How to Start Investing

Investing can be a scary word, especially with the effects of the 2008 financial crisis still lingering in many people’s lives and memories. But no matter what your risk tolerance is there are tax-efficient ways to save for your life goals. Knowing the risks and potential rewards of various investment tools can help you sleep soundly at night. Whether you’re wondering what a diversified portfolio looks like, what an Individual Retirement Account (IRA) is and what type might be right for you, or even how to save more money no matter how much you currently earn, these books offer ways to start planning for the future.

The Only Investment Guide You’ll Ever Need (2016 edition) by Andrew P. Tobias: This guide has been helping people save and invest their money for forty years. It gives many tips on how to save additional money no matter how much you earn, contains sections on investing saved money while minimizing risk, has a concise but well-reasoned explanation of the stock market, and advice on family planning. Tobias covers many bases and answers FAQs for anyone who is just getting their feet wet in investing.

The Little Book of Common Sense Investing by John C. Bogle: Bogle is the founder of the Vanguard Group Inc., the first investment management company to offer index funds to individual investors. In this book, Bogle makes the case for why index funds offer the greatest return over the long term for your money. At just a hair over 200 pages, The Little Book offers valuable insight in a quick and easily digestible read.

A Random Walk Down Wall Street: The Time-tested Strategy for Successful Investing by Burton Gordon Malkiel: Considered by many to be a classic investment guide that explains the stock market in terms that the average person can understand. It journeys from an examination of stock market cycles and bubbles (some from recent memory and some many have never heard of) to strategies that the pros use before recommending a sound approach to investing that can work for anyone.

Money, Master the Game: 7 Simple Steps to Financial Freedom by Tony Robbins: In true Robbins form, this book is about more than just money. The well-known life coach comes at finance from the angle of helping the reader determine what financial freedom means to them and the various options for achieving that financial freedom. While this book does have a self-help style that you might expect from Robbins, with references to motivation and mindset, it is also very well researched and fact-based. As part of his research, Robbins interviewed 50 of the world’s financial experts, including icons such as Carl Icahn, Paul Tudor Jones, and Charles Schwab.

The Road to Wealth: A Comprehensive Guide to your Money by Suze Orman: This book covers everything the average person might do with their money, from paying off debts to home ownership, investing in stocks and bonds, insurance, and wills and trusts. Written in the typical straightforward and no nonsense style that made Orman famous, this book contains hundreds of answers to frequently asked questions that Orman has encountered in her financial seminars.

~posted by Di Z.