Plan Your Prosperity
In Plan Your Prosperity, Ken Fisher demonstrates how you can better prepare for retirement by planning ahead and being aware of investor pitfalls—including investing myths. The book supplies you with a firm foundation in sound investment and retirement planning principles—giving you a framework for better understanding your financial needs, setting your financial goals, and creating a workable plan for your lifelong prosperity. It provides key principles and easy-to-follow exercises to better understand your current financial profile and estimate future, inflation-adjusted cash flow needs. Plan Your Prosperity can help you invest smarter and plan better for retirement, whether you're in retirement, just getting ready to retire, or 5 to 40 years out.
The book looks at common investor traps and how they can be overcome—like picking an appropriate portfolio benchmark and starting to save as soon as possible.
Ken Fisher debunks the idea that retirement planning is only appropriate at certain times, asserting instead that retirement planning is essentially the same as financial planning.
The book covers a bunch of other common pitfalls, like: believing volatility is the only risk that matters, relying on high-dividend stocks only for retirement cash flow, having unrealistic expectations, and more.
It covers the main concepts you should consider when crafting your retirement investing plan—these include careful consideration of your time horizons, return expectations, cash flow needs, your current financial situation and any other circumstances unique to you.
The book includes easy-to-follow steps like:
How to better figure how much income you need
How to determine if a portfolio can provide that income
How to figure how much to save each year to achieve retirement goals
What pitfalls to avoid
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1: What? Me? Retire?
The Imagined Dichotomy
Two Goals … and Some Non-Goals
Definitions and a Pencil
Start Immediately. Now. Right Away
Chapter 2: My Goals Are … What?
Why Is This So Hard?
Your Investing Goals, Simply
Inflation’s Insidious Impact
Three Percent, Compounded
Chapter 3: The Secret Code—Asset Allocation or Benchmark?
Benchmark—A Road Map and Measuring Stick
Picking a Benchmark
The Big Decision—Asset Allocation
Potential Pitfall: Age Doesn’t Equal Asset Allocation
Benchmark Versus Asset Allocation—What’s the Difference?
Chapter 4: Time Horizon—Longer Than You Think
Chapter 5: What’s in a Return?
Growth Defined
The Past as a Guide?
Gordon Moore and Endless Innovation
Potential Pitfall: Unrealistic Expectations
Chapter 6: Getting That Cash Flow
Potential Pitfall—The All High-Dividend Portfolio
How Much Do You Need?
Monte Carlo—Not Just a Casino
Let’s Get Bootstrapping
Chapter 7: Can I Get There?
How Much Do You Have?
A Savings Plan
Chapter 8: Putting It All Together
To Benchmark or Not to Benchmark
State Your Goals
Know Where You Are
Picking an Appropriate Benchmark
Finding Professional Help
Avoid Being a Fraud Victim
And You’re Off!
Appendix A: All Hail the Mighty Dow
Appendix B: Cash Flow Versus Expenses
Appendix C: Expense Categories
Appendix D: Personal Balance Sheet
Notes
About the Authors