Worry-Free Investing: A Safe Approach to Achieving Your Lifetime Financial Goals

by Ian Sykes and Zvi Bodie

Book Overview

An indispensable guide to safe investing: how to have the money available when you absolutely, positively need it This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0130499277
• ISBN13: 9780130499271
• Release Date: January 2003
• Publisher: FT Press
• Length: 272 Pages
• Weight: 1.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.3" x 9.4"

Customer Reviews

good advise for safe investing

The bottom line, the stock market is intrisically unpredictable and we are not saving enough. He makes a strong case for diminshing reliance on the stock market. He also has a great chapter on inflation that makes a strong case for I bonds and TIPS. The key issue is can we save enough money beginning at an early age to generate a large enough account to supplement social security. Bodie goes through specific examples and offers an on line calculator to help figure out what you need. I thought the formulas in the book were too complicated for the average person to use, but you can bypass them and go to the easy to plug in online calculator at [...] . Bodie suggests a way to invest safely. As of Sept 2009 I-bonds and TIPS are paying 0% interest. The US government Bond site lists the inflation rate at a -5%. However the principal is safe and will not go down. The interest rates change every 6 months. E bonds are paying 1.5% and are based on 5 year treasury notes. The book forced me to diminsh my holdings of stock and that has given me more comfort. This is a must read for any serious investor.

Good advice but the book smells (literally!)

Zvi's advice on investing in a manner in which to improve your results and how to wake up to the risks we don't think about is well taken. As a companion to "Spend 'Till the End" it gives you a solid basis to protect future investment earnings from markets that are disturbing all of us at this time. The book arrived in perfect condition other than smelling very musty - as if it had been stored near water for some time. I literally had to air it out in the sun to reduce the smell before reading. Never had this before.

Excellent book

Everyone interested in investment should read this book

Living on the Rue de Facile.... Easy Street

As a 64 year old entrepreneur, having had a used book store, an art gallery, and small press, I have been very cocky, some would say arrogant, in my investment habits, aided and abetted by my subscription for ten years to the Wall Street Journal, and my Friday night standing date with Louis Ruykeyser, and a bowl of popcorn. I thought I would be living on the Rue de Facile, Easy Street to non-French majors. However, I watched my margin account go from a few hundred thousand, to a miserly 45,000. in two years. The roller coaster at Nantasket Beach was the last time I had that sinking feeling, back in l956. I am now reading this book by Svi Bodie and Michael Clowes and wishing I had had the intestinal fortitude to sell off and buy TIPS in April of 2001. The sketches of families at three different life stages and the fairly simple formulae (or equations) to help the amateur financial planner like me, to get a grip, all help me to feel more sanguine about the next 20 years of thrifty and practical retirement living.

Brilliant, important, imperfect

Investment authorities have long recommended diversified portfolios of stocks, bonds, and cash as the best way for investors to pursue their financial goals without courting too much risk. In *Worry-Free Investing*, Zvi Bodie and Michael Clowes cast a gauntlet before this conventional wisdom. Most investors, they argue, should forget about traditional asset classes--especially stocks--and should abandon traditional approaches to risk management, like building a diversified portfolio and gradually decreasing its allocations to risky assets over time. Those saving for retirement or for a child's college education should instead invest in "risk-free" assets, such as inflation-protected bonds and annuities, and certificates of deposit with yields indexed to the cost of college tuition. By relying exclusively on such instruments, the authors contend, investors will never risk losing their nest eggs (as they would with stocks), will ensure that their purchasing power never diminishes (as it might with bonds or cash), will stand a much better chance of achieving their financial goals, and will sleep soundly at night. They will become, as the title promises, "worry-free."While Bodie has been making his case in academic journals for several years, this book marks his first attempt to reach the masses. To both authors' credit, their manifesto is remarkably accessible--much more so than most investment books aimed at a popular readership. The language is grammar-school simple, and important lessons about risk are presented not just in dull graphs and statistics, but through poignant personal stories: of the hardworking couple in their sixties, whose dreams of a comfortable retirement are shattered when an unexpected market correction teaches them that stocks are not "safe" in the long run; of the thrifty saver who spends her working years scraping together a nest egg, and her retirement in equally joyless frugality because she's afraid of outliving her assets; of the brilliant student who's been admitted to Stanford, but whose bear-mauled college fund can only support an enrollment at Penn State. Readers who have never been moved by impersonal tales of compound returns and standard deviations may find the human tragedies here more compelling (if they can agree with the authors that it's tragic to have to attend Penn State), and thus may come away from the book strongly motivated to develop sound financial plans. But others may find the authors' rhetoric patronizing, emotionally exploitative, and tendentious, particularly since many of their anecdotes are simply tales of greed, and not exempla of the conventional investment wisdom (what financial advisor would recommend a portfolio heavy with stocks to a couple two years from retirement, or to a parent whose child is already applying to college?).Manipulative rhetoric aside, there is no doubt but that Bodie is brilliant, nor that his ideas deserve the careful consideration of every serious investor. Followi