Name: The Safe Investor
Rating: 3.5 (2 reviews)
ISBN: 9781137279101

Tim McCarthy

Addresses concerns related to poor economic growth and contradictory advice to counsel reluctant investors on how to achieve safe, consistent and long-term returns, demonstrating seven strategies for creating a globally diverse portfolio that navigates risky markets. 40,000 first printing.

How to Make Your Money Grow in a Volatile Global Economy

The Safe Investor

Investing information is everywhere; there are blogs, newspapers, magazines, and cable TV shows all dedicated to helping individuals invest in smarter and more successful ways. Yet despite all the efforts to educate the public on investing, most people still feel uncomfortable with how they should actually invest their money. Recent predictions about slowing economic growth, historically low interest rates, and volatile markets have investors scratching their heads about what to do with their money. And more than ever, people are scared about whether they can grow their money enough to last through their lifetime. Expert investor Timothy McCarthy has spent the last 30 years in the US and overseas providing investment solutions to individuals and their advisors. He believes that understanding how to create a truly globally diverse portfolio while applying the magic of time will help all investors navigate risky markets. McCarthy also explores the fundamentals of picking and evaluating financial advisors for those who want to understand the principles of investing but not actually do the work themselves. McCarthy helps guide the reader along a straightforward path to investment success by telling engaging and actual stories to illustrate each of his seven lessons of successful investing. The Safe Investor will help even those readers with little interest or aptitude for finance to be comfortable in knowing what to do to manage their life investment plan and how to manage their own advisors.

Lance Willett

Skimmed this book using the Adler method (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_...) and found it useful but basic.

Summary: Your central goal is to be a safe investor, to build a portfolio that grows more than the savings rate without the risk of losing your money for your later years.

The 7 critical lessons of safe investing:
1. Diversify your assets (use all asset classes; that's more important than which funds)
2. Diversify your countries
3. Diversify time (start investing as soon as you can; trickle in/trickle out — patience!)
4. Keep the discipline: make no sudden moves in your long-term investments (30-40 year plan)
5. It's designed to be flexible
6. It's designed to allow mistakes
7. Do the due diligence; never risk a single point of failure.

Avoid false diversification where some hidden factor can affect your entire portfolio, such as only tech stocks.

Keep your emotions under control. Be educated without putting too much value on financial media hype.

Lesson of the 3 pockets:
1. Savings: rainy day fund, short-term expenses, parking place for money
2. Investing: grows more than savings, diversified across asset classes, countries, and time
3. Trading: used it for greedy, panicky emotions and for quickly moving money around. DO NOT TOUCH THE INVESTING POCKET.

I would recommend anyone interested in good investing strategies read this book, an maybe repeat it every few years to remember the lessons.

The Safe Investor How to Make Your Money Grow in a Volatile Global Economy

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