The Smartest Investment Book You'll Ever Read: The Simple, Stress-Free Way to Reach Your...

The Smartest Investment Book You'll Ever Read: The Simple, Stress-Free Way to Reach Your Investment Goals | Daniel R. Solin | Great primer on benefits of index fund investing

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	The Smartest Investment Book You'll Ever Read: The Simple, Stress-Free Way to Reach Your Investment Goals Daniel R. Solin Perigee Trade, 2006 - 192 pages average customer review:based on 35 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Achieve financial security in 90 minutes or less.

Daniel Solin cuts through financial propaganda to show readers exactly how assets should be invested, using trusted, brand name fund managers like Fidelity and Vanguard. Solin's easy-to-follow plan allows investors to create and monitor their portfolios in 90 minutes or less a year, explaining how to assess risk and how to allocate assets to maximize returns and minimize volatility. Readers will also learn how to avoid the biggest mistakes investors make, from buying into media hype to giving their hard earned cash to hyperactive brokers and investment advisors.

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The Smartest Investment Book You'll Ever Read

I love this book. It is informative, not too technical, tells you when you can skip a section of reading, and gives advice that makes sense. It's also an easy read - I read it in a few hours.

Great primer on benefits of index fund investing

I enjoyed this little book.

Most Americans never had the opportunity to learn the basics of investing in the U.S. educational system. Money magazine used to annually give a basic investing test to Americans and they consistently received grades of "F".

Americans also seem to have a short attention span (witness 8 second sound bites on TV).....so the design of this book might help educate people about the basics of investing. Most people also find the subject of investing very boring...and most Americans spend more time planning their vacations than reviewing their finances.

This book design is relatively short, and each chapter is relatively short at about 4 pages. The author uses the majority of the chapters to drive home the point that low cost index fund investing is the proven way to invest for almost most Americans.

Solin hit the basics of investing, but left out a few key steps in the entire process:

1. Living below your means so you have money to save and invest.
2. Use automatic savings method where you pay yourself first like 401K's.
3. Determine your asset allocation plan.
4. Adjust your asset allocation slightly to a less risky portfolio as you go through life.
5. Use low cost index funds to minimize expenses and maximize returns.
6. Determine your actual living expenses right before you retire so you can more accurately your retirement expenses.......and therefore the income you need to retire......versus using the 70% to 80% income replacement ratio rule-of-thumb when you get close to retirement
7. Don't withdraw more than a 4% inflation adjusted amount during retirement from your portfolio.
8. Rebalance your portfolio annually

All-in-all, a very easy to read book which does an excellent job of educating and justifying the advantages of index fund investing. Actually a pretty good job considering the author is an attorney!

If you are interesting in learning more about index funds and asset allocation, I would suggest reading some of the books noted below.

Index Mutual Funds: How to Simplify Your Financial Life and Beat the Pro's
The Richest Man in Babylon
Bogle on Mutual Funds: New Perspectives for the Intelligent Investor
The Millionaire Next Door
The Four Pillars of Investing: Lessons for Building a Winning Portfolio
A Random Walk Down Wall Street: The Time-Tested Strategy for Successful Investing, Ninth Edition
The Coffeehouse Investor: How to Build Wealth, Ignore Wall Street, and Get On With Your Life
The Bogleheads' Guide to Investing
Wealth: Grow It, Protect It, Spend It, and Share It
Retirement Income Redesigned: Master Plans for Distribution: An Adviser's Guide for Funding Boomers' Best Years

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Buy and hold low cost indexes rather than trying to trade on hot stocks or funds

OK. I have no idea why this author uses such an overhyped title for this book. Solin basically talks about two kinds of investors:

Hyperactive Traders who trade too much and hurt their earning by incurring too many costs and who unavoidably end up selling too low and buying too high.

And

Smart Traders who buy and hold indexes that give them exposure to the global markets in equities and bonds. Using funds like Vanguard, Fidelity, T. Rowe Price or similar low cost institutions, you can achieve this goal with three or four index funds.

I think the best part of the book is Solin's debunking of the products that brokers will try to sell you and the arguments they will make about "hot" funds or stocks. He also goes after the financial shows on TV and in print and why they have to hype bad deals for you in order to keep their businesses going. You simply can't go on the air everyday telling people about buying and holding low cost index funds anymore than news shows can go on and say that 99.999% of the population is just fine.

This is a good and concise book with good advice. I just think the title is too much.

Reviewed by Craig Matteson, Ann Arbor, MI

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Simple and sound advice, not much content

Sometimes the simple approach turns out to be the tactic offering the most beneficial results, and as Solin describes in this book, that is certainly the case with long term investing. Unfortunately, Solin's book, also simple in its approach, does not have the luxury of this principle.

This book does not present any profound strategies or anything that will offer you advice regarding short terms gains. Solin spends the full length of this book explaining in detail why hyperactive brokering does not work and why indexing is the proper advice for long-term growth and returns. Although the advice in this book could be easily condensed, this is not to say Solin is long winded; he merely spends a lot of time on the details of why managed funds are generally inferior.

The advice is sound and well described; however, the material in the book merely regurgitates a common and well known theme in investing; the vast majority of managed funds statistically do far worse than indexed funds over the long term. I would imagine the book would be worthwhile to anyone brand new to investing, but considering the title, this book is far too thin to come remotely close to being the smartest investment book available.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

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