You've Lost It, Now What? How to Beat the Bear Market and Still Retire on Time [Hardcover]

Jonathan Clements (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 27, 2003

Even if you have lost 40, 50, or even 80 percent of your savings, it is still possible to retire in comfort.

This year's stock market collapse has been especially devastating to millions of Americans in their forties and fifties who had been buying stocks and mutual funds for their retirement years. Trillions of dollars were lost, and thousands of retirement accounts and portfolios were reduced by more than 50 percent. The question now is, what's the next step? Will these hardworking people need to continue working into their seventies? Not if they make the right moves today, says Jonathan Clements, The Wall Street Journal's highly respected personal finance columnist.

Today, investors are faced with a barrage of dubious advice. Stocks are supposedly dead. Bonds are now touted as the only safe way to invest. Meanwhile, folks are once again claiming you can't go wrong with real estate. Clements, an award-winning personal finance columnist, rips apart this dubious advice, telling readers what's true and what's not. In the same feisty, easy-to-understand style that he brings to his regular Wall Street Journal columns, Clements gives readers a road map for the years ahead. He takes them step-by-step through the process of rebuilding their nest eggs and explains how, after reaching retirement, they can squeeze the maximum out of their savings.

This practical, concise guide will allow all readers to stop panicking, rebuild assets, and get their retirement plans back on track.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In this breezy but informative personal investment primer, Wall Street Journal columnist Clements sees a silver lining in lower stock prices and the chastened mood in the marketplace, provided investors keep their wits, follow sensible long-term plans and "save like crazy." Insisting that "the interests of investors and the interests of Wall Street are diametrically opposed," he advises readers to give up fantasies of beating the market, ignore the latest hot stock picks touted by the financial press and steer clear of heavily managed (and usually under-performing) mutual funds. Instead, he favors a low-fee, low-tax, broadly diversified, buy-'em-and-hold-'em strategy based on index funds, "the investor's best friend and Wall Street's worst nightmare." Along the way he provides a lucid introduction to a host of personal-finance topics, including credit-card debt, portfolio balancing, real-estate investment trusts, IRAs, how to select an investment adviser and the dos-and-donts of investing in a home. Clements's reader-friendly approach encourages novices to take their investments into their own hands, and provides detailed recommendations on which financial-services companies to go to, along with phone numbers and Web sites to get readers started. Both first-time investors and high-flyers burned by the recent market meltdown will find this a helpful guide.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About the Author

Jonathan Clements has written the weekly "Getting Going" column in The Wall Street Journal since 1994. He also writes a weekly column for The Wall Street Journal Sunday, a supplement appearing in seventy-seven newspapers across the nation.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Portfolio Hardcover; First Printing edition (March 27, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1591840163
• ISBN-13: 978-1591840169
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.8 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,569,038 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

32 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Rx for Bear Market Paralysis, April 13, 2003

By 

dennis wentraub (schenectady, new york USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: You've Lost It, Now What? How to Beat the Bear Market and Still Retire on Time (Hardcover)

Investors contemplating retirement, but stunned by losses sustained in the extended bear market that began in the spring of 2000, will find hope and encouragement in Wall Street Journal columnist Jonathan Clements' "Now What?". This is a do-it-for-yourself repair strategy for baby boomers with badly damaged bubble portfolios. First, face facts, we are told: You've got a "bone-head" portfolio, and it's not likely to come back in value, so sell your losers. Forget the "foolish beat-the-market fantasy" promoted by Wall Street's brokerage houses and money management firms. Invest to capture market returns with stock index funds. Diversify with stocks, bonds, and real estate. Specifically, you should own large and small US stocks and foreign stocks. For the bond portion of your portfolio, use inflation indexed treasuries and short-term corporate funds, and to boost your income, consider high yield bond mutual funds. Clements recognizes that "this will be the decade of the dividend and interest payment". So, REITS (real estate income trusts) with their high, single-digit returns, should represent 10-15% of your portfolio. In all this, Jonathan Clements is in good company: W. Bernstein, C. Ellis, B. Malkiel, L.Swedroe, B. Schultheis, et.al., have recently written (or updated) books with similar conclusions. Clements' contribution is in the timeliness of his insistence that boomers can salvage their own retirement plans by acting to keep investment costs in check, diversifying, and saving "like crazy". Indeed, the investment process should be simple to follow. "Why are we such sluts for sophistication?" Clements asks with exasperation. Readers may be skeptical that a fifty-year old, in an example, who hasn't saved a "nickel" for retirement can accomplish much by age sixty-five. But this late starting investor is not the book's primary focus. 'Gilding the Golden Years' (Chapter 7) is one of the author's better chapters. Investing may be "simple", but it is also an art, so this frequently quoted columnist's portfolio advice is of value. Clements is clearly intrigued by a strategy of establishing multiple sources of investment income during retirement. In addition to income from social security, 401k-style plans, pensions, and humbled securities portfolios, investors might consider an immediate annuity, a reverse mortgage, or even part-time work. After all, if it's true that investors should take no more than five percent of their investment assets each year for income, working part-time to earn five thousand dollars is like having another hundred thousand dollars in retirment assets. And an unconventional idea like a reverse mortgage may take on a new practicality for today's generation of soon-to-be retired. Investors paralyzed by their recent bear market experience will find sound, helpful advice in this book.

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Read a common sense guide to investing, April 14, 2003

By 

Arthur J. Canter (Boca Raton, FL United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: You've Lost It, Now What? How to Beat the Bear Market and Still Retire on Time (Hardcover)

As a CPA and registered investment adviser, I am always looking for a way to explain investment principles to my clients in a way they can easily understand. This book accomplishes this all-important function, and is a must read for investors. Jonathan presents common sense information which is unbiased. Many investors would profit from following the guidelines Jonathan presents, and should.

Jonathan presents a realistic approach to investing that avoids the day to day stimuli that can lead investors astray. The book also provides hope to those who've truly "lost it", either in dollar terms or in terms of their approach to investing.

People who read and understand this book will be ahead of those who don't, whether they invest on their own or use an adviser. I know anyone who has read this book will be better educated and will better understand investing.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "Bully" for this book, October 16, 2007

By 

Alan Haft "Alan Haft" (Southern California) - See all my reviews

This review is from: You've Lost It, Now What? How to Beat the Bear Market and Still Retire on Time (Hardcover)

A fantastic, easy to understand overview of the road to and through retirement in a thoroughly entertaining format. Clements' work here mirrors his enjoyable columns found in The Wall Street Journal.