Rate this book

Pound Foolish: Exposing The Dark Side Of The Personal Finance Industry (2012)

by Helaine Olen(Favorite Author)

3.65 of 5 Votes: 5

ISBN

1591844894 (ISBN13: 9781591844891)

languge

English

genre

Nonfiction

publisher

Portfolio Hardcover

review 1: I found this book after watching the PBS Frontline documentary on the Retirement Crisis, where the author is interviewed. I did enjoy this book, although there were a few chapters that were more interesting than others (Suze Orman, Dave Ramsey). Not everyone will love this "heavy on the financial facts" approach. A few facts I agreed with:For those saving between 1999-2009, the average return of the stock market for this period was -.5%. Most people don't realize the US had their own "lost decade", but for those of us in our prime savings years, it was extremely hard to not see any traction on retirement savings and we lost 10 years of compounding power which we can't recover. The retirement crisis is real and it is looming over the current and future generations. Th... moree disappearance of pensions and the selling of 401Ks as a magic bullet for everyone to have enough for retirement is a tragedy. The average middle and even upper middle class simply cannot save enough in these type of retirement accounts to provide for a comfortable retirement at age 65. The math simply doesn't work: meager to average savings, plus lower returns on the market, offset by inflation, does not equal enough to pay for retiree healthcare costs, let alone retirement.This book also touches on the selling of real estate investments as another "magic bullet" to generate an abundant retirement income (think "Rich Dad" books), and the danger of using debt when the real estate market tanks (think 2009).The bottom line is: don't buy investments you don't understand (stay far away from annuities), go ahead and plan to work for a really long time, and most importantly, financial stuff is not that complicated and you need to educate yourself and make wise choices so you won't get conned by "advisors" who make their money off commissions and fees, which reduce your hard earned nest egg.
review 2: An interesting look into the financial services industry and the vast amounts of hooey they peddle in order to drum up business. They are not the first industry (nor likely the last) to create perceived demand in order to gain customers, but we're dealing with an industry that pretty much delighted at the destruction of the pension. The content of the book was incredibly depressing but the book itself was informative, well-written, and read fairly easy to understand. As someone who knows very little about stocks and related products, there was not much jargon and could be followed most of the time. Some sections seemed to repeat the same broad point and those dragged the book on and made me start skimming (which is how I normally read non-fiction).Definitely recommended. less

Download links for: Pound Foolish: Exposing the Dark Side of the Personal Finance Industry

Advertising