Bogleheads’ Series, Introduction at Catch a Gideon

October 29th, 2006 by digerati

I just purchased the book The Bogleheads’ Guide to Investing. It looks like a great investment book so I’m going to share it with you. I’ll post a my thoughts and what I get out of each chapter as I read it. There are… several chapters, so it will take a few weeks to get through the entire book.

Here’s my writeup of the introduction to get us started:

Introduction

Despite the cover, a Boglehead is apparently not a bobble head, though I’m sure many Boglehead’s also ride around in cars (probably in the seats though…). A Boglehead is someone who follows the philosophy and strategy of investing advocated by Jack Bogle, the founder of Vanguard group.

They have “the world’s best investment forum” at Diehard.org. It is so incredible that I can’t get to it, but try later it has a lot of traffic.

The Guide (as I’ll call it frequently) enables you to become a better investor and manager of your own finances. Sounds kind of like my site, no? Here’s what the book is supposed to teach me:

How to get on a sound financial footing before you start investing
What the various types of investments actually are
How to protect your investments against the ravages of inflation
How to determine how much you need to save
Steps to building a simple but effective investment portfolio
Excellent ways to save for college
How to not let a windfall slip through your fingers
How to decide if you need a financial advisor, and how to choose on if you do
How to determine when to rebalance your portfolio and how to do it
How to identify and tune out the noise from Wall Street and the media that’s designed to benefit them and not you
How investor’s emotions can be their own worst enemy, and how to keep them from ruining your nest egg
Steps to take to prevent financial catastrophes
How to live a comfortable retirement without running out of money (sandles anyone?)
How to pass assets on effeciently to your heirs
How to keep your investing style simple, giving you more time to live your life to the fullest.

The authors (Taylor Larimore, Mel Lindauer, and Michael LeBoeuf) say they’ve got no hidden agenda (besides selling the book I suppose, though if you’re reading it they already did that). Overall it looks like a great summary to investing and should be able to teach someone the basics as well as the terms and how to find someone who can answer questions in more detail.

So buy the book and follow along. Or read about it and then buy the book…