Post: #1

Some of this guy's e-books are available for free from his site (no log-in or registration required).

Below is a reading list from his site.

http://www.efficientfrontier.com/reading.htm

"Those of you who are seeking investing enlightenment are not going to find much of it on the Web. I suggest you log off, power down your computer, and read some books. Take your time. The months you spend perusing this list will be well spent. I'd recommend reading at least the first four books listed before even thinking of getting your hands dirty with real investing.

1. A Random Walk Down Wall Street, by Burton Malkiel, is an excellent investment primer. It explains the basics of stocks, bonds, and mutual funds, and will reinforce the efficient market concept.

2. Common Sense on Mutual Funds. Replaces Bogle on Mutual Funds, by who else, John Bogle. It provides as much detail as you could ever want about this important investment vehicle. Mr. Bogle is the founder and retired chairman of The Vanguard Group, and has been an important voice in the industry for decades. Beautifully written, opinionated, and highly recommended. (The book also demonstrates the democritization which has swept the investment industry in recent years. Until a decade ago the sort of sophisticated mutual fund analysis described in his book was the brief of just a handful of professionals with access to expensive proprietary databases and mainframe computers. Almost all of Bogle�s work was done with a subscription to Morningstar and a statistically competent assistant, and could have been performed by any small investor with similar software and ability.)

3. Global Investing, by Roger Ibbotson and Gary Brinson. This is a beautifully written volume on the history of investible assets. An informed investor cannot know enough about market history, and this is the best single source in this area. Want to know: what the returns for US stocks have been in each of the past 200 years? The price of gold for the past 500 years? Interest rates and inflation for the past 800 years? It�s all here. As implied by the title, the authors also provide an excellent perspective on the place of foreign assets in a diversified portfolio, and provide some worthwhile insights on portfolio theory and the efficiency of the marketplace.

4. What Has Worked in Investing is a free pamphlet from Tweedy, Browne. A low-key sales pitch for their funds, it is also the best compilation I've seen of the data supporting the value method.

5. The New Finance, the Case Against Efficient Markets, by Robert Haugen. If you�re intrigued by the Tweedy pamphlet and wonder why value investing still works after all these years, this is your book. The prose is breezy, even quirky�Ben Graham meets Hunter Thompson on bad acid.

6. Value Averaging, by Michael Edleson. An extremely useful how-to guide on deploying a lump sum of money among multiple assets. Finally back in print as a Wiley Classic Edition.

7. The Intelligent Investor, by Ben Graham. A popularized and more readable version of his earlier classic, Security Analysis, written with David Dodd. Although it has great relevance to the markets in general and should be read by any serious investor, it is particularly pertinent to those who feel compelled to buy individual stocks. Many of today�s most successful money managers obtained their original financial inspiration from these two books. It is always fun to look at excesses in the marketplace and ask, "What would Ben say about this?" This 2003 edition benefits from annotation by one of finance's most brilliant observers, Jason Zweig. (By the way, if you get bitten by the Graham bug and decide to do Security Analysis, make sure you read the original 1934 edition, recently reprinted by McGraw-Hill.)

8. Devil Take the Hindmost, by Edward Chancellor. You simply can't learn enough about market history, and Chancellor's story of boom and bust in the capital markets, beginning in the 17th century, is pure mind candy. Supersedes Mackay's Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds.

9. The Millionaire Next Door, by Thomas Stanley and William Danko. If you can't save, it doesn't matter if your name is Warren Buffett. If you think the road to happiness runs past a Beemer and a McMansion, this book will scare you straight.

10. Asset Allocation, by Roger Gibson, covers much of the same ground as my own books with more emphasis on the qualities of individual assets. For hard-core enthusiasts only; oriented towards the financial advisor.

Unless you're a glutton for punishment, you won't read all of these books. But however many you do, it's time for a treat: a small bon bon written in 1940 by a man named Fred Schwed called Where are the Customers' Yachts? That the most recent version from Wiley is graced with Forewords by both Micheal Lewis and Jason Zweig should tell you something; aside from being snort-out-your-nose funny, it is also both profound and prescient, full of observations about the financial markets that would not become generally accepted for a few more generations. You won't be sorry."

Post: #2

The E-book:

http://efficientfrontier.com/ef/0adhoc/2books.htm

"For years I've thought about an eleemosynary project to help today's young people invest for retirement because, frankly, there's still hope for them, unlike for most of their Boomer parents. All they'll have to do is to put away about 20% of their salaries into a low-cost target fund or a simple three-fund index allocation for 30 to 40 years. Which is pretty much the same as saying that if someone exercises and eats a lot less, he'll lose 30 pounds. Simple, but not easy.

Not easy because unless the millennials learn a small amount about finance, they'll fall victim to the Five Horsemen of Personal Finance Apocalypse: failure to save, ignorance of financial theory, unawareness of financial history, dysfunctional psychology, and the rapacity of the investment industry."

Post: #3

Good stuff. Bernstein is one of the few rational voices in the investing world. I've been using his strategies since 2003 and they've been working good so far.

Post: #4

I have been chasing money over pussy for years, money is number one then pussy second on the agenda.

I think some guys put pussy always first, and trust me when you are retiring you wanna be living a nice life and be able to fly round the world or live in the South of France, not in a housing project with no money nor car!

Pussy comes and goes, but money builds wealth and opportunities, especially for later on.

Just for the record I travel a hell of a lot and nearly all my lays are done in foreign countries, I gave up dating in the Western World when I got divorced and watched many a man lose even more assets through dating single mothers and gold diggers.

Post: #5

Good list. I suggest that everyone reads Think and Grow Rich.

Something discussed on this forum often is "how much money is enough?" This book will help answer that question. The answer is different for everybody, and which is why it is best to SEE the life you want to build for yourself and then quantify that lifestyle.

Post: #6

Just to add one of the easiest ways to get yourself financially sorted is to pay off your mortgage as quick as possible, the establishment want to keep you chained to a mortgage working for interest.

As you probably know when you borrow say $250K you pay back $500K over 25 years, imagine if you could lower that 25 years to say 10 or 15, well you can quite simply by making overpayments, this may not always be possible but with hard work and not wasting money this can be achieved, unless your ex took you for everything then it could take longer.

http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/mortgag...tor#result

Check out some sums here, you will be amazed even overpayment of $100 a month drops years off the end of the mortgage.

Without a mortgage, you are also free to rent your house and claim maximum rental income to allow travel at a later stage in life.