800-CEO-READ Blog: Personal Finance and Investing

Go Green, Live Rich

David Bach--author of the popular Finish Rich series of personal finance books and the man who coined the term Latte Factor--has penned a new book entitled Go Green, Live Rich: 50 Simple Ways to Save the Earth and Get Rich Trying. It is a quick and interesting read, filled with a sense of purpose as well as easy steps that one can take to become a smarter consumer and live a greener lifestyle.

There is a widely held view out there that greening your lifestyle is an expensive and painful process. Bach deftly explodes this myth in 192 (recycled) pages. Early on in the book he revisits the Latte Factor concept, but tweaks it a bit and suggests we find our "Litter Factor."

I have long encouraged my readers to identify their Latte Factor and eliminate it to start saving money. But small changes such as not buying coffee in a disposable cup or water in a plastic bottle not only are good for your wallet, but they actually better the planet. In the same way that "little things" add up to drain your wealth, "small changes" add up to make a big difference for the Earth.

Consider this: Every year, Americans drink more than 100 billion cups of coffee. Of those, 14.4 billion are served in disposable paper cups, enough to wrap the Earth 55 times if placed end to end! Plus, those paper cups contain a plastic lining made from a petro-chemical that would produce enough energy to heat 8,300 homes a year.

He goes on to briefly discuss bottled water, referencing what I think was the best article published last year--Charles Fishman's Message in a Bottle. This is just a snippet of the first chapter, but it contains advice that, if taken, can lead to serious change... and save you money to boot. The rest of the book has equally clear and concise thinking and advice that ranges from how to save money by becoming energy smart, to shopping green, to going green at work. The steps to going green and energy-efficiency aren't necessarily going to be completely new to people, but Bach revealing how taking them is ultimately cost-efficient probably will be.

You'll be hearing much more from Bach on this issue. His first stop will be on the Today Show next Monday discussing seven green steps that can save you 3,000 dollars a year. The book itself will be hitting the shelves on Tuesday of next week, and I think you could consider it's $14.95 list price as an investment in the future of your finances, and maybe, even the future of planet as well.

Excerpt from Fast Profits in Hard Times

The following is an excerpt from the book Fast Profits in Hard Times by Jordan E. Goodman Published by Business Plus; January 2008; 9780446581561

Copyright (c) 2008 Jordan E. Goodman

10 Strategies: An Overview

Fast Profits in Hard Times will teach you everything you need to know and give you specific resources (websites, toll-free numbers, etc) to implement the following 10 strategies:

1. Invest in Tax Liens
   Buy liens placed on properties by municipalities because owners have fallen behind in paying their property taxes. Then, when the property owners pay what they owe to the municipalities, receive not only a return of your principal but also a penalty interest rate set by the municipality, typically in the range of 8% to 25%. If the property owner defaults altogether, take possession of the property for a fraction of its real value: the sum of the back taxes you've already advanced. You can then sell the property, even a bit below its market value, for a huge profit.
2. Buy Real Estate Below Market Value
   
   Identify real estate sellers who are willing to accept less than their property's full market value for a variety of reasons. Then resell the property immediately at a profit, rehab it, rent it out, or even live in it yourself, all with the built-in financial cushion of having purchased the property for far less than it is truly worth.
3. Invest in Income Trusts and Master Limited Partnerships
   
   Earn high yields of 8% to 13% by investing in trusts that extract or transport natural resources such as oil, gas, coal, or timber. Such trusts pass a large amount of their earnings directly to investors through monthly dividends. Depending on the trust or MLP, some of the distributions may be considered a tax-free return of capital, boosting your after-tax return even more.
4. Invest in High-Yield Stocks
   
   Invest in stocks with stable businesses that pay dividend yields of 5% to 15% or more. Some industries offering such high yields include electric utilities, oil tankers, and real estate investment trusts, and several broad-based closed-end mutual funds. This is a way to make your capital compound with very little risk when you reinvest the dividends or to boost the income you live on if you take the dividends in cash.
5. Enroll in Dividend Reinvestment Plans
   
   Invest in companies that offer Dividend Reinvestment Plans, known as DRIPS, which allow you to use dividends to purchase shares directly and thus bypass brokerage fees. Automatically reinvest dividends back into further stock purchases, thereby compounding your portfolio's assets over time. Several companies offer discount DRIPS, meaning that you get an additional 2% to 5% bonus every time you reinvest dividends, compounding your return even more at no additional cost to you. So if you get $100 in dividends, you receive $105 worth of stock when you enroll in a 5% discount DRIP.
6. Buy High-Yielding Bonds
   
   Buy bonds of companies, municipalities, or foreign governments, either individually or through open and closed-end funds, which pay yields of 5% to 12%. In addition to the high rate of interest, you will receive the return of your principal when the bond matures. There are many types of hybrid bonds available in today’s market with catchy names like STRIDES, ELKS, MITTS and HITS which offer guaranteed return of principal, high yields and potential bonuses based on how the underlying instruments perform.
7. Use Put and Call Options
   
   Rather than buying and selling actual stocks or stock indexes, you can, for a fraction of the cost, trade rights to buy and sell those stocks or stock indexes at specific prices within a specified period of time up to two years into the future. This form of leveraged trading allows for far greater gains but also runs the risk of far greater losses than normal stock investing. It is therefore imperative to follow careful strategies that limit risk while optimizing profits.
8. Profit from Foreign Exchange Trading
   
   Trade one currency against another currency, on the expectation that the currency you've bought will gain in value relative to the one you sold. This provides a convenient way to profit from the decline of the US dollar against most major foreign currencies.
9. Invest in and Broker Cash Flow Opportunities
   
   Identify people and/or businesses willing to sell future receivables at a significant discount in exchange for ready cash. Then either buy the payments yourself or serve as a broker for a third party, typically a large financial company, which provides the funds. For example, you can broker or buy cash flows from lottery winners, lawsuit winners, mortgage notes or reimbursements due to a doctor’s office from insurance companies or Medicare.
10. Set Up Passive Income Strategies
    
    Set up some kind of system that needs minimal ongoing management but continues to produce significant cash flow far into the future. A few examples include:
    
    • placing vending machines in high-traffic locations to collect passive income whenever customers make purchases
    
    
    • placing ATMs or point-of-sale (credit/debit/card swipe) machines in high sales volume locations to earn small fees paid by merchants whenever customers use the machines
    
    
    • Buy high-quality timeshares in desirable locations and seasons and rent them out over the internet to earn substantial rental income

Copyright (c) 2008 Jordan E. Goodman

Author
Jordan E. Goodman is a former Money magazine journalist and the author of several bestselling books, including Everyone's Money Book, The Dictionary of Finance and Investment Terms, and Master Your Money Type. He provides financial advice to millions of people each month through regular appearances on radio call-in and TV shows and through his seminars to corporate, association, and university audiences. He has been a regular contributor to NBC News at Sunrise, The Marketplace Morning Report on Public Radio, and many other shows. He hosts a popular financial resources Web site, www.moneyanswers.com, and is the host of The Money Answers Show on the VoiceAmerica Radio Network at www.voiceamerica.com. You can find out more about this book at www.fastprofitsinhardtimes.com.

Fast Profits in Hard Times

John C. Bogle is the Man

While this blog rarely covers personal finance books, I think that any time Jack Bogle puts pen to paper folks should take notice. His new book, The Little Book of Common Sense Investing, is another dose of refreshing common sense from the guy who created index funds as we know them today. Not to spoil anything, but there’s simply no great secrets revealed in this book. For years Bogle has been preaching a very simple and very powerful point. In today’s market the individual investor faces insurmountable odds over the long haul, after you factor in the transaction costs and the powerful incentives driving fund managers. Therefore buy low-cost index funds. End of story.

The charm of the book rests in Bogle’s sharp wit and spicy writing. Here’s a passage I particularly enjoyed:

As investors, all of us as a group earn the stock market’s return. As a group—I hope you’re sitting down for this astonishing revelation—we are average. Each extra return that one of us earns means that another of our fellow investors suffers a return shortfall of precisely the same dimension. Before the deduction of the costs of investing, beating the stock market is a zero-sum game.

But the costs of playing the investment game both reduce the gains of the winners and increases the losses of the losers. So who wins? You know who wins. The man in the middle (actually, the men and women in the middle, the brokers, the investment bankers, the money managers, the marketers, the lawyers, the accountants, the operations departments of our financial system) is the only sure winner in the game of investing. Our financial croupiers always win. In the casino, the house always wins. In horse racing, the track always wins. Investing is no different. After the deduction of the costs of investing, beating the stock market is a loser’s game.

Jonathan Clements, a Wall Street Journal personal finance writer with tremendous common sense, just touted Bogle’s new book in a piece, saying, "It's an easy read that will, I suspect, quickly join Burton Malkiel's 'A Random Walk Down Wall Street' and Charles Ellis's 'Winning the Loser's Game' as one of the indexing crowd's favorite books."

Personal Finance Advice: It's All The Same

You don't see us do much with personal finance books here on the blog. The advice is always the same.

The Wall Street Journal attempted to talk about the category on their Weekend Edition. This is the most important part of the article:

[J.D. Roth's Getting Rich Slowly], rated highly by Technorati, a search engine for blogs, includes advice about choosing books like this: "Many books -- especially the good ones -- give similar advice: pay yourself first, establish an emergency fund, don't spend more than you earn, diversify, etc. Sound personal finance is basic stuff."

It is an opinion seconded by academics even more grounded in the field. "Any book that suggests it has a new way to riches should probably be a little suspect," says Prof. Kenneth Froewiss, a finance professor at New York University Stern School of Business. A good book about personal finance, he says, always elaborates on three simple themes: Save early, know your risk tolerance and diversify.

I think I proved my point.

More Love for More Than You Know

The Wall Street Journal shows their love for More Than You Know today. Here is a piece:

Delightful examples follow from a variety of disciplines. The short period over which the average company can sustain a competitive advantage is likened to the lifespan of a fruit fly. The fatal risks of imitation by money managers are illustrated by ants who tend to follow one another in an endless circle, marching on and on until death. Mr. Mauboussin explains how Tupperware parties, where people buy lots more stuff than they need, provide important lessons for stock-market investors; how Tiger Woods's decision to change his golf swing even when he was winning reflects the "fitness landscapes" concept in evolutionary biology; and why gambling legend Puggy Pearson can help you be a better investor ("Ain't only three things to gambling: Knowin' the 60-40 end of a proposition, money management, and knowin' yourself").

What is also great about the review is the author--Burton Malkiel. He is the author of a different book you should be familiar with--A Random Walk Down Wall Street.

Jack and I both highly recommend this book.

The Books of William Bernstein

In the area of personal finance, there are two types of books

1. How do I get out of debt
2. What do I do with all my extra money now that I am out of debt.

The books of William Bernstein are for those who have extra money and are trying to figure out a way of investing it for the long-term. He believe in index funds and asset-based investing as the best path to success.

[a short pause while short-seller, derivative traders, and commodity brokers file out of the room]

For all of you still reading, I throughly recommend both of his books. Bernstein recommends The Four Pillars of Investing to "the liberal arts audience" and The Intelligent Asset Allocator "for the sophisticated investor".

In the first book, Bernstein explains the Four Pillars as history, theory, psychology, and business. He takes time to explain how "The Market Is Smarter Than You", how "Your Broker Is Not Your Friend", and "Neither Is Your Mutual Fund". He ends the book explain how to create a portfolio of the right asset types to minimize risk while maximizing returns.

In The Intelligent Asset Allocator, you need to already be on the bandwagon. He spends a little time talking about historical returns and the wide variation of the last 80 years. Shortly thereafter, the reader will find themselves in the world of standard deviation, correlation, and mean-variance optimizers. This is for the investors who has already drunk the Kool-aid and now wants to mix some for themselves.

WSJ's Five Best Rolls On

I continue to enjoy the Five Best feature in the Weekend Edition of the Wall Street Journal. A few weeks ago, they talked to their resident columnist Jonathan Clements about personal investing titles. He recommends the following:

• Money Masters of Our Time by John Train (HarperCollins, 2000)
• Capital Ideas by Peter Bernstein (Free Press, 1991)
• Winning the Loser's Game by Charles Ellis (McGraw-Hill, 2002)
• The Four Pillars Of Investing by William Bernstein (McGraw-Hill, 2002)
• Fooled by Randomness by Nassim Nicholas Taleb (Thomson Texere, 2004)

Read Clements' commentary on each of the books at the WSJ site.

Stanley Bing provided his Five Best on Saturday. He recommended Art of War, The Prince, The Godfather, Emily Post's The Etiquette Advantage in Business, and The Cat In The Hat. In this case, it is all about the commentary. Bing looks at the Dr. Suess tale as "a clever evocation of what happens to a corporation when a management consultant is hired by absent, clueless senior management to evaluate its organizational structure and to effect change." As I said, I suggest the commentary.

Chain of Links

Here is a dump of some of those links that have been building up in my bookmarks:

• Charles Fishman walks around Wal-Mart with Washington Post reporter Bob Thompson and talks about The Wal-Mart Effect.
• Andy Kessler reads alot of business books, but doesn't know why because they mostly suck. He does see our view of the new business book as one that shows you a different way of viewing the world. He says Mr. China, Wisdom of Crowds, The Hypomanic Edge, and Everything Bad Is Good For You are examples of books that help you see into the future.
• Biz Book Talk reviews Lee Eisenberg's The Number.
• Business Evolutionist gives his take on A Whole New Mind.

Forbes' 20 Most Influential Business Books

In the Forbes' article that Tom referred to yesterday, the writer Dan Ackman pointed to a list of business books the magazine put together in 2002. Forbes calls these The 20 Most Influential Business Books. As you look down the panel experts, you'll notice our own Jack Covert was among those called to contribute. Since this was put together before the blog was born, I thought we should get it put up here.

• In Search of Excellence by Tom Peters and Robert Waterman (1982)
• Built to Last by Jim Collins and Jerry Porras (1994)
• Reengineering the Corporation by Michael Hammer and Jim Champy (1993)
• Barbarians at the Gate by Bryan Burrough and John Helyar (1993)
• Competitive Advantage by Michael Porter (1998)
• The Tipping Point by Malcolm Galdwell (2000)
• Crossing the Chasm by Geoffrey Moore (1999)
• The House of Morgan by Ron Chernow (1990)
• The Six Sigma Way by Peter Pande et al (2000)
• Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey(1990)
• Liar's Poker by Michael Lewis (1989)
• The Innovator's Dilemma by Clayton Christensen (1997)
• Japan Inc. by Shotaro Ishinomori (1988)
• Den of Thieves by James Stewart (1991)
• The Essential Drucker by Peter Drucker (2001)
• Competing for the Future by Gary Hamel and C.K. Prahalad (1994)
• The Warren Buffet Way by Robert Hagestrom (1991)
• Jack: Straight from the Gut by Jack Welch with John Bryne (2001)
• Good to Great by Jim Collins (2001)
• The New New Thing by Michael Lewis (2000)

They also organized the books and you will find some good commentary under the topics of management, narrative, biography and investing.

Meet The Bogleheads

We don't do alot with personal finance here and more try to deal with the ups and down of business. I thought this was interesting though.

Wiley has published a book by three moderators from a Morningstar message board. The Diehards forum was started in 1998 and deals with the teachings of John Bogle, founder of Vanguard mutual funds. Their site brings in 25,000 people a day and can have hundreds of posts with people asking questions.

In The Bogleheads' Guide to Investing, Taylor Larimore, Mel Lindauer, and Michael LeBeoeuf are about making it simple for beginners. You will find sections on making sure your savings enough, asset allocation, and taxes. John Bogle has even written the foreword to the book and we have posted it over on the excerpt blog.

Books To Watch For - Spring '06

We did this last fall and thought you might enjoy another look at the season ahead.

So, here are the books we think you should be watching for in the first part of 2006.

• The Number by Lee Eisenberg (1/06, Free Press) - If you have walked into any Barnes & Noble since New Year's it would have been impossible to miss this book. We think it is a great book. Eisenberg takes Gladwell-like look at the complexities of retirement. As I said in my prior post, this one had me on an emotional rollercoaster. It is a great book and one everyone should read.
• The Wal-Mart Effect by Charles Fishman - The long-time Fast Company editor writes an amazing book on what drives Wal-Mart and how that drives our economy. He has firsthand accounts from employees who started some of the company's biggest businesses. He also talks with suppliers about what it is like to work with the retail giant. What Fishman does best is shed some light a company that the public really doesn't know much about.
• Silos, Politics, and Turf Wars by Pat Lencioni (2/06, Jossey-Bass) - We have just started reading this one, but it is hard to bet against this author after the classics of Death by Meeting and Five Dysfunctions of A Team.
• The Ultimate Question by Fred Reichheld (3/06, Harvard Business School Press) - Reichheld has been writing books on customer loyalty for a number of years. He has done the research to show that you can ditch all the 47 question satisfaction surveys and ask your customers one simple question - "Would you recommend us to someone else?"
• The Radical Edge by Steve Farber (4/06, Kaplan) - Jack just got done reading the manuscript and he says he may like it more than Radical Leap. Many of the familiar characters are back. This time, it is about taking personal responsibility and living life on your terms.
• Questions of Character by Joseph Badaracco (4/06, Harvard Business School Press) - The subtitle says it all -- "Illuminating the Heart of Leadership Through Literature". The book is based on a class taught by the author at Harvard Business School. He says that fiction offers a unique way to teach leadership. It is possible to truly know what the characters are thinking, versus learning tools such as interviews and case studies. I think it is brilliant.

New Year's Resolutions for Better Finances?

Richard Pachter of the Miami Herald reviews three personal finance books to get your finances in order for the New Year.

• Smart and Simple Financial Strategies for Busy People by Jane Bryant Quinn.
• The Wall Street Journal Complete Money and Investing Guide by Dave Kansas
• The TurboTax 2006 Income Tax Handbook edited by Anna Isgro

Tax Season Arrives Again

The Weekend Edition of the Wall Street Journal asked tax expert Randy Blaustein for good books on the IRS and your taxes.

• The IRS Problem Solver by Daniel Pilla
• Confessions of a Tax Collector by Richard Yancey
• What The IRS Doesn't Want You To Know by Martin Kaplan
• Tax This! An Insider's Guide to Standing Up To the IRS by Scott Estill
• J.K. Lasser's Your Income Tax 2006 by the J.K. Lasser Institute

Blaustein also has a book called How to Do Business With the IRS: The Complete Guide for Tax Professionals (out of print).

Go Read The Number

I have a simple request: go read The Number, now.

We have seen this book coming ever since this summer. Free Press has gone to extreme lengths to make this a big book. We got the manuscript in July. Jack and I both read it. We thought it was brilliant.

The publisher printed 3,500 hardcover preview copies. That is unheard of. Publishers never want to spend this kind of money to promote a book. We used 100 copies of the special edition to spread to our movers and shakers.

This Saturday, I was in Barnes and Noble and the book was everywhere. It was on the front table. It was in personal finance section. There was even a special table sitting next to the checkout line with a sign asking "What is Your Number?"

Jeffrey Trachtenberg wrote a piece last month for the Wall Street Journal talking about all that Free Press has done to roll this book out. What is missing from the article is one thing -- the book is really good and that is why it will do well. In three months, people will be talking about this book like they talk about Freakonomics.

Let's get past the hype. This weekend, the book was reviewed in the Wall Street Journal by Glenn Ruffenach, editor for their retirement sections. Ruffenach's biggest problem with the book is that Lee Eisenberg suggests tried and true methods for reaching retirement with the money you need. I have two responses:

1. Doctors tell people to eat right and exercise if they want better health. Yet, most people don't want to follow the advice that has been confirmed in study after study. Savings of 10% to 15% of your paycheck and spreading your investments are also great ideas that people can't seem to follow. People don't need new ideas; they need to follow the ones that are already proven.
2. The reason that this book is going to strike a chord is because it is written in a wonderful narrative. Eisenberg has pulled together a wonderful set of stories that allow people to internalize the complexity of the topic. The stories stick with you. I don't remember the last time I read a book that sent me on a emotional rollercoaster like The Number did. I was clinically depressed halfway through the book, but like any good writer Eisenberg brings you back and gives you hope.

I think the storytelling is going to help people appreciate the simple but tough things that they need to do to prepare for retirement.

One more time...just so I am clear- go read The Number.

The Soul of Capitalism: John Bogle Interview

One of my favorite books this year is The Battle for the Soul of Capitalism: How the financial system undermined social ideals, damaged trust in the markets, robbed investors of millions—and what to do about it by John C. “Jack” Bogle, the founder of Vanguard (i.e. the pioneer of no-load index funds, which revolutionized the industry). This ambitious book requires your full attention. Bogle draws from his authority as a key player in the world of finance over the past 50 years, who has revolutionized the investment industry, witnessed huge changes, and never backed down from a fight. His book takes on the whole rotten system, and bears reading for a number of reasons.

Battle tackles the systematic rot gnawing at the effectiveness of large corporations, the power of small investors to beat the system, and the integrity of enterprise as many of us see it. Bogle cites isolates trends that other writers have noted, such as out-of-control CEO compensation, the dereliction of duty by boards, the systemic siphoning of profits away from investors by conglomerate-owned managed funds, and weaves them all together into a compelling overall argument. Not only that, but he writes wonderfully, to boot. It’s hard to argue with a book so smart and persuasive. The first chapter is available online as an excerpt. Here’s a nugget that I particularly enjoyed:

Over the past century, a gradual move from owner’s capitalism—providing the lion’s share of the rewards of the investment to those who put up the money and risk their own capital—has culminated in an extreme version of managers’ capitalism—providing vastly disproportionate rewards to those whom we have trusted to manage our enterprises in the interest of their owners. Managers’ capitalism is a betrayal of owners’ capitalism, a system that worked, albeit imperfectly, with remarkable effectiveness for the better part of the past two centuries, beginning with the Industrial Revolution as the eighteenth century turned to the nineteenth.

Earlier this fall I had the chance to do a question and answer with the man called Jack. Here’s what he said.

Q: Jack, you are one of the most influential investment figures of the past 50 years. Why have you written this book?

A: This is meant to be a lot more than a business book. It addresses this country’s role in the world, and our faltering practice of capitalism. We have turned a system of owners’ capitalism (where the idea is to earn the maximum return on the capital invested by the owners) into managers’ capitalism. In corporate America, the investor-owner is now at the bottom of the food chain, and managers are at the top. And there’s a very simple equation at stake here: the more that managers of America take, the less that investors make. This formula may not be up there with “e=mc squared,” but it is tautologically true. I say in the book that if investment returns are 7 percent annually and the system takes 2.5 percent then you are left with only 4.5 percent.

One key problem is that we’ve gone from an own-a-stock society to a rent-a-stock one, which has a terrible impact on the shareholders. When, as Larry Summers asked, was the last time you washed a rental car? Likewise, when was the last time someone voted a rental stock? The typical fund manager with all that turnover doesn’t care about real business value. And index managers, on the other hand, can’t follow that threadbare rule of ‘if you don’t like the manager sell the stock.’ Instead, they should be advocating a model of ‘if you don’t like the management then change the manager.’ They should be an activist in corporate proxies, by putting proposals in the proxy to limit compensation, for example, and by nominating directors. But you can’t find a fund manager like this. When was the last time there was any proxy proposal raised by a mutual fund? Isn’t that amazing for an industry which owns 28 percent of corporate America?

It’s very clear from a statistical standpoint that all this high turnover is to the disadvantage of fund shareholders. When I came into this industry, turnover was around 15-16 percent annually, and now it is 100 percent. This just doesn’t work in the long run. Fund shareholders will eventually gravitate toward more intelligently run mutual funds. They will encourage funds to focus more on the long run than the short run. People laugh at me, but it is going to happen. These ideas are on the right side of history. They are so fundamentally common sense.

Q: Your book takes on more than fund management however. It critiques the way corporate boards govern and how CEOs manage their companies. Why take such a systematic approach?

A: It’s all of a piece. You have the CEO compensation issue, where the game becomes not to build the company but to build the price of the stock, and then to capitalize on stock options. The fact of the matter is that everyone knows that the value of the stock is the discounted future cash flow, plain and simple. That’s it. And yet we have this industry practicing witchcraft. You have CEOs promising earnings growth of 11 percent annually and delivering six. You wonder why they don’t get fired! The real question that motivates them is ‘how do I drive the stock up?’ And they do this by making outrageous projections and then doing whatever they can by hook or by crook to achieve these projections. And to accomplish this they bring others into the system. One of the most egregious examples of course is Enron, which involved conspiracy with the accountants. And why do the accountants conspire? Because on a basic level, the companies pay them. The companies pay five times as much for consulting services than for accounting, so, naturally, the accounting firms did not want to lose the consulting business. Then in the mutual fund business you have the failure of directors who are captive to the fund managers who sit on the other side of the table. These executives are generally the kind of men you’d like your daughter to marry—I’ve never met a corrupt person in the industry. But the industry itself is corrupt because it is taking too much money out of the returns and is ignoring its fiduciary duty to fund owners.

In the old days, directors answered directly to the stockholders. But we no longer have direct representation. That ended in 1981, which was the last year that more than 50 percent of public equities was owned by direct investors. We went from 92 percent of individual ownership in 1950 to 32 percent today. And what has emerged at the same time are financial agents whose ownership rose from 8 percent to 68 percent. Astonishing! But these agents don’t represent the interests of the principals . . . largely mutual fund shareholders and pension beneficiaries. Today the money management companies are largely owned by giant conglomerates, and their goal is to earn a return on their capital, not on your capital as a fund shareholder. They have a fiduciary responsibility to shareholders, and they also have to make as much money as possible for their owners. They are serving two masters. And what necessarily happens is that they serve the one that is paying their compensation. So you see it’s all of a piece.

Q: How do you change it?

A: I don’t think that change is going to be easy. The book is my attempt to give a little impetus to the changes that we have to make. When I say investors of the world unite, I mean it. There are several key things we must change. The biggest risk to our financial system is the failure of our retirement system. Right now half the savings assets of the American economy—nearly $10 trillion—are in retirement plans, which are failing badly. The problem is that over an investment lifetime only about 25 percent of the rewards go to the investors and 75 percent go to the intermediaries. We have to change this. We need to have a federal blue ribbon commission to study the entire system. Right now we have a whole series of isolated pockets of retirement savings when we need an integrated system—something that would be linked, for example to corporate 401k plans and corporate pension plans, which would be integrated with the social security system. But in order to do so we need to make sure that there is a federal standard of fiduciary duty. We need to codify that standard and state what it means. We also need to have a massive education campaign so that investors understand simple investment fundamentals, and the confiscatory power of trading costs and fund expenses. The sooner investors look after their own economic interests the better off they will be.

Q: You continue to advocate index funds. Couldn’t your prescriptions be seen as somewhat self-serving?

A: I don’t see how. Vanguard index funds are the core of what I am talking about today: giving the investor no more and no less than his or her fair share of whatever returns the financial markets are kind enough to deliver. That’s just what I said in my senior thesis from college in 1951 and have said ever since. I have no vested interest in whether or not Vanguard gets bigger.

I do believe that we are seeing some positive change. The best investors today are accepting the message of index funds and low-cost investing. Peter Lynch said years ago that most investors would be better off with an index fund. How could he be wrong? The numbers are there. Jack Meyer, who is leaving Harvard, says the investment industry is a giant scam. And David Swensen of Yale calls the mutual fund industry a colossal failure for individual investors. You can even go back to the legendary Benjamin Graham, who in a late interview in 1976 seemed to indicate that indexing was the best strategy. Nobel Laureate Paul Samuelson challenged those who had brute evidence that management worked in favor of the investor to prove it. He’s still waiting. Warren Buffett has recommended low cost index funds for decades. If those investors are all agreeing, then sooner or later people will sit up and take attention. When the dumb investor realizes how dumb he is and buys an index fund, he immediately becomes a smart investor.

For investors to gain the almost universally accepted benefits of maximum diversification, they must have intermediaries, whether pension funds or other managed funds, to pool their resources and own literally hundreds of stocks and bonds. So agents are necessary; we have an agency society. And the whole darn book can be summed up by the fact that these agents aren’t representing their principals. We need a fiduciary society where we enjoin the agents to represent their principals, a society in which stewardship and trusteeship are the watchwords.

Bestseller Brought Back

One of the treasures we uncovered on our trip to New York was a new edition to Napolean Hill's Think and Grow Rich from publisher Tarcher Penguin.

This is the grandfather of books on motivational thought. Hill was a journalist that Andrew Carnegie hired to find out what the formula of success was. In the 25 year journey to the answer, Hill interviewed 500 millionaires and published his finding in 1937. The book has sold over 15 million copies in its almost seven decade run.

There are several things I like about this new edition. This version was revised and updated by Arthur Pell. Some additional material uses more recent examples of Bill Gates and Michael Jordan to illustrate points. The packaging is well done with the rough cut pages and french covers (i.e. a soft cover with folded flaps to mimic a dust cover). And it's only $10. You rarely see me mention price, but that is a great price point.

A Look at the Fall

Here are some books we are liking for the fall.

Competition Demystified by Bruce Greenwald and Judd Kahn (Aug.) - The author revisit and simplify Porter's Five Forces. I was skeptical, but they sold me in the introduction.

First in Thirst by Darren Rovell (Sept.) - This is a interesting brand biography on Gatorade. You will see this book on the BBBT at the end of September.

Bag the Elephant by Steve Kaplan (Sept.) - Bard Press puts out one book a year and each one is without fail is a great title. GUTS!, Marketing Outrageously, and Little Red Book of Selling were all from Bard Press. This year's book is about the idea of small business attracting and retaining big customers.

Radical Careering by Sally Hogshead (Sept.) - The book has great design and a powerful message. It reminds me of Fast Company in its heyday. Brand Autopsy has a nice preview.

Let My People Go Surfing by Yvon Chouinard (Oct.) - The Republic of Tea and Raising The Bar showed us there was a different way to do business. Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard continues the tradition.

The Big Moo by Seth Godin and the Group 33 (Oct.) - The book is a perfect follow-up to Purple Cow.

The Number by Lee Eisenberg (Jan.) - This book takes a Gladwell-like look at retirement. The question is "What is your number?"

So, there is a little something for everyone to read this fall.

Enjoy!

The Musts of Resale Value

The Wall Street Journal has published a book called Guide to The Business of Life. I think it is an interesting compilation of things that have been in the paper. I am going to published the Table of Content in the extended section so you can get a flavor for what is offered.

Here is a piece from Chapter 7 - The Great Game: Buying, Financing, and Keeping A Car In Shape:

The Musts of Resale Value

The time to consider a car's resale value is when you buy it. Dealers will tell you that some features that you may pay extra for up front are worth it when it comes time to trade in or sell. The big ones:

Bigger engines are usually better. Go for the six cylinder, not the four-banger.
Silver is a classic color. So are black and white.
Power is good. In these days when people are accustomed to powered appliances, make sure your car has power locks operated with a remote, keyless entry; power windows and cruise control. Power seats aren't a bad idea either.
Tinny FM radios won't do. Go for the CD player (or on newers models, MP3 players).
Spring for cowhide. Buyers love the smell of leather interiors, and they hold up better than cloth.
Shiny is best. Alloy wheels are popular; they help keep your car looking sharp.

Table of Contents
Chapter One - Getting There: The Secrets of The Savvy Traveler
Chapter Two - Creature Comforts on The Road
Chapter Three - Getting Pampered, Having Fun and Roughing It: Leisure and Adventure Travel
Chapter Four - Logistics: The Nuts and Bolts of Travel
Chapter Five - After Hours
Chapter Six - Gadgets: Learning to Speak Geek
Chapter Seven - The Great Game: Buying, Financing, and Keeping Your Car In Shape
Chapter Eight - Real Estate: Buying, Selling, and Upgrading Your Home
Chapter Nine - Health and Fitness: Taking Control of Yourself
Chapter Ten - Education: The Long Haul
Chapter Eleven - Life is a Tightrope: Balancing Work and Life
Chapter Twelve - Financing Your Life: The New Realities
Chapter Thirteen - Shopping: The Nation's New Sex

The Currency of Bankruptcy

A number of recent hearings, articles, and other events have given new currency, so to speak, to a recently touted personal finance title, All Your Worth: The Ultimate Lifetime Plan. What’s new? The passage of the bankruptcy bill, for one, as well as the recent Senate hearing on the implications of this bill on credit card disclosure. In addition, both the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal have published excellent articles on the key trends concerning troubling personal finance trends, the myth of class mobility, and the explosion of personal debt in the U.S.

Consider the following quote from the May 17 Journal article. “For Americans who aren’t getting a big boost from workplace raises, easy credit offers a way to get ahead, at least for the moment. To some, the expansion of credit is a milestone of democracy, giving middle- and lower-income people financial flexibility that only the rich used to enjoy. Others see the borrowing binge as a way for average households to make up for sluggish growth in income over the past several decades. Since 1990, income for the median American household has risen only 11% after adjusting for inflation, while median household spending has jumped at 30%, according to an analysis by Economy.com. How could the typical family afford to spend so much? Median household debt outstanding has jumped by 80%.”

We recently mentioned several worthy personal finance titles. Now, given the continuing debate over the structure of personal debt and its role in the economy, it seems like a good time to check back in with co-authors Elizabeth Warren and Amelia Warren Tyagi of All Your Worth. By the way, another excellent book on this topic is Credit Card Nation by Robert Manning, a strident and convincing effort which is backed by an excellent website.

Q) Please explain how your background in the broader financial landscape
affects your advice to individuals.

A) Elizabeth is a professor at the Harvard Law School. She’s been doing original empirical research since 1981. Amelia has an MBA from Wharton, and she is a former consultant with McKinsey and Company. Together, we embarked on innovative research into the financial state of the modern American family. What we found alarmed us. The rules of money have changed, and families—millions of ordinary, hard-working, middle-class people with good educations and decent jobs—are living on the financial edge. It became very clear that the old harangues to “use double coupons” and “just save more” aren’t cutting it. To get ahead in today’s economy, families Americans need specific tools that help them take control over all their spending –from the mortgage right down to the tube of toothpaste.

Q) How does the recent passage of the bankruptcy bill affect the advice you
give in your book?

A) It makes us want to shout the advice from the rooftops—with a bullhorn! The safety net is fraying, and that means families need to take stronger steps to protect themselves. This bill means that there is even less margin for error, and that Americans need to be savvier than ever if they are going to get ahead.

Q) Your book rebuts the received wisdom of most books about personal finance. Without naming names, what would you say are the worst sins of personal finance titles? What types of commonly touted wisdom would you caution folks to avoid above all?

A) Worst advice: Cut out the lattes, save a few pennies here and a few nickels there, and all your financial problems will magically disappear. The truth is, if you can’t afford a latte, you can’t afford your life. You are in need of a comprehensive overhaul. Not only is the “latte problem” not real (as the data prove), it is dangerous. This advice has encouraged millions of Americans to spend all their time focusing on the pennies, while ignoring their real problem – they are spending too many dollars on big-ticket items. But this advice continues to get shelled out, not because it is true, but because it is so much easier to shake a finger over too many frivolous things without giving any hard advice on how to take control over the things that really matter.

Second worst advice: Put a second mortgage on your house to pay off credit card bills. The advisers do a few quick calculations and claim you can save a few dollars on interest. They never mention that if anything goes wrong and you can’t pay all those bills, you will lose the roof over your head! Credit card companies can’t take your home, but home equity lenders sure can; that’s the only reason they give those preferred rates to begin with.

Third worst advice: To get into the stock market, you must spend zillions of hours researching stocks and bonds and hundreds of new financial gizmos (or hire someone who will spend zillions of hours on your behalf). This is absurd—and it keeps people on the sidelines when they should just jump in. A simple indexed mutual fund will do the trick for most people, and it takes only a few minutes to shop for.

A Beautiful Book

How a book is packaged can make all the difference.

HarperBusiness has re-released the 1949 text of Benjamin Graham's The Intelligent Investor and the book is gorgeous. I don't think the picture does it justice. They used great red cloth on the covers. There is no dust jacket. There is a simple plate on the front with the title and author and a plate on the back with a summary and author information. The pages are rough cut. I love the whole package.

I think it is a perfect gift for the investor in your life.

Will Boomers Blow Up The Stock Market?

On the front page of yesterday's Wall Street Journal was an outstanding article (sub. needed) on the future of the stock market.

Jeremy Siegel is a professor at Wharton and he has been a big supporter of stocks as a long-term investment. His book Stocks for the Long Run has sold 350,000 copies.

Siegel has a new book and he has changed his tune. In The Future for Investors, he says that the coming retirement of the baby boomers will cause the stock market to tank. On the supply side, boomers will be selling stocks and bonds to maintain their quality of life. On the demand side, there will not be enough investors to buy up all of these assets and prices will fall (the ratio of workers to retirees will drop from today's 4.9 to 1 to 2.6 to 1 over the next thirty years). The only savior, Siegel claims, could be the growing economies of India, China, and other developing nations.

What makes the article great is the counterpoint that Robin Brooks offers. Brooks is an economist from the IMF and he says Siegel is all wet. He talks about how 10% of individuals in the US hold 88% of stocks and how this segment will not need to sell large portions of their portfolios.

This sums up the article:

"Whether we will see some sort of crash or slow crumble over the next decade or so, I don't know," says Andrew Abel, another finance professor from Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. "But it is certainly likely enough that it has gotten to enter into people's planning."

Richard Pachter Looks for Luck

Richard Pachter of the Miami Herald reviews three luck books this week - Make Your Own Luck, How To Create Your Own Luck, and Lucky or Smart?.

Tax Day Arrives

To coincide with our birthday, it is also Tax Day.

The book connection would be Many Unhappy Returns: One Man's Quest To Turn Around The Most Unpopular Organization In America by by Charles O. Rossotti.

No one believed the IRS could ever run like a twenty-first-century business. Until it did.

When Charles O. Rossotti became Commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service in 1997, the agency had the largest customer base-and the lowest approval rating-of any institution in America. Mired in scandal, caught in a political maelstrom, and beset by profound management and technology problems, the IRS was widely dismissed as a hopelessly flawed enterprise.

In Many Unhappy Returns, Rossotti-the first businessperson to head the IRS-recounts the remarkable story of his leadership and transformation of this much-maligned agency. In the glare of intense public scrutiny, he effected dramatic changes in the way the IRS did business-while it continued to collect $2 trillion in revenue.

Through fascinating accounts of heated Congressional hearings, encounters with Washington bigwigs, frank exchanges with taxpayers and employees, and risky turnaround strategies, Rossotti serves up a colorful story of leadership and change against daunting odds. He also underscores why every honest taxpayer should demand reform in the broader U.S. tax system.

Infused with keen wit and hard-won business wisdom, Many Unhappy Returns illuminates the perils and possibilities of leading large, complex organizations in a transparent world.

Paying for College

This is one of those items that has been sitting on my desk for a couple of weeks. A few weeks ago, the topic of the Journal Report in the WSJ was How to Save for College. Don Taylor, an associate professor at The American College, put together a list of books and documents "for helping parents plan for the high cost of higher education."

• "The Best Way to Save for College A Complete Guide to 529 Plans 2005 Edition," By Joseph F. Hurley, CPA 2005
• "Bogle on Mutual Funds" By John C. Bogle, Dell 1994
• "J.K. Lasser's Winning Ways to Save for College," By Barbara Wagner, Wiley 2002
• "The Standard & Poor's Guide to Saving and Investing for College," By David J. Braverman, McGraw-Hill 2003
• "Savings Bonds for Education," on the Bureau of Public Debt's Web site.
• "IRS Publication 970 (2004), Tax Benefits for Education"
• "Just Give Me the Answer$: Expert Advisors Address Your Most Pressing Financial Questions," By Sheryl Garrett, Marie Swift, Dearborn Trade 2004
• The Princeton Review's, "Paying for College Without Going Broke," By Kalman A. Chany with Geoff Martz, Random House 2004
• "The Everything Paying for College Book," By Nathan Brown & Sheryle A. Proper, Adams 2005

The Last Personal Finance Book You’ll Need

There are some unfortunate genres, such as self-help books, that are littered with crap. Personal finance books are another field of dreck. Let’s not name names. But in the former I shy away from cheesy, desperate, unctuous, and superficial books; and in the latter I pretty much avoid…the same.

Good news. The last six months have been a very good time for finance books, with a new release capping this encouraging phase. Any discussion must start by touting Eric Tyson and his lovely Personal Finance for Dummies. This book certainly isn’t new, but it occupies a special place in my heart—not simply as the best of the (often dismissed) Dummies line, but as an excellent blend of wisdom and practicality and clear advice on how to proceed.

But what’s new? First off, three titles from Portfolio. Last year Jean Chatzky spoke to us about her new, excellent book Pay It Down: From Debt to Wealth on $10 a Day. Her publisher has wisely reissued her prior book The Ten Commandments of Financial Happiness: Feel Richer with what You’ve Got, which is another smart guide that addresses the key human and emotional aspects that lead to financial discipline, and health.

Add to this list the clever Bad Debt, Good Debt: Knowing the Difference can Save your Financial Life from Jon Hanson. Debt, says Hanson, is neither good nor bad. It simply is. Having too much is bad, while having a manageable level in terms of the overall picture is acceptable. His book benefits enormously from his perspective, as he shares how himself was plagued by the demons. He speaks as one who learned his lessons from hard experience. A smart and engaging read.

But the real deal is All Your Worth: The Ultimate Lifetime Plan by Elizabeth Warren and Amelia Tyagi Warren.

Why? This book raises the bar for all other personal finance books by shifting the way in which it is discussed. These authors have a fundamental understanding of both the economic context driving household decisions, and the individual makeup that often leads people to poor choices. They deal with both threads, and in the process present the challenge of managing money proportionally in the scheme of life. Their core argument is that people must balance their financial life—to allocate wisely between essentials, wants, and savings. Sure, this sounds like common sense. But when is common sense common? And how many of us really do live by a consistent set of financial principles?

Principle is actually the key word here. For while the authors share a wealth of tips, many of their tactics, while wise, feel almost perfunctory, an almost tacit admission that so much financial advice is a mere intellectual commodity. These authors seem more comfortable drawing from a deep and abiding set of principles culled from experience. Mom teaches bankruptcy law at Harvard Law School; daughter is a former consultant and HBS grad. Together they wrote the The Two-Income Trap: Why Middle-class Parents Are Going Broke, a brilliant book detailing the vast changes in the personal finance landscape of the past two decades. The rules have changed profoundly, they argue, for most Americans. Paying for the essentials of life, such a mortgage and health care has become a more difficult challenge for myriad reasons, among them a different attitude about lending standards.

Their background deeply informs this personal finance book. They understand the primary importance of establishing a budget that deals with first things first—the essentials of life that occupy a disproportionately high a percentage of spending for too many Americans. They focus their advice on achieving a balance of paying for essentials, for fun, and for savings. Their advice doesn’t offer trivial solutions to profound problems (by showing how to clip coupons for example.) It helps people stay focused on the most important financial issues that rule their life.

The enduring value of this book comes from a sensible, informed, and even passionate voice of reason about how individuals today can make the right financial decisions. Moreover, given the current march of the terrible bankruptcy bill in congress, the book couldn’t be more timely.

To read the intro to the book, click here. And, click here for an author Q&A.

1. What is ALL YOUR WORTH about? We lay out the new rules of money—the rules that have changed since your parents were young, the rules nobody talks about. Then we use those new rules to build a lifetime money plan, a strategy to get control over money once and for all. All Your Worth shows its readers how to get out of debt, how to cover the bills, and how to start getting ahead—all without needing to pinch pennies or carry a calculator. This book is about taking control right now and keeping control forever.
2. Who did you write this book for? This book is for anyone who worries about money. Whether you are knee-deep in past-due notices or you just don’t think you’re saving enough, we are here to help you figure out what is wrong and fix it. We think of this as the sleep-tight book because it shows you how to develop a workable plan that will chase worry away.
3. The main crux of ALL YOUR WORTH is the concept of “balancing” your money. Can you describe what that means? You’ve heard of a balanced diet, with enough of each of the basic food groups. Balancing your money follows the same general idea. When your money is in balance, you are spending the right amount in each of your major expense categories. You have money for what you need, like your house and your insurance. You have money for savings, so you can get ahead and start to build some real wealth. And you have money that’s just for fun, because life is about more than just boiled vegetables! A crash budget doesn’t work any better than a crash diet; getting your money in balance is about creating a sensible approach to managing your money that can last you an entire lifetime.
4. So what is the Balanced Money Formula?This is the bull’s eye, a model for a lifetime plan for your money:
   • 50% of your take-home income goes to your Must-Haves, like your mortgage, car payment, groceries and insurance.
   • 30% goes to Wants. This includes all the stuff you want -- but don’t really need -- like restaurant meals, new clothes, vacations, and new gadgets.
   • 20% goes to your Savings, which includes saving for retirement and all your other dreams, as well as paying off your old debts.
   
   We have had some really startling results when people have compared their own numbers to the Balanced Money Formula—they can see in one glance exactly where they are out of balance, and exactly what needs fixing.
5. How does “balancing” your money differ from other financial advice? A lot of advice books just talk about the edges, telling you to “Cut back here” and “Trim over there.” That’s a little like planning a diet by saying, “Cut out cookies” and “No sugar in your coffee.” This approach may (or may not) help for slight modifications, but it is not a real plan. We help you take stock of all your money, and then we help you build a money plan that is flexible enough to last a lifetime. This advice isn’t based on gut reasoning or lucky guesses; it is the result of over two decades of intensive research, drawing on the experiences of literally thousands of people from across the country.
6. What are the new rules of money? When your parents were young, odds were that if they got a decent job, bought a normal house and didn’t go nuts with spending, everything would turn out just fine. They could build up equity in their homes, save plenty of money, and retire in comfort—not because they were thriftier or smarter, but because the rules of money were different. Today, you have to be a lot smarter about money. There are big banks urging you to take on more credit card debt than you can manage, mortgage companies offering to lend you money to buy a house you can’t afford, skyrocketing costs for health insurance and college tuition, companies turning employees into “consultants,” and a lot more pressure to provide for your own retirement. In the new rules of money, you can’t sit back and hope that everything will work out; you have to take control over your financial future. That means you have to ignore all those big banks and mortgage companies, and you have to decide for yourself what you can really afford. Anyone who doesn’t master the new rules is standing in the middle of a six-lane superhighway, hoping not to get hit.
7. Who is affected by money worries? Last year, the number one New Year’s resolution was to get out of debt. Right now 44 million Americans make the minimum monthly payment on their credit cards, and over 60 million report that they worry about making ends meet. Deep down, every single one of these individuals is scared. Fear and anxiety about money can be found everywhere. High income and low income. Men and women. Single, married and divorced. Neighbors, friends and family. People everywhere are worrying. Can I get out of debt? What would I do if I lost my job? How will I send the kids to college? Can we ever buy a house? The details may change, but the gnawing fear that it won’t be possible to hold it all together, that it could all be taken away, haunts the nighttime hours of tens of millions of people. This book is based on mountains of research, and it tackles head-on the heart-pounding financial worries of ordinary Americans.
8. Various statistics show that money is the #1 issue that couples argue about and even get divorced over. What advice do you have for couples who fight over money? Number One Best Move: Fun money for you, and fun money for your partner. And then (and this is really important) no questions asked. You need a little free space in your life, and it is the same with money—you also need some free space in your wallet. So no matter how broke you are, you should budget a little fun money for each of you that you can spend however you want. She wants to spend hers on high fashion sandals and he wants to spend his on power tools; she wants to spend hers on archery lessons and he wants to spend his on silk underwear. It just doesn’t matter. Giving each other some free money will take the pressure off your relationship. Besides, people who are having a little fun are more fun to be around. (Try kissing a guy who is wearing silk undies!)
9. How does your new book ALL YOUR WORTH differ from your previous book THE TWO INCOME TRAP? The Two-Income Trap told the story of millions of decent, hard-working families who struggle financially every day, and it explained why today’s families are working harder than ever but still falling behind. The focus of The Two-Income Trap was on explaining the problem and presenting policy solutions. All Your Worth starts with a different question: What should people do to protect themselves and build a brighter financial future? This book is focused on practical advice that people can use in their own lives right here, right now.
10. This is your second book together as a mother-daughter author team. How did you come to start writing together? Elizabeth: I wanted to hold the baby! I had a ton of new research, and I was trying to make sense of all of it at the same time that I went to help Amelia with her tiny new baby. We talked about the funny rash on the baby’s neck for hours, but finally we started talking about the new data. Amelia started sitting at the computer writing notes and looking for other data online. The more she worked, the more I got to hold the baby—and vice-versa. We were well on the way to a book without even noticing.
11. How has your writing partnership changed your relationship? Our lives are knitted together in new ways. The tiny baby from the last book is a preschooler now, and another baby is on the way. That makes us both moms, and both concerned for the welfare of someone very small and vulnerable. We have two joint projects—this book and our earlier book, The Two-Income Trap, and both the books and the babies have brought us closer. We spend hours arguing and researching, rethinking and rewriting, but we always come back to the same point—each of us knows that the other’s heart is in exactly the right place.

Berkshire Hathaway's Annual Letter to Shareholders

Every year Warren Buffet writes the Annual Letter to Shareholders for Berkshire Hathaway.

I think they are required reading for any business person. This is the rare chance to read what the Oracle of Omaha has to say on the year past.

Download here now.

Millionaire Mentions

Michael at Canadian Headhunter sums up the philosophies of three "How to Become Millionaire" experts.

If any of their teachings strucks a chord, here are said experts and their books:

Tom Stanley

• The Millionaire Next Door
• The Millionaire Mind
• Millionaire Women Next Door

Robert Kiyosaki

• Rich Dad, Poor Dad
• Rich Dad's Cashflow Quadrant
• Rich Dad's Guide to Investing
• Rich Dad's Rich Kid Smart Kid

David Bach

• The Automatic Millionaire
• Start Late, Finish Rich

[via businesspundit]

Your Apprentice Update

Well,