Investing for the Clueless: A Step-By-Step Money Management Guide for the Total Beginner

Rating:
Summary: I'm a total beginner!
Review: I think this book did a pretty good job at teaching the complete beginner, me, about the basics of investing with stocks, bonds, and mutual funds. He favors stocks over bonds in the long term, and rightly so. He clearly demonstrates that bonds simply can't handle inflation the way stocks can. However, some bonds do make sense for certain people, like older folks near retirement. Even then, he suggests using say, 25% stocks to protect older folks from inflation. But for young kids like me (20 yrs old), long-term, diversified no load stock mutual funds seems to be the way to go. He shows one table in his book showing the average return of different stock and bond combinations through 1947 to 1989. The table demonstrates that a porfolio with 100% stocks and 0% bonds has the largest average return. He also discusses numerous tax deferral programs such as various IRA accounts, including Roth IRAs. I could go on and on about all the things I learned in this book. I would recommend this book to anyone new to investing.