Wednesday, June 25, 2008

Financial Experts

I find it very interesting to compare advise from financial advisers.

Dave Ramsey
If you have $300,000+ of debt listen to me to get motivated and make the required sacrifices to get out of debt by selling the second car and getting a second job. "Out of debt" includes your mortgage. Then buy a mutual fund but keep it simple or you won't do anything.

Ric Edelman
Once you are out of debt get diversified with all available asset classes, stocks, bonds, ETFs, Index Funds, International funds, real estate, natural resources and cash; but stay away from evil 3% annual fee Mutual Funds.

Suzy Orman
Get out of debt and diversify for women. And once you are as rich as me, buy Munibonds.

Robert Kiyosaki
Nothing works but real estate investing and silver. The US dollar will never be worth anything again because US is going broke due to Social Security and Medicare.

Jeremy Siegel
Macroeconomics tells us to keep investing for the long-haul and I've created my own ETFs called Wisdomtree to help you get there. (Economist for Wharton.) Economists always will give you a reason as to why their earlier predictions were so wrong.

Larry Kudlow
Always optimistic about America no matter what!

Cramerica
Buy! Sell! Buy! Sell!

At the end of all of this, I find I like listening to all of them because they do help somebody. When I try to help people most tend to be strapped with debt, then they slowly move to buying a house and getting a few mutual funds with their retirement account. Emotions and bad ideas from the media will drive them in and out of bad investments with even worst timing.

Most people will hopefully be realistic about their financial life, get out of debt, eventually pay off their house and stick with Warren Buffett's "Buy one or two low cost Index funds" idea and they will probably be fine. Unfortunately most won't make it this far.

Amazingly most of this list of financial experts admit to having made extremely large financial mistakes. Experience is what they have to share. Perhaps the best thing to happen to you will be an extremely bad choice early in life.

Craig.