Rating: 
Summary: Recommended for any young investor
Review: This book provides a good survey of where to start thinking about your investment possibilities, and offers some good advice on what to do and what not to do. The most valuable part of the book is the personal experiences shared by the financially successful individuals at the end of each chapter. I agree with another reviewer that this booked was basically a sales brochure, however, it offers some good advice. Recommended if you have no clue what you're doing but know you have to do something ASAP.
Rating:
Summary: Start saving now in your 401k
Review: Getting rich is a process of consistent saving program/investing program and keeping a job long term. The author presents three share price patterns: high to low, high to low to high, low to high.
Lets look at the high to low pattern. Suppose an individual invests 100 dollars a pay period in the high to low scenerio; what would be the break even point? Total invested/number of shares is the break even price with the point being that the break even price is significantly lower that the average share price. So long term investing and dollar cost averaging allows the investor to buy cheap shares and profit handsomely as the price swings to higher prices. So the focal point is not paying off the mortgage, it is accumulating wealth through saving and investing. Analyze how to divert as much money as possible to your 401k: live cheap, don't eat out, and reduce recreation. Accumulate your wealth through sacrifice and then live off your money.Start saving now. Start investing while your young. Invest the maximum amount the 401k will allow. Be care not to overinvest in a company stock. Don't invest all your money in a single stock, instead result risk by diversification. Suppose, an invest buys a 100 dollars worth of a stock for 1 dollar per share that would increased by a 1000 percent and bought it cheap and when the stock reached the 1000 percent sold it and profited with 900 dollars. Ok, thats not enough to retire on. If you repeated the pattern three times then retirement is possible. The author asks the reader what would be the likelihood of finding three stocks with this potential and aggressively investing the complete fund into each investment opportunity? There are so many pitfalls: seeing financial patterns where no pattern exists, following hot tips that turn out to be error, economic predications that become errorenous, and compartimentalizing thinking that cause error. These points suggest how complex investment selection can be. If this pattern could be broke and new emerging techniques followed, we should discover immediately many penny stock billionares. How many do you know? Index funds can swing from top position to bottom position and bottom position index funds can rise to the top. The constant shifting of index position over time producing a complex matrix with very little pattern to predict which type of index that will be on top. So the point becomes to balance with a healthy cross section of indexes, money markets, bonds and treasuries, and precious metals. The author does not think market timing will generate wealth for the average investor. Suppose you market time for 100 years with a 100 percent accuracy, you'd own trillions of dollars. The result, all wealth would be owned by one person. The problem with market timing is that investing technique becomes purely a emotion function of greed or fear. Investors can be disillused by what they feel, selling when they should be buying, buying when they should be selling; lacking expertise to intrepret technical analysis, company fundamentals (retain earnings, earnings per share, consumer demand), and overvaluing media information. The authors investor spend 3 hours a month thinking about finances. So, we return back to the basics: 1. invest now 2. invest consistently 3. invest longterm 4. leave your money alone. The author does like rebalancing strategies because he considers that technique market timing. Instead the author prefers diversification and compounding as a source of wealth generation.
Rating: 
Summary: Almost the Perfect Book -- from the Library
Review: If you, the reviewer reader, like the drivel that Suze Orman pushes out, you'll probably love this book. If you liked The Millionaire Next Door or the Millionaire mind, you'll find yourself confused by the contradictions between this book and them. If you like Robert Kiyosaki's stuff.... just pass on by! This book is light reading, humorous at times, and for every idea Mr.Edelman throws out there (don't pay off your mortgage early), he tends to follow them up with confusing, mish-mashed examples that do NOT convince the reader. Then, when he gives a backhanded slap to The Millionaire Next door, any crediability flies out the window. In short, this book is the result of thousands (apparently) of questionaires Mr. Edelman put before his clients (he's a financial planner by day), and has compiled and analyzed the habits that these middle-income families practice that allow them to save staggering sums of money (I remember reading about one lady who saved $200,000, and another that had like 1.2 million...impressive, but hardly earth-shaking).
Again, some of the points are thought-provoking, and if they cause you to step back and look at your life, then the book is at least worth reading. But it would be a complete waste of money to purchase. If you're truly interested in the habits of the wealthy, grab the Millionaire Next Door. Otherwise, this is light reading, with about 50% of the book being quotes from Mr. Edelman's clients, not his actual narrative.
| 
