Since its central thesis is that whether you end up ahead of the market or behind the eight ball is almost entirely a matter of luck, you will not find this book highly commended by anyone who thinks that he or she knows anything at all about finance.

Not that this worries Kahneman particularly, because he believes – and he has a vast body of evidence in support of his belief – that nobody knows anything at all about finance anyway. If you want to pick a stock, or a bank, or a retirement plan, you should hire a chimpanzee and a dart board. They will, in the vast majority of cases, comfortably outperform anyone who might be considered a dispenser of “good” economic or financial advice.

As to history, it is written by the survivors. But these are not ipso facto better qualified to predict posterity; it’s just that the dead can’t.

Most people are willing to accept that they might have to spend a year or two, if not conisderably more, in full-time study to prepare for a career of 20-30 years or so (and more years after that education paying off their student loans).

Why the unwillingness to accept that it might take a few years of part-time study to learn enough to manage your investments in preparation for 15-35 years of retirement? If your eyes glaze over looking at investment options, start studying!

A basic macroeconomics class, a couple of accounting and finance classes, and some careful reading of a few good economics, finance and history books will put the average person with a decent high school education far ahead of the average retirement planner in understanding the forces that shape investing over the long run as well as the ability to read the financial statements that are available for most investments.

Anyone else feel like this blog is accelerating over the proverbial shark tank as we speak?

As #16 points out, with your system, it seems you’d be 100% in bonds at retirement (possibly with decades of life ahead of you from that point forward).

There’s nothing here about why your approach would be more effective than others, or any data about how well or poorly it’s worked compared to other approaches.

You also don’t mention risk tolerance or fees from one fund option to the next.

You are very capable of writing about many topics, but so far, investing does not appear to be among them.

Even though this person apparently delayed saving for retirement so he’s arguably relevant to the post, it seems classist to use a photo of a casually dressed person in a modest environment to illustrate the concept of a “simple” method to choose an investment plan. I’m not sure if the meaning is supposed to be that delaying saving for retirement could mean golden years spent drinking Busch beer in the garage, or if this guy ended up in the garage because there wasn’t a “simple” enough investment plan around to address the needs of folks who drink beer in the garage. In conjunction with the post, the photo (which may just be a guy relaxing the way he wants to) perpetuates the stereotypes discussed in the morning post.

Lock down? I guess that’s a combination of lock up and shut down?

If the man in the photo has regrets about investing, I would’ve liked to hear them from the man himself. Too much financial advice (especially about retirement) comes from people too young to know if their tips really do work in the long run. Hearing this gentleman’s perspective would’ve been a nice change of pace.

OR in my experience :

“handed a pile of papers and forms to fill out by the HR person performing the new employee orientation”

But if I was posing for a picture that was to be published on a website for thousands to look at, I could probably manage a smile. Or even if I was posing for a picture to be viewed only by close friends and family for that matter.

I would also probably request that I be shot from a more natural angle, but maybe this guy just really likes his right ear and wanted to make sure that it got the spotlight that it deserved.

It is a pretty great ear.