Investment Industry Claims Debunked: Smart Personal Finance Management for Ordinary Folks, Before and After Retirement - Paperback

by Robert P. Kurshan (Author)

This book is for people who want to know what to do with the money they save: so that it's there when they need it -- to buy a home, pay for college, etc. -- but also grows enough so they don't outlive it. The investment industry is fixated on the importance of maintaining a "balance" of stocks and bonds, shifting to more bonds as one ages. This book challenges this belief by arguing that what's actually important is to have just enough bonds and cash to support spending needs from a stable source, and to replenish these through the sale of stocks at propitious times when the stock market is not depressed. It features simple mathematical calculations, an explanation of basic financial objects like stocks, bonds, ladders, CDs, ETFs, or annuities, a discussion of how to evaluate financial risk, examinations of insurance, fraud deterrence, dollar cost averaging, benefits of a mortgage, risks of a pension, and general advice about healthcare.

Although the book is written to be accessible to those with little or no prior knowledge of finance, the studies and conclusions presented here benefit a multitude of financial investors.

Back Jacket

This book is for people who want to know what to do with the money they save: so that it's there when they need it -- to buy a home, pay for college, etc. -- but also grows enough so they don't outlive it. The investment industry is fixated on the importance of maintaining a "balance" of stocks and bonds, shifting to more bonds as one ages. This book challenges this belief by arguing that what's actually important is to have just enough bonds and cash to support spending needs from a stable source, and to replenish these through the sale of stocks at propitious times when the stock market is not depressed. It features simple mathematical calculations, an explanation of basic financial objects like stocks, bonds, ladders, CDs, ETFs, or annuities, a discussion of how to evaluate financial risk, examinations of insurance, fraud deterrence, dollar cost averaging, benefits of a mortgage, risks of a pension, and general advice about healthcare.

Although the book is written to beaccessible to those with little or no prior knowledge of finance, the studies and conclusions presented here benefit a multitude of financial investors.

Author Biography

Robert P. Kurshan was a Distinguished Member of Technical Staff in Math Research at Bell Laboratories Research, Murray Hill, NJ, (US) until his retirement in 2001. After that, he took a position as a Senior Fellow at Cadence Design Systems, retiring in 2015.

He worked at Bell Labs since receiving his Ph.D in mathematics in 1968, from the University of Washington (US) in homological algebra. He is author of over 80 technical publications, holds 27 patents in communications, digital filtering and verification, and is the author of the book Computer-Aided Verification of Coordinating Processes (Princeton Univ. Press, 1994), which is based on a course he gave at U. C. Berkeley. He has edited numerous other books. From 2005 through 2014, he was Editor-in-Chief of Springer's Formal Methods in System Design journal.