cover image 25 Myths You've Got to Avoid--If You Want to Manage Your Money Right: The New Rules for Financial Success

25 Myths You've Got to Avoid--If You Want to Manage Your Money Right: The New Rules for Financial Success

Jonathan Clements. Simon & Schuster, $23 (240pp) ISBN 978-0-684-83982-0

In a lively and entertaining style, Wall Street Journal columnist Clements sweeps aside long-standing conventional wisdom on personal finance--a good job brings a good pension, stocks are risky, buy bonds to feel safe, etc.--and offers practical guidance for today's world of downsizing businesses, stock-market opportunity and four-year college tuitions priced at $100,000. He comes down hard on the stock-bond ""balanced portfolio"" concept, full-service brokers (they're basically salesmen, he maintains) and a home as ""best investment"" (thanks only to inflation). This is a complete financial education for the consumer, a penetrating and intense analysis of investment instruments. Clements is refreshingly candid about the value of his advice: ""Even if you employ these strategies, you won't have it all."" His book isn't for readers looking for an investment blueprint. It's for readers looking to educate themselves so that they can spend a lot of time thinking about their money and making their own decisions. (Feb.)