"The most important finance topics don't require details. Most can be, and should be, summarized in a sentence or two."
Dollar-cost average for your entire life and you'll beat almost everyone who doesn't
Every five to seven years, people forget that recessions occur every five to seven years
You're twice as biased as you think you are (four times if you disagree with that statement)
Read more books and fewer articles
Read more history and fewer forecasts
Be careful when reading about how stupid investors can be and not realize you're reading about yourself
Your circle of competence is probably 90% smaller than you think it is
Big risks will always be disregarded; small risks always blown out of proportion
When in doubt, choose the investment with the lowest fee
Emotional intelligence is more important than book intelligence
The more you learn about the economy, the more you realize you have no idea what's going on
Start saving for college before your kid is born, and start saving for your retirement before you graduate college. You'll feel silly when you start and like a genius when you finish
The most powerful way to grow your money is learning to live with less, since you have complete control over it
You have no obligation to have an opinion about anything
You have a strict obligation to not have an opinion about things you don't understand - see Munger's Law
You shouldn't feel strongly about any investment you haven't spent at least a week thinking about
Holding 60% of your assets in stocks and 40% in bonds isn't perfect for everyone; but I can think of a thousand worse strategies
Respect the role luck has played on some of your role models
Change your mind as often as the facts change
Ignore people who refuse to change theirs when the facts change
Read last year's market predictions and you'll never again take this year's predictions seriously
Two things you can do to make yourself a better investor are increase the amount of time you're investing for and the (intellectual) humility you put into your ideas
Just as you should dress appropriately for your age, you should spend appropriately for your income, and not a penny more
Warren Buffett has the best explanation of dumb risk-taking: "To make money they didn't have and didn't need, they risked what they did have and did need. And that's foolish. It is just plain foolish"
You can probably afford not to be a great investor -- you probably can't afford to be a bad one
You're twice as gullible as you think you are
Learn more from your bad investments than your good ones
Judge investors by the quality of their arguments, not the performance of their last trade
You can realistically afford probably half the home the mortgage broker approves you for
Admit when you are wrong
Imagine how much stuff you'd have to make up if you were forced to talk 24/7. Remember this when watching financial news on TV
There is, and always will be, more money to be made providing investment advice than receiving it
Assume the worst, hope for the best, accept reality
Save for your own retirement; assume Social Security and private pensions won't be around (even though they probably will)
Annuities: A product mixing the complexity of high finance with the sales tactics of used-car salesman has an entirely predictable outcome
During the last 100 years, there have been more 10% market pullbacks than Christmases. Everyone knows Christmas will come; think of volatility the same way
Don't attempt to keep up with the Joneses without realizing the Joneses aren't any happier than you are
Teach your kids about money before they're old enough to earn their own
Predictions, opinions, and forecasts should be discounted by the number of times the person making them is on TV each week
Not taking advantage of an employer match on your 401(k) is no different than declining a raise
Don't let Washington sway your investment decisions. Congress has been a dysfunctional swamp of disappointment since 1789, and stocks have done well ever since
To quote Larry Summers: "A good rule of thumb for many things in life holds that things take longer to happen than you think they will, and then happen faster than you thought they could."
Quit day trading, and donate your money to charity instead. Same financial result for you, and a better outcome for society
Most people's biggest expense is interest, which comes from living beyond your means, and buying things they think will impress others, which comes from insecurity. Avoid these two and you'll grow richer than most of your peers
Reaching for yield to increase your income is often like sticking your hands in a fire to warm them up -- good in theory, disastrous in practice
Your devotion to a political party or economic philosophy is directly proportional to your tendency to think irrationally about how politics affects your investments
There's a strong negative correlation between flaunting money and being rich
Investors were probably better informed 20 years ago when there was 90% less financial news
The proper financial mindset is to be scared enough to save for the short run and brave enough to invest for the long run
Projection is one of the most powerful forces, so be careful around those who tell you how honest and trustworthy they are
Money can bring happiness but it also brings complexity, and complexity can quickly lead to unhappiness
I have no interest in anything that’s not sustainable. The key to success in so many areas of life is endurance and longevity Source
Study others: "[Hamming] saw these undeniably great figures as human beings that had learned how to do something, and by studying them, he could learn it too." Study successes: "there are so many ways of being wrong and so few of being right, studying successes is more efficient, and furthermore when your turn comes you will know how to succeed rather than how to fail!" You need both education and training.:"Education is what, when, and why to do things. Training is how to do it. Either one without the other is not of much use. You need to know both what to do and how to do it." Have a vision: "The main difference between those who go far and those who do not is some people have a vision and the others do not and therefore can only react to the current events as they happen." Struggle is important: "A life without a struggle on your part to make yourself excellent is hardly a life worth living." Measure carefully: "The way you choose to measure things controls to a large extent what happens." "The instrument you use clearly affects what you see." "You get what you measure." Believe in your own ability: "Among the important properties to have is the belief you can do important things". "Confidence in yourself, then, is an essential property. Or, if you want to, you can call it “courage." Leave the door open: "I've observed repeatedly that later those with the closed doors, while working just as hard as others, seem to work on slightly the wrong problems, while those who have let their door stay open get less work done but tend to work on the right problems!" Source
Investment is most intelligent when it is most businesslike Successful investing is about managing risk, not avoiding it The intelligent investor is a realist who sells to optimists and buys from pessimists The investor’s chief problem – and even his worst enemy – is likely to be himself Never mingle your speculative and investment operations in the same account nor in any part of your thinking Thousands of people have tried, and the evidence is clear: The more you trade, the less you keep It should be remembered that a decline of 50% fully offsets a preceding advance of 100% The best way to measure your investing success is not by whether you’re beating the market but by whether you’ve put in place a financial plan and a behavioral discipline that are likely to get you where you want to go If fees consume more than 1% of your assets annually, you should probably shop for another adviser Before you invest, you must ensure that you have realistically assessed your probability of being right and how you will react to the consequences of being wrong
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