Little Book of Safe Money

JASON ZWEIG is the investing and personal finance columnist for the Wall Street Journal. Previously, he was a senior writer for Money magazine and a guest columnist for Time magazine and CNN.com. Before joining Money in 1995, Zweig was the mutual funds editor at Forbes. A frequent commentator on television and radio, Zweig is also a popular public speaker who has addressed the American Association of Individual Investors, the Aspen Institute, the CFA Institute, the Morningstar Investment Conference, and university audiences at Harvard, Stanford, and Oxford. He serves on the editorial boards of Financial History magazine and the Journal of Behavioral Finance. Zweig has a BA from Columbia College, where he was awarded a John Jay National Scholarship.

"A little book with big advice. Jason Zweig . . . doesn’t promise investors the moon, but in language that everyone can understand, he offers solid, common-sense steps to protect and improve their portfolios. . . Such advice is consistent with the bigidea of Zweig’s book: If an investment looks too good to be true, it probably is. And he offers a useful process to help readers remember it." —SmartMoney.com "There are very few in the financial media whose material I would consider recommended reading. Wall Street Journal columnist Jason Zweig is one of them, and his new book is one you should consider.  His latest work adds to his reputation for books that not only provide important insights into the winning investment strategy, but are also good reads. This little book is filled with sage counsel from which even sophisticated investors can benefit. . . His book also provides advice on how to avoid many of the behavioral mistakes investors keep repeating. As William Bernstein, who wrote the forward, put it: ‘Jason Zweig knows your financial demons, where they live, why they’re making your poor, and how you can beat them."—Larry Swedroe, CBS MoneyWatchThis book is a well written, fascinating page turner that I read in one sitting with a big bag of microwave popcorn. Yet, I don’t just recommend a book because it was thoroughly enjoyable. The main reason to read this book is that it can put you on the path toward reaching financial freedom. But it’s up to you and whether you’d rather spend your retirement years pursuing your interests, or spend them asking strangers if they’d like their value meal supersized.—Allan Roth, Founder of Wealth Logic, and author of How A Second Grader Beats Wall Street

• Foreword xvIntroduction xxiChapter One The Three Commandments 1Chapter Two Solid, Liquid, or Gas? 5Chapter Three You are an Egg 19Chapter Four Keeping Your Cash from Turning into Trash 31Chapter Five Guarantees are Not All They’re Cracked Up to Be 45Chapter Six Fixing Your Fixed Income 53Chapter Seven Stocks for the Wrong Run 67Chapter Eight Rules for Stock Investors to Live By 77Chapter Nine Little Things Mean a Lot 89Chapter Ten How to Get Your Kids through College without Going Broke 99Chapter Eleven What Makes Ultra ETFs Mega-Dangerous 107Chapter Twelve Hedge Fund Hooey 117Chapter Thirteen Commodity Claptrap 131Chapter Fourteen Spicy Food Does Not Equal Hot Returns 141Chapter Fifteen WACronyms: Why Initials are So Often the Beginning of the End 149Chapter Sixteen Sex 157Chapter Seventeen Mind Control 167Chapter Eighteen Financial Planning Fakery 183Chapter Nineteen Advice on Advice 189Chapter Twenty Fraudian Psychology 199Chapter Twenty-One The Terrible Tale of the Missing $10 Trillion 211Chapter Twenty-Two How to Talk Back to Market Baloney 219Acknowledgments 229