Investing for a Lifetime: Managing Wealth for the "New Normal"

"Investing for a Lifetime is packed not only with solid financial advice, but also vivid examples drawn from recent market history. This is the book that investors need to read as they reassess their finances after a tumultuous decade and a half for the stock and real-estate markets."
—Jonathan Clements, author of The Little Book of Main Street Money and columnist for The Wall Street Journal Sunday

Investing for a Lifetime
saving, investing, and spending

• Investing starts with savings. A "savings goal" tells an investor how much must be saved by the time of retirement.
• How do investors reach these goals? By setting a rate of savings high enough to accumulate the required wealth by the time of retirement.
• Investing itself is much easier than saving, although investing has many pitfalls for the unwary. The two largest challenges for investors are to choose the right portfolio to begin with and to stick with investment strategies when markets tumble.
• Trying to fund retirement from investment income alone may lead to portfolios that are too risky for a retiree in this low interest rate environment. It's better to base spending on investment returns, not just on the income from investments, and to choose diversified portfolios of stocks as well as bonds to fund retirement.
• A "New Normal" may mean that stock returns in the future will fall short because of slower growth in the industrial world. A New Normal may also mean that bond returns will fall short as the thirty year bull market for bonds finally comes to an end.
• A New Normal with lower investment returns may make saving, investing, and spending that much more challenging. Younger investors may find that they have to save more than their parents did and older investors may find that their plans for retirement fall short of their hopes.
• Investing for a Lifetime addresses all of these issues.