Rating: 
Summary: Develop those dreams within you!
Review: Not since Charles Givens has a financial author gone beyond goals to go for the dreams. It is those dreams that motivate and excite you and give you the energy to achieve them. This is what sets a great author like Edelmen ahead of mediocre authors like JBQ or even better than average authors like Orman. It's a lot more exciting to get up every mornng and go for a previously considered uattainable dream than just to go to work to pay the lousy bills and reduce your debt load.This is a great book. I highly recommend it.
Rating: 
Summary: Trying to save the job for financial planners
Review: The not so funny style of this book does offer some valuable insights in to how to set the goals and what ratings of mutual funds mean. But the whole idea revolves around the basic premise how to prove that a finacial planner or a broker is important for you and without them nothing can be achieved. Whether it is the reliability of online calculators, financial software, no load funds or index funds, all Rick Edelman does is try to emphasize that an individual investor is not so smart and will get burnt unless supported by a Financial Planner. No wonder most the testimonials on the back cover come from Financial planner associations and similar agencies.
Rating:
Summary: Truth, honesty and Integrity
Review: These are the three values that come to mind when I think of Ric Edelman. There are many financial books out there and advisors eager to take your money, but how many can you trust?Edelman was named the #1 financial advisor by Research magazine for his focus on the individual client. He has earned three Awards of Excellence by Royal Alliance Associates, was named Ace Advisor of the Year by Ticker Magazine, named Financial Planner of the Year three times by World Invest Magazine and named one of the D.C. areas top financial professionals by Washingtonian magazine. His firm Edelman Financial Services Inc., has won more than 50 professional, business, community service and philantropic awards, was named three times by Inc. magazine as the largest growing privately owned financial company in the nation. awards and has been ranked twice by Bloomberg Wealth Manager as one of the largest independent financial planning and investment management firms in the nation (his firm ranks 6th in the nation). The firm has created and implemented financial plans for more than 6,500 clients, and today Ric and his team manage $2 billion for people across the country. His classic book The Truth About Money was named book of the year by Small Press magazine and his five books have collectively sold over a million copies. Ric has also earned several financial designations, CFS, RFC, CMFC, CRC, and QFC. Finally the man has three important qualifications: Truth, Honesty and Integrity. Ric Edelman is not a "me-too" financial author. He stands alone. In the opinion of many, he is the best.
Rating:
Summary: Loved him on Oprah, and love his new book!
Review: This guy really has a way of taking into account the human elements of financial planning and explaining all that difficult to understand money stuff like no one else -- if you've ever read any of his other books you're already nodding your head in agreement. This book goes past understanding the basics of how things work (The Truth About Money); and seeing how other people are getting rich (Ordinary People, Extraordinary Wealth); into how YOU can become wealthy. Discover the Wealth Within You is packed full of all the knowledge you would need to overcome struggling with your finances and motivate you toward a successful plan for your life, health and wealth. This is by far the most $valueable$ book than any of his previous titles. If you're a math genius, you might find this too basic, but for the rest of us (99.9% of the population), this book is awesome and inspiring. Thanks Ric! p.s. Maybe this book should be in the spirituality section instead of the fincance section of the book store
Rating: 
Summary: An easy (and funny?) book on personal finance
Review: This is a book for personal finance. But it only concentrate on 2 main topics - setting up goals and picking up mutual funds. On goal setting, it is one of a few books that give such an emphasis (and proportion) on this topic. It is important, critical, but somewhat over-long. (Imagine listing several pages of places/events that help you to pick up for your goal?) The good side is that the importance of goal setting is applicable is many other areas - not just personal finance. The second half of the book is about mutual funds, and there are some very interesting 'facts' - e.g. Morning Star ratings, index fund, tax benefit, etc. Since the author is quite humorous, it is a very easy read for the 300+ pages. One thing I only like is that some of the footnotes are totally pointless - they are there just for the sake of being funny?? Maybe Ric can consider 2 labelling of footnotes - one is useful and the other is only joke.
Rating:
Summary: An easy (and funny?) book on personal finance
Review: This is a book for personal finance. But it only concentrate on 2 main topics - setting up goals and picking up mutual funds. On goal setting, it is one of a few books that give such an emphasis (and proportion) on this topic. It is important, critical, but somewhat over-long. (Imagine listing several pages of places/events that help you to pick up for your goal?) The good side is that the importance of goal setting is applicable is many other areas - not just personal finance. The second half of the book is about mutual funds, and there are some very interesting 'facts' - e.g. Morning Star ratings, index fund, tax benefit, etc. Since the author is quite humorous, it is a very easy read for the 300+ pages. One thing I only like is that some of the footnotes are totally pointless - they are there just for the sake of being funny?? Maybe Ric can consider 2 labelling of footnotes - one is useful and the other is only joke.
Rating:
Summary: Two unrelated themes, one decent book
Review: This is a decent book, if (a)you want a very interesting guide to goal setting, and (b) you want to learn about mutual funds, and the ideas involved in modern portfolio allocation. So in one way, it is two books in one. The two however, are NOT related in a real way. While some of the advertising and blurbs for this book make it sould like the investing section will in some way help you to more rapidly reach the goals you set in the front "goal setting" section, this is almost certainly not going to happen. The mutual fund, and the "modern portfolio allocation" are not radical way to improve returns. If you follow the advice of this book, you will (a) do about as well as most any disciplined investor, and (b) protect yourself from possibility of massive loss in the type of market we have just been through. You will probably not be touring the world on a sailboat, operating a first class horse farm, or living in luxury in Europe, which are type of goals Mr. Edelman encourages the reader to engage in at the front of the book. So my only complaint would be that the book promises much more than it returns. But if you read each half of the book, as clearly NOT related to the other half, it is a useful tool, in particular the thoughts on portfolio allocation, and the links near the end. It is clearly written and easy to understand in most ways.
Rating:
Summary: Entertaining Guide on Life Goals and Selecting Investments
Review: This is Ric Edelman's fourth HarperBusiness book on money and finance. Edelman's 400-page tome is divided into three parts: I. Part I covers the pursuit of happiness and how to achieve your goals (122 pages)
II. Part II focuses on selecting the most appropriate investment vehicles (102 pages)
III. Part III reviews how to select the best mutual funds for your needs (123 pages) Overall, the book is an enjoyable read and fully researched, although Part I could have been a book by itself. The layout is pleasing to the eye - numerous charts, cartoons, tables, lists, highlighted text, examples and anecdotes. Edelman supports his material with 219 footnotes (most are personal comments that should in the text rather than placed as footnotes on the bottom of the page) and 51 sourcing footnotes in the appendix. In Part I, Edelman helps you create a list of goals by providing worksheets. Also provided is a list of questions, and activities to choose from that the reader is asked to fill in and select from, respectively, ranging from actions you'd like to do in your life to accomplishments to places and things you'd like to experience. Edleman then covers how to achieve your goals by asking key questions. He provides insight on how to build a plan to achieve your goals and how much money is needed. He also covers the importance of not forgetting that long-term care insurance is critical. In Part II, Edelman covers investments. He is a big fan of using the stock market to increase wealth because of the long-term positive returns, even considering the intervening bear markets. He believes that individuals that invest in cash equivalents (e.g., CDs, T-bills, and money market accounts) are harming themselves because of the ravages of inflation and the low total return compared to stocks. Edleman provides an interesting table showing an investor's return from 1926 - 2000 based on the percentage of assets that are placed in stocks. For example, investing 0% of one's assets in the market resulted in an annual return of 5.4% (in bonds, for example). At 100% invested in stocks the annual return was 13.1%, and at 50% invested the annual return was 9.4%. Obviously, the higher percentage invested, the higher the annual return. Edelman further points out that over the last 100 years the market has gone up 70% of the time. Edelman doesn't show 5-year periods or ten-year periods, so you cannot see the variance in different timeframes and the impact of bear markets. Over 74 years the market has gone up, but there have been 14 bear markets and some very severe ones including the most recent from the first quarter of 2000 to the current time. So, Edelman's table is not a true representation of the average investor's return. Interestingly, Edelman dismisses the current bear market as a normal bear market occurrence. This is hardly the case for many investors whose high-tech portfolios have been decimated between 50% - 90%. He does mention, later in the book, that a diversified portfolio would have softened the blow of the 2000 - 2001 bear market for many investors. Edelman includes a chapter on why an investor should not invest in sector funds - you have to pick the right sector at the right time. He provides the performance of 13 sectors from 1984 to 2000 showing the variation in performance and the difficulty in picking the right sector. There is another short chapter on the four ways you can buy your investments. He covers mutual funds, annuities, hiring an investment manager, and doing it yourself. In Part III, Edelman spends 31 pages explaining Morningstar's star rating system, category rating, and style boxes. He believes that most investors pick their funds with the highest star ratings, but are disappointed when future performance is less than expected.
Edelman demonstrates that high star ratings do perform well in the future and shouldn't be used for predicting future returns. His long-winded explanation of Morningstar is a bit of overkill. Also, in early May the firm announced a change to their rating system to be implemented in the near future. So the value of this chapter may be minimal. Edelman then spends 26 pages on how an investor should select mutual funds by understanding the principal of the standard deviation of different funds. He also provides a chart showing how long it takes to recover from different percentage losses (e.g., a fund losing 80% of its value will take 14 years to break-even assuming a 12% annual return). Edelman favors actively managed funds to index funds because, he says, that the latter haven't outperformed them. Additional chapters in Part III cover how many funds do you need to be diversified, and active vs. passive management. Edelman has strong opinions on how to invest. While I always don't agree with them, at least he presents his case with facts, statistics, and examples. Overall this book should provide the reader with useful insights into planning life's goals, enjoying them, and which investments to avoid in order to have the financial assets needed to live a good life.
Rating:
Summary: Entertaining Guide on Life Goals and Selecting Investments
Review: This is Ric Edelman's fourth HarperBusiness book on money and finance. Edelman's 400-page tome is divided into three parts: I. Part I covers the pursuit of happiness and how to achieve your goals (122 pages)
II. Part II focuses on selecting the most appropriate investment vehicles (102 pages)
III. Part III reviews how to select the best mutual funds for your needs (123 pages) Overall, the book is an enjoyable read and fully researched, although Part I could have been a book by itself. The layout is pleasing to the eye - numerous charts, cartoons, tables, lists, highlighted text, examples and anecdotes. Edelman supports his material with 219 footnotes (most are personal comments that should in the text rather than placed as footnotes on the bottom of the page) and 51 sourcing footnotes in the appendix. In Part I, Edelman helps you create a list of goals by providing worksheets. Also provided is a list of questions, and activities to choose from that the reader is asked to fill in and select from, respectively, ranging from actions you'd like to do in your life to accomplishments to places and things you'd like to experience. Edleman then covers how to achieve your goals by asking key questions. He provides insight on how to build a plan to achieve your goals and how much money is needed. He also covers the importance of not forgetting that long-term care insurance is critical. In Part II, Edelman covers investments. He is a big fan of using the stock market to increase wealth because of the long-term positive returns, even considering the intervening bear markets. He believes that individuals that invest in cash equivalents (e.g., CDs, T-bills, and money market accounts) are harming themselves because of the ravages of inflation and the low total return compared to stocks. Edleman provides an interesting table showing an investor's return from 1926 - 2000 based on the percentage of assets that are placed in stocks. For example, investing 0% of one's assets in the market resulted in an annual return of 5.4% (in bonds, for example). At 100% invested in stocks the annual return was 13.1%, and at 50% invested the annual return was 9.4%. Obviously, the higher percentage invested, the higher the annual return. Edelman further points out that over the last 100 years the market has gone up 70% of the time. Edelman doesn't show 5-year periods or ten-year periods, so you cannot see the variance in different timeframes and the impact of bear markets. Over 74 years the market has gone up, but there have been 14 bear markets and some very severe ones including the most recent from the first quarter of 2000 to the current time. So, Edelman's table is not a true representation of the average investor's return. Interestingly, Edelman dismisses the current bear market as a normal bear market occurrence. This is hardly the case for many investors whose high-tech portfolios have been decimated between 50% - 90%. He does mention, later in the book, that a diversified portfolio would have softened the blow of the 2000 - 2001 bear market for many investors. Edelman includes a chapter on why an investor should not invest in sector funds - you have to pick the right sector at the right time. He provides the performance of 13 sectors from 1984 to 2000 showing the variation in performance and the difficulty in picking the right sector. There is another short chapter on the four ways you can buy your investments. He covers mutual funds, annuities, hiring an investment manager, and doing it yourself. In Part III, Edelman spends 31 pages explaining Morningstar's star rating system, category rating, and style boxes. He believes that most investors pick their funds with the highest star ratings, but are disappointed when future performance is less than expected.
Edelman demonstrates that high star ratings do perform well in the future and shouldn't be used for predicting future returns. His long-winded explanation of Morningstar is a bit of overkill. Also, in early May the firm announced a change to their rating system to be implemented in the near future. So the value of this chapter may be minimal. Edelman then spends 26 pages on how an investor should select mutual funds by understanding the principal of the standard deviation of different funds. He also provides a chart showing how long it takes to recover from different percentage losses (e.g., a fund losing 80% of its value will take 14 years to break-even assuming a 12% annual return). Edelman favors actively managed funds to index funds because, he says, that the latter haven't outperformed them. Additional chapters in Part III cover how many funds do you need to be diversified, and active vs. passive management. Edelman has strong opinions on how to invest. While I always don't agree with them, at least he presents his case with facts, statistics, and examples. Overall this book should provide the reader with useful insights into planning life's goals, enjoying them, and which investments to avoid in order to have the financial assets needed to live a good life.
Rating: 
Summary: Informative and Inspiring
Review: Well, I'm finally taking that trip I've been "planning" for the last 10 years. I've also learned some simple things that I'm doing wrong with my finances - practical advice that's helped me a lot. I recommend this book.
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