Discover the Wealth Within You: A Financial Plan For Creating a Rich and Fulfilling Life - Hardcover

Edelman, Ric

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0060008326 ISBN 13: 9780060008321

Publisher: Harper Business, 2002

Synopsis

Most people say they want money so they can buy a home, send children to college...and retire comfortably.

Those are fine goals. But, as Ric Edelman points out in this book, there is -- or rather, should be -- a lot more to life. Have your goals and dreams gotten lost in your daily struggle to earn a living and provide for your family?

Join Ric on a journey to self-discover. In Discover the Wealth Within You, he shows you how to choose fun, enriching...and rewarding goals and gives you a simple straightforward plan for achieving them.

You'll discover how easy it is to create wealth, once you set the right goals. After all, as Ric reveals in this book, all you need to become wealthy is to decide what you want to do with your money. With enticing, personal goals in place, you'll motivate, excite...and sustain yourself in your quest for wealth.

After using Ric's worksheet to help you set goals properly, you'll embark on a detailed exploration of personal investing, Ric reveals his formula for creating a plan to achieve your goals, build your financial future...and finance your dreams -- all through his unique, time-tested investing strategies.

By following Ric's plans and guidelines, you can achieve a healthy, balanced and richly rewarding life. Anyone can do it, he stresses, with the tools and techniques he provides. So, join Ric and discover the wealth within you.

About this title

About the Author

Ric Edelman is Barron's #1 independent financial advisor, the bestselling author of seven books on personal finance, and host of The Ric Edelman Show, heard on radio stations nationwide. Ric's firm, Edelman Financial Services, manages $5 billion in assets and has been helping people achieve financial success for twenty-five years.

Reviews

Personal finance specialist Edelman acknowledges up front that this is really two books in one. The first half aims squarely at readers of motivational self-help books, as the author exhorts readers to set exciting goals for themselves climbing mountains, collecting handbags that will inspire their quest for wealth. In the second half, he advises readers on investing in mutual funds, targeting his counsel toward those with at least some knowledge about the field. He attacks some common investing wisdom, particularly the value of Morningstar ratings and the advantages of index funds. Edelman painstakingly points out that he's criticizing the mutual fund industry's misuse of Morningstar ratings in advertisements, not the Chicago-based ratings agency itself. Fair enough, though his argument glosses over the point that ratings are helpful when used as one of many criteria to evaluate a fund. More troublingly, his dismissal of index funds stems from his premise that fees, including mutual fund loads, are the least important consideration in an investing decision. There is much good evidence to the contrary. Performance is unpredictable; fees aren't. Unlike his earlier blockbuster, Ordinary People, Extraordinary Wealth, Edelman's latest may strike a false chord with readers. On deadline, Edelman inserted some references to the terrorist attacks, apparently to compensate for the self-indulgent tone of the "goal statements" that clash with the newly sober national mood.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

The author of the best-selling Ordinary People, Extraordinary Wealth (2000) supplies a unique investment guide that focuses less on how to achieve wealth and more on the reasons for doing it. Following the lead of success-guru Anthony Robbins, Edelman uses a goal-oriented approach to help readers achieve what they really want in life. For instance, if your goal is to travel, Edelman lists popular destinations and has you write down two or three of your favorite vacation dream spots. He dedicates more than a quarter of the book to worksheets for stimulating life goals before getting into his version of financial planning, in which he compares investing to baking: boring, slow growth investments are like pound cake; and riskier, potentially higher rewarding investments are like cupcakes. His section on picking mutual funds dispels a lot of confusion and offers insight into how the Morningstar ratings system works. Wary investors can use this guide to get back into the kitchen and bake up some fresh cakes and pie charts. David Siegfried
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Discover the Wealth Within You

A Financial Plan for Creating a Rich and Fulfilling LifeBy Ric Edelman

HarperBusiness

Copyright © 2002 Ric Edelman
All right reserved.
ISBN: 9780060008321

Chapter One

Does the Cabbie Know
Where You Want to Go?

Have you ever gotten into a cab but refused to tell the driver where you want to go? Of course not. The whole point of hailing a cab is to have the driver help you get to your destination. You tell him your goal, and the cabbie both develops the plan for getting you there and implements it for you.

Financial planning operates the same way. Thus, if you don't have goals, the planning effort is as pointless as asking a cabbie to drive you around town, with no destination in mind.

I bet you can tell me what surveys reveal are the top three reasons people save money. They are:

• To buy a home

• To pay for college

• To afford a comfortable retirement

If you were to expand this list, you could add:

• wedding costs

• capital expenses, such as a car

• celebrations, such as a couple's 50th anniversary

• vacations

• major medical expenses

• elder care costs

• and, ultimately, leaving your money to your kids and/or other heirs.

Each of the above is a common reason why people save and invest. Each requires or constitutes a set of goals. And when combined, each fits into an overall financial plan.

But one thing bothers me about this entire list. And I imagine it bothers you, too. You know what the problem is?

Simple: The entire list is boring.

I mean, really boring. Yeah, I'll grow up. Buy a car. Get married. Have kids. Pay for college. Maybe foot the bill for a wedding or two. Retire. Wither away in some old-age home. Die.

And to make this even more fun, I'm supposed to pay some financial planner to tell me I can't afford it.

There's more to life than this, isn't there? Tell me there is! Please! Yes, there is much more to life than obligation and responsibility. There is also personal fulfillment and happiness. In fact, it's partly why our nation was founded.

In the Declaration of Independence, the founders of our nation recognized our right to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

The pursuit of happiness.

The document doesn't say anything about financial planning.

This is what makes the United States of America the greatest nation on earth. If anyone ever disputed that notion, no one has dared do so since September 11, 2001. On that day, our lives changed forever. At some point -- was it days? weeks? I can't remember -- I began wondering if this book's message would still be valid. So, I reread my manuscript, and discovered that you still need the message this book offers you, and that perhaps you need to hear this message even more so than before that horrible day.

That's because this book is all about setting and achieving goals. More than ever, you need to focus on your future. But as you read, you'll see that my emphasis on goal-setting is of a personal, and in many cases, materialistic nature. And in the aftermath of September 11, I suspect that many of us will have replaced many such goals with different, more fundamental ones. Where in the past goals might have pertained to beach houses, fancy cars and exotic vacations, people increasingly are considering goals that involve their communities, charities and families. All of this is healthy, and as you'll see as you read on, it is entirely consistent with my message.

Life is about the future. And our future is bright, thanks to the incredible foresight of our nation's founders. So, let's return to our nation's roots -- and begin our journey, a journey in the pursuit of happiness.

Continues...

Excerpted from Discover the Wealth Within Youby Ric Edelman Copyright © 2002 by Ric Edelman. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

Edition details

• Publisher: Harper Business
• Publication date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0060008326
• ISBN 13: 9780060008321
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 416