Picture yourself as clueless about the investment world looking for the best investment guide, a guide that could get you up to speed on investment basics and more with little effort on your part. If you don’t know stocks from bonds and mutual funds, I think you would agree that if you could find the right guide that it would be the best investment you could make. With so many books out there, how do you sort out the best guide, one that talks to YOU?
There is a world of difference between the best investment guide and a get-rich-quick book. Many popular publications on the subject of investing are timely in nature and are soon outdated or worse. For example, people who bought some of the popular real estate investment books written in the years leading up to the 2008 financial crisis were sorely mislead, and soon bankrupt if they followed the advice given. The best investment guide for most people focuses on investment basics and sound investment strategies that don’t change from year to year.
In sorting things out, a good way to get a handle on any non-fiction book is to leaf through the table of contents. Does the publication cover the subject areas of interest to you, in a sequence that seems to make sense and is easy to follow? Most people need an investment guide that starts at the beginning and assumes that the reader is a new student to the subject with little prior knowledge of the subject matter. Then it progresses step by step from the basics to investment strategies that work in any economic environment.
There is no reason in the world why learning needs to be boring or difficult. The best investment guide will keep the reader’s interest because it is written in a down-to-earth fashion in plain simple English that’s easy to understand. For example, bonds and the bond funds that invest in them are an investment alternative that most people should consider, but few understand. If this subject is introduced using a real-life example of one person lending money to another virtually anyone can relate to it and get the picture.
An investment guide written for people without a background in finance should first cover the basic financial characteristics common to all investments before getting into specific areas like stocks and bonds. Every investment in the world can be stripped down to its basics in terms of what it brings to the investor’s table. Deciding whether an opportunity is right for you is simple if you know how to compare its investment characteristics with your needs for liquidity, safety, profit potential, and other factors. With these basics covered, our best investment guide then turns its focus to the specific investment alternatives of interest to all average investors: like stocks, bonds and mutual funds.
At this point in the learning process the average person should have a handle on their investment options, and is ready to progress into investing concepts and investment strategies. After all, to succeed and make money as an investor you also need to know how to play the game. The world’s best investment guide, if you can sort it out from the others, is really a complete guide to investing for beginners that starts with investment basics and takes you all the way to the finish line.
A retired financial planner, James Leitz has an MBA (finance) and 35 years of investing experience. For 20 years he advised individual investors, working directly with them helping them to reach their financial goals.
Jim is the author of a complete investor guide, Invest Informed, designed for average investors or would-be investors of all levels of financial background and experience. To learn more about investments and investing and his new financial guide go to http://www.investinformed.com.
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