same items (a 139% cumulative rate of inflation). Ouch! In addition, as fellow reader "MJC" mentioned in the comments, the app does not take important recurring annual expenses such as property taxes into account, which can easily add up to thousands of dollars a year! I have spoken to multiple people in the financial industry over the years and the number one regret that they hear from their clients is that they did not save enough for retirement. So Tony's app worries me. You may want to sign up for the free app and run through your numbers before you buy the book to see if this feels right to you.

5. The book is very hyper and has too much excitement. As another reviewer, Prohobo, put it so well: "there is a lot of "excitement", "wow factor", "hype", "selling" and "fluff" in the book - leading up to the meat. So it does read very "self-helpy" for a lack of a better word." It has a bit of a feel of a "get rich quick" book, so be ready for that if you're going to buy it. Also, Tony anticipates and responds to any criticism of his book by dismissing anyone's critical opinion unless they themselves are rich. Yet, he himself did not make his initial wealth in the stock market. Rather, he made his millions in his twenties through his books, tapes/CDs, coaching, and seminars (remember "Wealth Mastery"?). According to Forbes, "'Unleash the Power Within,' nets him some $9 million annually", not counting his other seminars and products. He claims to teach the keys to wealth and business mastery, but other than selling personal development products and services, which he admittedly is very good at, his overall business track record is questionable to say the least. Does anyone remember what happened to his public company, DreamLife? Or what about his "more than twenty companies, a dozen of which he actively manages" (according to his description on Amazon)? How does one person actively manage that many companies?
Although Tony says that he will donate all of the proceeds for this book, it has stirred up a huge amount of publicity for Tony's brand, his products, and the companies which he is constantly promoting throughout the book. And there is a disclosure at the beginning of the book saying that "the author is in discussions with StrongHold Wealth Management to enter into some type of business partnership". In fact, I looked into this and I found an article from ThinkAdvisor which claims that Josh Jenkins-Robbins, Tony's son, works for Stronghold! The article states: "According to FINRA's BrokerCheck, [Josh Jenkins-Robbins] is registered with Stronghold Financial in San Diego. And his LinkedIn Profile links to three company websites: Stronghold Financial and two enterprises in which Tony Robbins enjoys joint ventures. In his book, the elder writes that Josh "has been in financial services his entire life."" Hmm...

6. As Cullen Roche wrote in a recent MarketWatch article, "Robbins stresses the importance of becoming an "INSIDERS" and steers the reader toward many of his own companies or companies he's partnered with" (see the link to the article in my 11/28/14 comment). In addition, "the book promotes a low-fee approach, yet it recommends working with companies [i.e. Lifetime Income and Stronghold Financial] that will outsource you to high-fee firms. This is a contradiction that is difficult to reconcile, and it seriously undermines the credibility of the text. [...] The book is filled with contradictory strategic investment commentary. Robbins stresses the importance of using passive index funds, but also explains the importance of asymmetric returns and active strategies. He interviews supposed "INSIDERS" who have totally contradictory approaches (stock traders, activists and indexers), while putting many high-fee hedge fund managers on a pedestal. He even cites his own market-timing calls over the years as if that adds any value to the text without mentioning that he has made some horrible stock market calls [...]. You come away thinking that these high-fee active managers are geniuses, but then you're told at points that high-fee active managers are useless. Again, the commentary seemed to contradict itself consistently."
I highly recommend you read the full article so you know what you are getting yourself into if you're going to buy the book.

Having read dozens of financial books over the years, my "baloney detection kit" went off multiple times while reading this book. For example, I believe his advice pertaining to paying off your mortgage faster is inaccurate (someone with real estate expertise correct me if I'm wrong on this one). On page 251, "The Banker's Secret", Tony claims that if you have a 270,000 dollar home financed over 30 years at 6%, if you prepay 270 dollars a month, you will pay it off in 15 years, saving 50% of the total cost. I have a mortgage so this would be great news for me. However, I went to Bank Rate's website and ran those exact numbers and the result I got was that the mortgage would be payed off in 21 years (i.e. 9 years sooner, rather than the 15 years claimed by Tony) and that you would save 107,729 dollars, versus Tony's 50% which would you have been closer to 265K, since the total cost of the home would have been 582K at 6% over 30 years. In addition, on that same page he writes "To be clear, you're not paying extra money; you're simply prepaying next month's principal a touch sooner", even though I am paying 270 extra dollars every month... Hmm.

At the end of the day, it's an inexpensive book and a lot of the advice in it is good and it is nice to read the views of the some of today's great investors (although even that part spends too much time talking about the individuals and their achievements, it has little practical advice, and sounds very much like his old "Power Talk" series, which were fun to listen to but ended up having little impact on your life). Tony has a special gift for taking old information, even common wisdom at times, and "repackaging" it to make it sound earth-shattering. If this book makes you take action on information that you already know, then it's worth every penny. If you are new to investing, you will get a lot of good information (although I strongly recommend you read a few more books to get different perspectives. See the comments section for some suggestions). That is, if you can make it through the entire book. However, if you know more than 90% of the general population (which isn't hard to do, given the financial ignorance of the average person), then you can safely skip this book. At the end of the day, the book ends up over-promising and under-delivering if you ask me.

12/2/14 Update:
So many of you have been asking me for a list of key points from the book so here goes

1. Understand the power of compound interest and save/invest 10-20% of your income.
2. You can't beat the market.
3. Fees kill your returns. Look at America's Best 401(k) or Feex to see how your 401(k) fares.
4. Hire an independent fiduciary adviser.
5. Use a Roth IRA or Roth 401(k) and pay taxes now as much as possible, since they are likely to rise in the future.
6. Forget Target Date or actively managed mutual funds. Use index funds instead.
7. Know how much you need in order to retire (use the free app to find some rough numbers. Make sure to take inflation into account since the app doesn't do that)
8. Come up with a solid asset allocation: a secure bucket (bonds, CDs, cash, etc) and a growth bucket (stocks, real estate, commodities, etc). Re-balance regularly. Take the Rutgers University risk tolerance quiz to find out how much risk you can stomach.

That's all for now. I'll continue as soon as I have more time

P.S. Did anyone notice that there is no bibliography? On page 639, Tony gives you his main website to go access the bibliography (it's online "in order to be efficient on additional space", he says) but I was unable to find it anywhere. Did anyone else find it?


Here are the links I mention in my review:

http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-11-19/trade-against-a-selfhelp-genius

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/to...-the-game-of-money-in-his-new-book-2014-11-25

12/6/14 Update:

Here are two additional articles that I mention in my review:

"Infomercial king Tony Robbins wants to tell you what to do with your money. Be very afraid"
http://www.theguardian.com/money/20...-tony-robbins-wants-to-be-the-next-suze-orman

"What one financial advisor discovered after plunking down $12 for Tony Robbins' 'Money' manifesto"
http://www.riabiz.com/a/49913525887...king-down-12-for-tony-robbins-money-manifesto

12/10/14 update:

I'm getting contacted by so many people as a result of posting this review. People have been posting messages on my other reviews and some have even managed to find me on Facebook!. After thinking about this long and hard, I have decided to create a dedicated email account to answer any questions that people might have pertaining to their finances: roman.wealth101@gmail.com. Feel free to contact me there if you have any questions. You are, of course, also welcome to post messages here instead if you prefer.

*Please note that I am not a financial advisor. I am completely self-taught through dozens of books and 17 years in the market. I know how difficult it is to find accurate and practical information on this touchy subject as I have been interested in investing since I was very young and have found that people who know this subject are often unwilling to share their "secrets" with others. I don't want to be one of those people.

12/13/14 Update:

Here is a retirement calculator you may want to check out:
http://www.merrilledge.com/retirement/personal-retirement-number

I believe that Tony's app makes assumptions that might leave a lot of people in a position where they are unable to retire or have to go back to work in their old age. Better have too much saved than not enough!

So here are some resources that I would recommend for new investors to get started:

-Benjamin Graham's "The Intelligent Investor". A classic for anyone serious about learning value investing. It's a thick, serious book but contains invaluable information.
-www.investopedia.com. This site has tons of free articles and excellent information on investing in the stock market.
-Anything by the Motley Fool. For a general money Q&A, you may want to look at "The Motley Fool Money Guide". But also, spend some time on their website. They have TONS of free articles with great information. Here's a short one about index to get you started: http://www.fool.com/60second/indexfund.htm
-If you prefer to watch (or listen) to DVDs, I recommend "Understanding Investments" by The Great Courses (taught by Professor Connel Fullenkamp). It goes into all kinds of investment types.
-Charles Schwab's "Guide to Financial Independence" is decent.
-If you want to invest in individual companies, you may want to check out books by Phil Town, such as "Rule # 1".
-The more books you'll read the more you'll notice that most of them repeat the same information.

I recommend avoiding:
-Anything by Robert G. Allen (too much excitement and hype)
-Anything by Robert Kiyosaki (his company, Rich Global LLC, filed for bankruptcy. A lot of his advice is questionable and very vague. See http://www.johntreed.com/Kiyosaki.html for more info)
-Any expensive seminars that mainly make money for one person, and it's typically not going to be you ("Wealth Mastery" anyone?)

Hope that helps. Let me know if you want more recommendation or have any questions.

 

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[Bila]

Thanks for taking the time to write this

 

[DeletedUser394]

Thanks for taking the time to write this

I didn't write it. 'Roman M' did. If you click on his name, or any of the other blue portions it takes you right to the same amazon page that the other person linked to

I was definitely not a teenager in the early 90s (one of his first lines of the review) haha I wasn't even born

 

[Bila]

Ahhh .......nothing wrong with being a teenager in the 90's by the way

 

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[Trivium iz rC]

Before you start investing you should always start with a good foundation & Ask yourself these questions.

Do I know how (My Countries) monetary policy works?
--How does money get created?
--How does the Federal Reserve work?

Do I understand how taxes on capital gains/profits for business & investing work?
--Difference between Earned Income, Show-Term Capital Gains, Long-Term Capital Gains?.
--Difference between Capital Gains & Qualified Dividends.
--How does the state i'm living in tax these gains.

Is the asset class i'm looking to invest in a bubble, under valued? ect
--Stock market
--Real Estate
--Commodities
--Other Paper Assets

Are these low risk investments (CD's, High-Yield Savings Accounts, Money Market Accounts) paying atleast keeping up with inflation?

Can I Read Financial Statements Fluidly?
--Income Statement
--Balance Sheet
--Cash Flow Statement


I always tell people to invest in the education before putting there money in any investment class.

 

[Thriftypreneur]

Good resources to get me started, thanks. Always open to more responses and advice in this area.

 

[Avus]

I would also look at babypips. I believe this is just for forex, but a lot of what it teaches you you can use for stocks.


The best part is that the course is free.

 

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[Peta of JamRock]

I found this thread right on time. Thanks for starting it, @Thriftypreneur!

 

[H. Palmer]

Your question is: how to learn ALL about investing?

You cannot. Even Warren Buffett acknowledges that he doesn't know all about investing after 65 years of study reading 10 hours per day 7 days per week.

You can ask yourself: where do I start?

Then again, the various ways of investing are so diverse that it's better to specialize as soon as you can.

Stock market, CD's, bonds, options, gold and silver, Real Estate, tax liens, businesses, antiques, etc.
Each of those require an education by themselves.

So it's better to ask yourself what type of investing you are naturally attracted to.

 

[Fine young man]

I've been wanting to get into real estate for a while, does any have any good resources for this type of investing? Especially interested in Airbnb and holiday renting, I've stayed in about 10 Airbnb apartments in the last year and the margins seem pretty good, no matter where I go. Also interested in more traditional stuff, anything really.

 

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[Wiggly0607]

Some GREAT books to begin your investment education:

1. Learn to Earn, by Peter Lynch (explains the basics of the stock market, some history, how the market works, etc)
2. One Up On Wall Street, by Peter Lynch
3. Buffettology by Mary Buffett (explains the exact steps Warren Buffett uses to evaluate companies)
4. Value Investing Made Easy, by Janet Lowe (explains value investing in simple, easy to use terms)
5. Rule #1, by Phil Town (another explanation of simple Buffett-like ways to make a lot of money investing long term)

These five books alone are a solid investment education.

 

[Peta of JamRock]

Some GREAT books to begin your investment education:

1. Learn to Earn, by Peter Lynch (explains the basics of the stock market, some history, how the market works, etc)
2. One Up On Wall Street, by Peter Lynch
3. Buffettology by Mary Buffett (explains the exact steps Warren Buffett uses to evaluate companies)
4. Value Investing Made Easy, by Janet Lowe (explains value investing in simple, easy to use terms)
5. Rule #1, by Phil Town (another explanation of simple Buffett-like ways to make a lot of money investing long term)

These five books alone are a solid investment education.

Thanks! Wish-listed for the near future.

 

[fastlanebeast876]

http://www.amazon.com/review/R34NR1...nodeID=283155&store=books&tag=viglink20442-20

1,918 of 1,972 people found the following review helpful
A lot of "filler" and unfortunately little new information

By Roman M on November 18, 2014

I realize that this is not going to be a popular review in a sea of readers who are either huge fans of Tony's work or people who are new to investing and I am in no way trying to discourage anyone from buying the book. I just hope that a few people will read this with an open mind in order to make an informed purchase.

I started following Tony's advice back in the early 90s, when I was a teenager, and am very familiar with all of his principles. A couple of weeks ago I saw a post on Facebook about him releasing a new book on finances so I bought it to see if it would be any better than his books and CDs (if you've read any of his books or listened to his CDs, you probably know that he provides very little concrete advice and invites you to attend his expensive "Wealth Mastery" seminar in order to learn more). As expected, the first few chapters of the book consist mainly of motivational material and a description of the issue (i.e. most Americans don't know how to make money in the stock market long-term). You can easily skip those without missing any critical information, unless you need motivation to invest. As I was listening to these chapters on Audible, I was starting to worry that the entire book would consist of nothing more than motivational material...

Then he finally starts going into some specifics. He starts out by saying that the secret to wealth is to add more value to other people's lives. Okay. Then he talks about deciding on a specific percentage of your income that you want to invest (he recommends saving and investing 10-20% of your income). He spends a lot of time talking about index funds (of which many books have been written before, such as books by John C. Bogle) and the exorbitant amount of fees charged by most mutual funds (nothing new there either. See Phil Town's "Payback Time", for example). He talks about dollar cost averaging, re-balancing your account at least once a year, don't invest in actively managed mutual funds, etc.

So far, all of this information is accurate, but if you have been investing in the market for a number of years or even read the free articles on the Motley Fools' website, I'm sorry to say that there is little new information here. But at this part of the book, Tony starts referring to the reader as "an INSIDERS", which I find a bit comical.

In all honesty, if you are new to investing, this is one of many potential books where you can get more information. However, be aware of the following:

1. The book is very long. And sadly, it is not because it is so full of financial wisdom. Although there are some nuggets of useful information found throughout the book, unfortunately, most of the pages are filled with "filler" information. Tony goes on and on listing the names of the "INSIDERS" that he spoke with to come up with advice for this book. The information is very repetitive. He also spends a significant amount of time going into non-financial information from his prior books and seminars (i.e. the six human needs, controlling your emotional states, etc and trying to tie the information to money). Unfortunately, all this filler information makes the book painfully slow to read and was totally unnecessary if you ask me. If you read a book like Benjamin Graham's classic, "The Intelligent Investor", you right away see the difference. It's all meat and no potatoes. Not the case with Tony's book, unfortunately.

2. Although he tells us not to try to time the market, he then proceeds to give us a list of examples of past predictions he made which turned out to be correct. However, he doesn't mention anything about his August 2010 prediction in which he said: "Right now is a time you might want to take some stocks off the table in the stock market. Especially if they are in manufacturing or retail or banking or god forbid homebuilding and housing . . . I would feel bad if I didn't warn you . . . One of the biggest bubbles in history is blowing up now." What happened after he made this prediction, you ask? The market ended up gaining 90%! (See the recent BloombergView article for more information. I will post the link for it in the comments section). In addition, his recommendation to take money out of the stock market directly contradicts information found in the book (which specifically recommends to "wait out" market lows and continue investing every month, also known as dollar cost averaging).

3. A lot of the "financial shortcuts" that he mentions have "catches" (as he finally reveals hundreds of pages into the book, although in the first few chapters -and on the book cover- he only talks about the positives of his methods, making them sound easy and full-proof). Definitely do your research before attempting anything other than the time-tested advice, such as investing in index funds. Even his "All Weather" portfolio might not prove to be as good as his historical numbers suggest (see the link in the comments section for more information).
In fact, as I keep on finding more and more reviews online by financial advisers and financial journalists, I see that many of them have noticed some of the same issues and contradictions that I discovered when reading the book. I'm going to post two more links to articles on the first comment for anyone who cares to read them.

4. The free "app" (which is not really an app since you can't download it as far as I can tell) is nice. It asks you for your current spending on different items (food, mortgage, transportation, etc) in order to calculate how much you will need in order to pay for these things through your investments. However, I am puzzled that it utilizes today's amounts and doesn't seem to take inflation into account. So it gives people the false impression that they will reach their goals much sooner than expected but that seems like a critical mistake to me. Let's suppose that you had achieved financial security back in 1984 (20 years ago) and back then you needed 4,500 dollars a month to pay for your basic needs. According to USinflationcalculator, today you would need 10,754 dollars in order to pay for the same items (a 139% cumulative rate of inflation). Ouch! In addition, as fellow reader "MJC" mentioned in the comments, the app does not take important recurring annual expenses such as property taxes into account, which can easily add up to thousands of dollars a year! I have spoken to multiple people in the financial industry over the years and the number one regret that they hear from their clients is that they did not save enough for retirement. So Tony's app worries me. You may want to sign up for the free app and run through your numbers before you buy the book to see if this feels right to you.

5. The book is very hyper and has too much excitement. As another reviewer, Prohobo, put it so well: "there is a lot of "excitement", "wow factor", "hype", "selling" and "fluff" in the book - leading up to the meat. So it does read very "self-helpy" for a lack of a better word." It has a bit of a feel of a "get rich quick" book, so be ready for that if you're going to buy it. Also, Tony anticipates and responds to any criticism of his book by dismissing anyone's critical opinion unless they themselves are rich. Yet, he himself did not make his initial wealth in the stock market. Rather, he made his millions in his twenties through his books, tapes/CDs, coaching, and seminars (remember "Wealth Mastery"?). According to Forbes, "'Unleash the Power Within,' nets him some $9 million annually", not counting his other seminars and products. He claims to teach the keys to wealth and business mastery, but other than selling personal development products and services, which he admittedly is very good at, his overall business track record is questionable to say the least. Does anyone remember what happened to his public company, DreamLife? Or what about his "more than twenty companies, a dozen of which he actively manages" (according to his description on Amazon)? How does one person actively manage that many companies?
Although Tony says that he will donate all of the proceeds for this book, it has stirred up a huge amount of publicity for Tony's brand, his products, and the companies which he is constantly promoting throughout the book. And there is a disclosure at the beginning of the book saying that "the author is in discussions with StrongHold Wealth Management to enter into some type of business partnership". In fact, I looked into this and I found an article from ThinkAdvisor which claims that Josh Jenkins-Robbins, Tony's son, works for Stronghold! The article states: "According to FINRA's BrokerCheck, [Josh Jenkins-Robbins] is registered with Stronghold Financial in San Diego. And his LinkedIn Profile links to three company websites: Stronghold Financial and two enterprises in which Tony Robbins enjoys joint ventures. In his book, the elder writes that Josh "has been in financial services his entire life."" Hmm...

6. As Cullen Roche wrote in a recent MarketWatch article, "Robbins stresses the importance of becoming an "INSIDERS" and steers the reader toward many of his own companies or companies he's partnered with" (see the link to the article in my 11/28/14 comment). In addition, "the book promotes a low-fee approach, yet it recommends working with companies [i.e. Lifetime Income and Stronghold Financial] that will outsource you to high-fee firms. This is a contradiction that is difficult to reconcile, and it seriously undermines the credibility of the text. [...] The book is filled with contradictory strategic investment commentary. Robbins stresses the importance of using passive index funds, but also explains the importance of asymmetric returns and active strategies. He interviews supposed "INSIDERS" who have totally contradictory approaches (stock traders, activists and indexers), while putting many high-fee hedge fund managers on a pedestal. He even cites his own market-timing calls over the years as if that adds any value to the text without mentioning that he has made some horrible stock market calls [...]. You come away thinking that these high-fee active managers are geniuses, but then you're told at points that high-fee active managers are useless. Again, the commentary seemed to contradict itself consistently."
I highly recommend you read the full article so you know what you are getting yourself into if you're going to buy the book.

Having read dozens of financial books over the years, my "baloney detection kit" went off multiple times while reading this book. For example, I believe his advice pertaining to paying off your mortgage faster is inaccurate (someone with real estate expertise correct me if I'm wrong on this one). On page 251, "The Banker's Secret", Tony claims that if you have a 270,000 dollar home financed over 30 years at 6%, if you prepay 270 dollars a month, you will pay it off in 15 years, saving 50% of the total cost. I have a mortgage so this would be great news for me. However, I went to Bank Rate's website and ran those exact numbers and the result I got was that the mortgage would be payed off in 21 years (i.e. 9 years sooner, rather than the 15 years claimed by Tony) and that you would save 107,729 dollars, versus Tony's 50% which would you have been closer to 265K, since the total cost of the home would have been 582K at 6% over 30 years. In addition, on that same page he writes "To be clear, you're not paying extra money; you're simply prepaying next month's principal a touch sooner", even though I am paying 270 extra dollars every month... Hmm.

At the end of the day, it's an inexpensive book and a lot of the advice in it is good and it is nice to read the views of the some of today's great investors (although even that part spends too much time talking about the individuals and their achievements, it has little practical advice, and sounds very much like his old "Power Talk" series, which were fun to listen to but ended up having little impact on your life). Tony has a special gift for taking old information, even common wisdom at times, and "repackaging" it to make it sound earth-shattering. If this book makes you take action on information that you already know, then it's worth every penny. If you are new to investing, you will get a lot of good information (although I strongly recommend you read a few more books to get different perspectives. See the comments section for some suggestions). That is, if you can make it through the entire book. However, if you know more than 90% of the general population (which isn't hard to do, given the financial ignorance of the average person), then you can safely skip this book. At the end of the day, the book ends up over-promising and under-delivering if you ask me.

12/2/14 Update:
So many of you have been asking me for a list of key points from the book so here goes

1. Understand the power of compound interest and save/invest 10-20% of your income.
2. You can't beat the market.
3. Fees kill your returns. Look at America's Best 401(k) or Feex to see how your 401(k) fares.
4. Hire an independent fiduciary adviser.
5. Use a Roth IRA or Roth 401(k) and pay taxes now as much as possible, since they are likely to rise in the future.
6. Forget Target Date or actively managed mutual funds. Use index funds instead.
7. Know how much you need in order to retire (use the free app to find some rough numbers. Make sure to take inflation into account since the app doesn't do that)
8. Come up with a solid asset allocation: a secure bucket (bonds, CDs, cash, etc) and a growth bucket (stocks, real estate, commodities, etc). Re-balance regularly. Take the Rutgers University risk tolerance quiz to find out how much risk you can stomach.

That's all for now. I'll continue as soon as I have more time

P.S. Did anyone notice that there is no bibliography? On page 639, Tony gives you his main website to go access the bibliography (it's online "in order to be efficient on additional space", he says) but I was unable to find it anywhere. Did anyone else find it?


Here are the links I mention in my review:

http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-11-19/trade-against-a-selfhelp-genius

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/to...-the-game-of-money-in-his-new-book-2014-11-25

12/6/14 Update:

Here are two additional articles that I mention in my review:

"Infomercial king Tony Robbins wants to tell you what to do with your money. Be very afraid"
http://www.theguardian.com/money/20...-tony-robbins-wants-to-be-the-next-suze-orman

"What one financial advisor discovered after plunking down $12 for Tony Robbins' 'Money' manifesto"
http://www.riabiz.com/a/49913525887...king-down-12-for-tony-robbins-money-manifesto

12/10/14 update:

I'm getting contacted by so many people as a result of posting this review. People have been posting messages on my other reviews and some have even managed to find me on Facebook!. After thinking about this long and hard, I have decided to create a dedicated email account to answer any questions that people might have pertaining to their finances: roman.wealth101@gmail.com. Feel free to contact me there if you have any questions. You are, of course, also welcome to post messages here instead if you prefer.

*Please note that I am not a financial advisor. I am completely self-taught through dozens of books and 17 years in the market. I know how difficult it is to find accurate and practical information on this touchy subject as I have been interested in investing since I was very young and have found that people who know this subject are often unwilling to share their "secrets" with others. I don't want to be one of those people.

12/13/14 Update:

Here is a retirement calculator you may want to check out:
http://www.merrilledge.com/retirement/personal-retirement-number

I believe that Tony's app makes assumptions that might leave a lot of people in a position where they are unable to retire or have to go back to work in their old age. Better have too much saved than not enough!

So here are some resources that I would recommend for new investors to get started:

-Benjamin Graham's "The Intelligent Investor". A classic for anyone serious about learning value investing. It's a thick, serious book but contains invaluable information.
-www.investopedia.com. This site has tons of free articles and excellent information on investing in the stock market.
-Anything by the Motley Fool. For a general money Q&A, you may want to look at "The Motley Fool Money Guide". But also, spend some time on their website. They have TONS of free articles with great information. Here's a short one about index to get you started: http://www.fool.com/60second/indexfund.htm
-If you prefer to watch (or listen) to DVDs, I recommend "Understanding Investments" by The Great Courses (taught by Professor Connel Fullenkamp). It goes into all kinds of investment types.
-Charles Schwab's "Guide to Financial Independence" is decent.
-If you want to invest in individual companies, you may want to check out books by Phil Town, such as "Rule # 1".
-The more books you'll read the more you'll notice that most of them repeat the same information.

I recommend avoiding:
-Anything by Robert G. Allen (too much excitement and hype)
-Anything by Robert Kiyosaki (his company, Rich Global LLC, filed for bankruptcy. A lot of his advice is questionable and very vague. See http://www.johntreed.com/Kiyosaki.html for more info)
-Any expensive seminars that mainly make money for one person, and it's typically not going to be you ("Wealth Mastery" anyone?)

Hope that helps. Let me know if you want more recommendation or have any questions.

Thank you. It may take me a while to get rthrough all this info appreciate it

 

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