Customer Reviews

The Little Book of Bulletproof Investing: Do's and Don'ts to Protect Your Financial Life (Little Books. Big Profits)

5 star:		(20)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

The new Stein/Demuth tomb is almost a can't put it down page turner. It's funny and chock full of what I think is the best advice regarding investments: buy everything, own it forever, and own it at the lowest possible cost. This is John Bogle's tried and true approach This book tells you how to do that and what your risks are. Risk is the other side of the equation that is not often addressed by the financial industry. Everyone pays attention to the reward aspect but it's the risk that will bugger ya. To develop their buy and hold portfolio they use some of the best forward looking risk analysis software available which is why I call this Bogle meets Quant. They also suggest some of the lowest cost of ownership ETFs' to get widely diversified and how to keep the portfolio in balance once you start making money.

The book also addresses how to take money out of your nest egg once you have amassed your fortune with an eye on not going broke when you are old and sick. The worst time to run out of money is when you're 85 (or 105). This is hardly ever addressed. The financial industry wants your money with them NOT with you, as does the government, so correctly exiting is as important as correctly entering an investment. It gives you some idea of how to dole out the money to your heirs and plan for their future as well. Good read, Good advice.

We sure have been through a financial storm haven't we? The financial good times had gone on for so long that most people had never experienced a very serious economic downturn (no matter the political hyperbole about "worst economic environment since the Great Depression"). The problem is that when we are in the middle of a severe crisis we cannot be sure about has just happened and what course of action will lead to our survival. Just like the newly hatched sea turtles trying to get to the sea, it pays to be focused and fast and get to the waster as quickly as you can. But for some turtles, no matter what they do, the birds swoop down and make them into lunch.

Ben Stein and Phil DeMuth have written a humorous and wise handbook to help you understand what has just happened to you, what your realistic options are, and how to move forward and make progress from where you find yourself now. No crying over the milk on the floor and no time wasted with recrimination.

You get a handy chapter on the psychology of finance that is not only sound, it provides you with principles you had better adopt or you will find yourself working your way through even more of the Biblical plagues. There are lots of people who understand how you think and process information and how you handle stress. They spend a great deal of time figuring out how to use this knowledge along with clever sales techniques in order to separate you from your hard earned after-tax dollars (well, nickels and dimes nowadays).

Stein and DeMuth then take you through how not to invest (which is how most people actually lose their money in the markets) and why it doesn't work. They then take you through the proven way to invest, which is about simplifying, diversifying, investing in good times and bad, holding onto your investments (while rebalancing and set intervals), and why you must (MUST) care about and minimize your taxes and management costs.

After this preparation, the authors share their "bulletproof" method of investing. Now, mind you, even a bulletproof vest or bulletproof glass will yield to a powerful enough gun. So, even their method won't save you if the economic world ends in some kind of unforeseen conflagration. But in that environment, what will dollars and securities do for you anyway?

While I can't explain their entire method to you here, it isn't so complicated that you can't understand it and use it to your benefit. Basically, you use combinations of low cost stock and bond funds and mix them in combinations to provide the level of risk and return that best suits your current investment needs. They point you to many free online resources to help you do the work required easily and accurately. The authors also point you to low cost funds that you can either use directly or to compare against the costs of the funds you think you want to use.

As valuable as the first half of the book is, the last six chapters will help you live a happier, less stressful, and more prosperous life from here on out. They show you how to become the CEO of You, Inc. I particularly like the advice to never "indulge in drugs or alcohol except in homeopathic quantities." Another chapter shows you how to take charge of your life and make sensible plans for your future. While this chapter is great for us at any age, the younger you are the more useful it will be if you listen to what the authors teach. They show you why the best use of a great portion of your earnings is saving to take care of your future self (and loved ones) instead of present consumption and how to do it. Of course you can find misery and poverty in old age if you want it and the authors show you how too many achieve this awful state. They answer your question if you can still retire comfortably. The answer is yes, but first, don't really retire. Every dollar you earn goes a long way to keeping the wolf from your door. Reset your expectations. Instead of a country club, think about playing golf at public courses. Instead of global travel, think about classes at a local community college. Instead of living in an expensive and prestigious community think about finding a less costly area of the country. And be conservative, very conservative in your draw down on your retirement savings. You might live longer than you expect and have more need of money than you ever dreamed of. Live now in a way that will allow you to be prudent and kind in your responsibilities to your future.

This is a wise, intelligent, witty, and helpful book. I hope you take the time to get a copy, read it, think about it, and put its recommendations to work in making your life happier and more secure than you are right now.

Reviewed by Craig Matteson, Saline, MI

This book is powerful and succint discussion of what matters in financial planning and how to deal with the key issues. The vast majority of people would benefit from reading this book and even those who know whats in it will be glad to have a book that they can give to their friends and children to explain the key issues of planning. Ben and Phil succeed where many fail: they present sensible and solid information and make it entertaining rather than dry. This book is not just a rehash of stuff from other books--there is likely to be information in here that you have not seen even if you have read John Bogle's many good books and articles.

It was well written and easy to read but I was disappointed. Having said that however, investing is like religion - it's a journey not a destination. Everyone is at a different place in their investing journey and if you are just starting out or just need a kick in the pants to return to or consider conservative index/mutual fund investing then this book is for you. The website the authors urge us to look at: [...]ultimately directs you to Phil DeMuth's company website to consider opening an account. That may not be a bad thing, but you should know it before you buy the book. I thought it was a little self serving...

If you are serious about investing, avoid this book. I was disappointed. The useful material can be condensed into a 10-page paper, and even those 10 pages are not all that beneficial. Perhaps my expectations were too high and I was looking for portfolio analysis similar to what the authors generated in a prior book, "Yes, You Can Supercharge Your Portfolio!" The three Tangent Portfolios featured in this book do not stand up well when analyzed using the software the authors featured in the Supercharge book.

Instead of an investing book, Bulletproof Investing is filled with pages of material most of us learned from our parents. Theme headings include: DO pay to educate junior, Do write love letters, DON'T trade in and out of houses frequently, DO pay your taxes, DO avoid redecorating insofar as possible, DO marry a sensible person, DO be charitable, etc. This is not the type of material I am looking for when I purchase an investment book. The authors recommend not going into education, healthcare, or social service as the pay is too low. That sends a clear message to those attempting to improve society.

Chapter Five is titled, "The Holy Grail of Investing." Let me quote from this chapter. "The Tangency Portfolio is the Holy Grail of investing It is the perfect investment--that ideal combination of everything (stocks, bonds, commodities, real estate, etc.) that gives you the highest return for the least amount of risk." Careful analysis of the portfolios will show this is not the case and that the Return/Risk ratio is anything but the Holy Grail of investing. Apparently the authors forgot to analyze the portfolios as they forgot to include an index.

Wiley printed two investment books this year that merit consideration. They are: "The Elements of Investing" by Burton G. Malkiel and Charles D. Ellis and "The Investor's Manifesto: Preparing for Prosperity, Armageddon, and Everything in Between" by William J. Bernstein. Those are five-star books.

This is a worthy new addition to a valuable series from other investing greats such as Joel Greenblatt and Christopher Browne. I read the earlier books in this series, so bought and read this one too and I am glad that I did.

In this book, Ben Stein and Phil DeMuth offer wise advice in a fun read. Their ideas would certainly have saved a lot of people a lot of money over the past few years. If you read only one new finance book this year, this should be it. You can also buy this book with their new one: The Little Book of Alternative Investments: Reaping Rewards by Daring to be Different (Little Books. Big Profits)

Really enjoyed this book. I breezed through it on a Sunday afternoon. It actually is a very entertaining read in addition to offering valuable advice that sure would have been nice to have circa the stock market crash in 2008! Would have saved me a bunch of money as I have since ditched my financial adviser.

I liked what I read so I "googled" tangent portfolio and found out that you can invest in these strategies...pretty cool! I think I will give it a run.

You can find a link to open an account here:[...]

You'll notice the range of opinions say this is for the expert or beginner. It's for neither, except that the experts can stand around at parties and talk about Mr Stein's new book, laughing at the financial humor. At times he goes into abbreviations and acronyms, so deep into investing concepts that he puts the beginner to sleep, then later veers into what I call "invest wisely" common sense advice, such as giving money to your kids--didn't know this was a parenting book.

He also contradicts himself. I bought this based on his interview on one of the early morning news shows, and he specifically said to never invest on your own, to always get an adviser, because, hey, they're the experts and how could you possibly know how to invest. In the book he goes the complete opposite, making the case that financial planners are as good as flipping a coin, and they're probably unethical anyway.

His movie on intelligent design was excellent and still goes unanswered, but this book was not worth my time.

If you are a follower of Bogle, you'll like this book (Save, Save, Save, Invest and forget about it). For all of the rest of us, I think the day of the invest and hope for the best days are over. This book is basically the reasoning why buy and hold is the way to go. I just can't understand this philosophy when the market has been flat for the last 10 years (flat for 20 years in Japan which is where we are headed).

Although this book is an interesting read, it is a total waste of your money if you are looking for financial advice. It is a good thing that these authors make money writing books and by diverting you to their paid website, because they won't make any money in the markets. Please check their recommendations at morningstar. Just type in the symbol and go to performance. Look at how these picks performed in 2008. You would have had your head handed to you on a silver platter. Their bond etf's designed to take some of the heat off of their stock etf's would have been far lacking.
And then they critize technical analyses and everything else in the financial arena except their own fluff. By using technical analyses I was able to sidestep the crashes in 2002 an 2008 plus get back in within a month of the bottom.
Bottom line is that you have to work at investing. Study and learn. You just cannot pick a portfolio like the BS in this book and then just hold it. In good years with their portfolio you will make a little. In bad years you will give it all right back.