Unshakeable by Tony Robbins

내가 personal finance 관련으로 가장 큰 도움을 받았던 책이 두권 있다고 하면 하나는 Dave Ramsey 의 The Total Money Makeover 이고, 그 다음이 Tony Robbins 의 Money, Master the Game 이라고 할수 있다. 재정적으로 아주 어려운 상황에 있거나, 빚이 많아서 힘들어 하고 있는 사람들에게는 The Total Money Makeover 를 추천하는데, 개인적으로 investing 하는 부분에 있어선 Dave Ramsey 가 가르치는 내용을 선호하지 않는다. 단순하게 "4개의 종류의 mutual fund에 투자해라"라고 하고 financial advisor 를 고용하는걸 추천하는데, 그걸로만 봐서도 Dave Ramsey 는 "투자"쪽에서 전문가는 아니라고 생각해도 될것 같다. 두번째 추천하는 책이 Tony Robbins 의 책인데, 이 책을 읽으면 어떻게, 어디에 투자해야 하는지 튼튼한 기본기를 다질수 있을 것이다. 다만 Money, Master the Game 은 두께가 거의 성경책만하기 때문에 추천을 하는것도 조심스러워지고, 아무리 투자에 대해서 배우고 싶은 열정이 있다고 해도 섣불리 책을 시작하지는 못할수도 있다. 

 

다행히 Tony Robbins 가 거의 같은 내용을 짧게 정리한 책을 하나 더 출판했는데 그게 "Unshakeable" 이라는 책이다. 난 2018년말에 Money, Master the Game 을 읽었고, 2020년초에 Unshakeable 을 읽었는데, 최근에 다시 읽기 시작해서 거의 끝나가고 있는 상황이다. 다시 보니까 이 책이 얼마나 알차고 귀한지 더 깨닫게 된다.  내가 책을 읽고 서평이나 summary 같은걸 쓰는 건 잘 못하는데 이번에 다시 읽으면서 중요한 부분을 highlight 했다. 그 부분을 여기에 옮겨 적어놓으려고 한다. 언제든지 기억하고 싶을때 찾아볼수 있도록. 

 

Chapter 1

"one of the greatest lessons I've learned from these money masters is that you don't have to predict the future to win this game... you have to focus on what you can control, not what you can't."

 

"... much of that economic mayhem had been caused by the reckless ways of a small minority of bad actors on Wall Street."

 

Ray Dalio, Jack Bogle, Mary Callahan Erdoes, T. Boone Pickens, Carl Icahn, David Swensen, John Paulson, Warren Buffet

 

"Jack Bogle wrote, "This book will enlighten you and reinforce your understanding of how to master the money game and, in the long run, earn your financial freedom." Steve Forbes wrote, "If there were a Pulitzer Prize for investment books, this one would win, hands down.""

 

"the truth is that nobody - I repeat, nobody - can accurately predict with any consistency where the financial markets are headed."

"Most people who you think are providing unbiased financial "advice" are actually brokers, even if they prefer to go by other titles."

 

www.getasecondopinion.com

 

"one of the simplest yet most important rules is this: fees matter."

 

"One study showed that 96% of mutual funds failed to beat the market over a 15-year period.※  The result? You overpay for underperformance." (※ Industry expert Robert Arnott, founder of Research Affiliates)

 

"S&P 500 returned an average of 10.28% a year from 1985 to 2015."

 

"What are you really after? ... Is it really money you're chasing, or is it the feelings that you think money can create?"

 

Chapter 2

"The media perpetuates a myth that, if you're smart enough, you can predict the market's moves and avoid its downdrafts."

 

"Some of these folks may actually believe in their own powers of prediction; others are just slick salesmen."

 

"(Jack Bogle) said, "Sure it would be great to get out of the stock market at the high and back in at the low, but in 65 years in the business, I not only have never met anybody that knew how to do it, I've never met anybody who whad met anybody that knew how to do it... And Warren Buffet has said, "The only value of stock forecasters is to make fortune-tellers look good.""

 

"the US stock market typically rises over time because the economy expands as American companies become more profitable, as American workers become more efficient and productive, as the population grows, and as technology drives new innovation."

 

"In fact, every single bear market in US history has been followed by a bull market, without exception."

 

"the US market has a general upward bias.  It rises over the long term because the economy continues to grow."

 

Chapter 3

"Because the largest expense in your life is taxes, and paying more than you need to pay is insane - especially when it's absolutely avoidable!"

 

"Richard Bauer and Julie Dahlquist examined more than a million market-timing sequences from 1926 to 1999.  Their conclusion: just holding the market (via an index fund) outperformed more than 80% of market-timing strategies."

 

"(David Swensen) warns: "When you look at the results on an after-fee, after-tax basis, over reasonably long periods of time, there's almost no chance that you end up beating the index fund."

 

"(Robert Arnott) studied all 203 actively managed mutual funds with at least $100 million in assets, tracking their returns for the 15 years from 1984 through 1998.  And you know what he found? Only 8 of these 203 funds actually beat the S&P 500 index.  That's less than 4%! To put it another way, 96% of these actively managed funds failed to add any value at all over 15 years."

 

"But there's another problem that few anticipate: today's winners are almost always tomorrow's losers."

 

"Of the 248 mutual stock funds with five-star ratings at the start of the period, just four still kept that rank after 10 years."

 

"Mutual fund companies are notorious for opening lots of funds in hopes that a few of them might outperform."

 

"A frim will go out and start five incubation funds, and they will try and shoot the lights out with all five of them.  And, of course, they don't with four of them, but they do with one.  So they drop the other four and take public the one that did very well, with a great track record, and sell that track record."

 

""You're not going to beat the market," (Ray Dalio) told me. "Competing in the markets is more difficult than winning in the Olympics."

 

"Buffett says he's left instructions that, after his death, the money he leaves in trust for his wife should be invested in low-cost index funds."

 

Chapter 4

www.ShowMeTheFees.com

 

Chapter 5

"40% of Americans now use an advisor."

 

"60% of respondents "believe that financial advisors act in their companies' best interests rather than the consumers' best interests."

 

"about 90% of all financial advisors in America are brokers."

 

"the financial industry has lobbied hard to block these laws.  Why? Frankly, advisors and their employers would earn way less money if they could no longer stack the deck in their favor."

 

"1. First, check out the advisor's credentials. 2. Ideally, if you're using an advisor, you should be getting more than just someone to design your investment strategy.  3. Next, you want to make sure your advisor has experience in working with people just like you.  4. It's also important to make sure that you and your advisor are aligned philosophically.  5. Finally, it's important to find an advisor you can relate to on a personal level."