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Your Money Milestones: A Guide to Making the 9 Most Important Financial Decisions of Your Life

✍ Scribed by Moshe A. Milevsky


Publisher
Financial Times/ Prentice Hall
Year
2010
Tongue
English
Leaves
225
Category
Library

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✦ Synopsis


A Whole New Way to Look at Your Money…and Make It Grow!

 

“Here is a lively new guide that offers fresh and actionable ways to approach everyday financial problems. Whether you’re rich or just getting by, starting your career or winding down, you’ll benefit from the author’s insightful observations and suggestions―all delivered with warmth and wit.”

―Evan Cooper, Deputy Editor, InvestmentNews

 

“The author’s unique gift is to make complex ideas from the world of high finance simple to understand, and his new book gently coaches readers in how to think about their personal finances. Best of all, readers can use Milevsky’s financial calculators online to test these ideas, so they can make choices with confidence. Investing in this book might be the wisest financial decision you make this year.”

―Gil Weinreich, Editor, Research Magazine

 

“The author has accomplished the near impossible. He has made the complicated, confusing, and often contradictory world of personal financial planning easy to understand. More importantly, he’s made it easy to act on his ground-breaking advice and guidance and has made it easy for readers to address their most important financial decisions in a thoughtful, practical, and painless manner.”

― Robert Powell, Editor, Retirement Weekly and Retirement Columnist, www.MarketWatch.com/retirement

 

“What are the nine crucial financial decisions every person must make over the course of a lifetime? If you don’t know, read this book. The author’s nine choices revolve around his core concept of human capital and how it must be gradually converted to financial capital to achieve a successful retirement.”

―Jonathan Chevreau, National Post Columnist and Author of Findependence Day

 

Your Money Milestones helps just about anyone see life’s most important money decisions in a fresh and completely rational light. If you want a smart, practical roadmap to a financially sound future, you need this book.”

―Eric Schurenberg, Editor-in-Chief, BNET

 

Your Money Milestones illustrates how four principles inspired by basic arithmetic can be applied to manage the most important financial decisions (money milestones) people face over their entire financial lifecycles.


  • Addition: Identify the true value all of your financial resources.
  • Subtraction: Budget for the hidden liabilities in your future.
  • Division: Spend your total resources evenly over time.
  • Multiplication: Prepare for many alternative and unexpected universes.


This book offers a complete framework for thinking about money that’s every bit as provocative as Freakonomics. Drawing on the newest research into psychology and personal finance, Milevsky helps you identify the true value all of your resources; budget for hidden liabilities in your future; plan to spend your total resources smoothly over time; and prepare for unexpected events that could upend even the most careful planning. You’ll discover why children are short-term investment liabilities but may be long-term pension assets, why winning the lottery may increase your chances of going bankrupt, and why giving up control of your retirement nest egg might actually make you happier. The insights are fascinating and useful throughout your life whether you're deciding what to study, contemplating your first home purchase, deciding whether to keep contributing to your 401(k), or considering when and whether to retire.

✦ Table of Contents


Cover
Contents
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Prologue: Financial Deicide
Introduction: Human Capital: Your Greatest Asset
Is That Glass Half-Empty or Half-Full? Valuing Human Capital
Mark Yourself to Market
Is This a Cynic’s Value or True Worth?
An Appreciation That Grows with Age
The Nine Milestones
Money Milestones over Your Lifetime
Summary
Chapter 1: Is the Long-Term Value of an Education Worth the Short-Term Cost?
Investing in a Gold Mine...Called Anastasia
Should We Allow Human Capital Derivatives?
Securitizing Human Capital
Are College Graduates Truly Wealthier?
The Best-Paying Careers?
Minor Initial Differences Magnify over Time
How Investing in Human Capital Pays
Human Capital Investments over Time
College Grads Learn to Buy Different Assets
Could the Fortunes of College Graduates Wane?
Does the Ivy League Pay Greater Dividends?
Distinct Groups of Students—And “Fun Capital”
Did Anastasia Accept the Offer?
Summary
Chapter 2: What Is the Point of Saving Money Forever?
The 25-to-25 Jackpot: What Would You Do?
Guiding Principle: Smoothing Consumption
How Does Income Smoothing (Long Division) Work in Practice?
Advice That Goes Against the Grain—but Smoothes?
We Are Not Mr. Spock in Star Trek
Do People Who Win the Lottery Behave Rationally?
The Perils of Not Smoothing
The Smoothest Population of All
Where Does All of This Leave Us?
Summary
Chapter 3: How Much Debt Is Too Much and How Much Is Too Little?
Americans Have Diverse Debts
These Eggs Belong in One Basket
Optimal Debt Management Strategies Across Space and Time
Liability Silos Compared
Bottom Line: Debt Diversification Destroys Value
Should You Borrow from Yourself?
The Borrowing Sweet Spot: Age 53
Oh, and Being Slim Can Help as Well
Debt Literacy as Distinct from General Financial Literacy
Concluding Thoughts: Is Debt Soothing or Smoothing?
Summary
Chapter 4: Are Kids Investments and Can Marriages Diversify?
Children: Explicit Liabilities, Hidden Assets
Inducing More Children
Children as Pensions—And a General’s Revenge
Thwarted by Good Intentions
Is Marriage a Safe Investment on the Balance Sheet?
Two Plus Two Equals a Very Safe Four
Fiscally Fatal Attractions
Birds of a Feather May Not Flock Together
Summary
Chapter 5: Government Tax Authorities: Partners, Adversaries, or Bazaar Merchants?
How Do Taxpayers Behave if “Big Brother” Is Watching?
Treat Your Tax Filing Like a Trip to the Bazaar
Tax Authorities as Lifetime Partners in Your Business
Tax Lessons from Uruguay (a Beautiful Little Country in South America)
Another Puzzle: People Prefer Big Tax Refunds
The After-Tax Return Matters
Reversals of Fortune
Bottom Line: Get Tax Savvy
Summary
Chapter 6: Can You Eat Your House or Will It Ever Pay Dividends?
Floating Debt Obligations and Sinking Values
Back to the Holistic Balance Sheet
My Strong Bias: Many Homeowners Should Have Rented
Housing over Time: A Human Capital Approach
The Missing Factor: Housing and Social Capital
Investing in Social Capital
Summary
Chapter 7: Insurance Salesmen and Warranty Peddlers: Are They Smooth Enough?
Insurance from Babylonia to Today
Insurance Purchases: Another Form of Smoothing
Life Insurance as a Hedge for Your Human Capital: When Young
Life Annuities as a Hedge for Your Financial Capital: When Old
What and When Do People Actually Insure?
Create Your Own Insurance Company: The “Small Risk Fund”
Behavioral Economics in Practice
Summary
Chapter 8: Portfolio Construction: What Asset Class Do You Belong To?
What Went Wrong?
Are You a Stock or a Bond or Something in Between?
How Does Your Allocation Measure Up?
Avoiding Robert’s Outcome
Human Capital Impacts Financial Capital Well Before Your First Job
Can You Take Diversification Smoothing Too Far?
History of Ideas: Credit, Where It’s Due
What About the Rest of Us? Back to Human Capital
Summary
Chapter 9: Retirement: When Is It Time to Shutter the Well and Close the Mine?
Why Are Pensions So Important?
Pensions Are a Dying Breed
Retirees with Pension Annuity Income Are Happier
Florida’s Elderly, Pension Choices, and My Brush with Bush
Investment Plans Versus Pension Plans—What Would You Choose?
Do Retirees Smoothly Transition into Retirement?
Don’t Count on Pennies from Heaven to Smooth Your Retirement Ride
Is It Better to Get a Lump Sum? The Military View
Taking Their Lumps
Women and Annuities
Final Recommendations: Get a Pension, from Somewhere
Summary
Conclusion: Four Principles to Guide All Financial Decisions and Money Milestones
Create a Decision-Making Process for All Money Milestones
The Perfect Job for Me!
References
Index
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J–K
L
M
N
O
P
Q–R
S
T
U
V
W–Z


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