Personal Finance & Investing

This is a great book about a very simple strategy aimed at preserving wealth and making a reasonable inflation adjusted return. The strategy is very simple, but the detailed advice about how to implement it is very helpful. I found the arguments in favor of the strategy very compelling.

As an audiobook, it suffers in two respects. First, the book has a lot of tables, which the narrator just reads. Kind of mind-numbing. Second, the narrator is just not that good. His voice reminds me of Don Adams playing Maxwell Smart, for those of you old enough to remember.

Maybe better purchased for a Kindle or as a hard copy book.

This is a really interesting book on some specific approaches to value investing. It has a lot of practical information. The book is also relatively short and an entertaining listen -- well, for a book on this subject.

This is a really good book that absolutely nails some key things that investors should remember (but seldom do): Events are rarely unprecedented. People often over-react to the noise on CNBC and the other business media and fail to consider historical precedent. Over time, it has paid to invest in the market and it has not paid to jump in and out. The authors also point out the flaws in some commonly reported statistics.

If there is one thing that I question in the authors' analysis (and this would not surprise them), it is their nonchalance regarding debt. The debt that has exploded in the last three years is -- in my view anyway -- truly unprecedented, and the demographic trends we are facing (an aging population more dependent on government programs) does not bode well. The only reason the debt is remotely manageable are low interest rates caused by Fed manipulation -- something that cannot last forever. When those rates increase, debt service will become more and more problematic.

The authors would probably disagree, and, frankly, I hope they are right and I am wrong. Still, the overall message of the book that things tend to work out over time and that we somehow muddle through is encouraging and has been historically valid. Let's hope we do it again.