And You’re Off!

This is only the very start of your journey. I hope you use what you’ve read here to better guide you to an appropriate benchmark for your retirement investing plan.

Investing is very difficult. If it weren’t, there’d be no need for this book, any of the others I’ve written or any of the thousands more written over the years by others. The industry wouldn’t have spawned countless products, myriad sales and service people and firms globally that exist solely (or primarily) to service and advise investors. It’d be like falling off a bike. Anyone could do it, and they would, and we’d probably all be much wealthier.

And even if you have a good plan and an appropriate strategy, it’s still not easy. Our brains weren’t set up to do this well. We’re plagued constantly by conflicting cognitive errors. If you find investing difficult, you’re normal. If you find it easy, you’re kidding yourself. If you can acknowledge investing is hard and counterintuitive and a lifelong battle, you likely have a bit of a leg up over your peers.

But that’s why you need a plan. And the earlier you establish one, the better off you can be. Create a good plan and select an appropriate benchmark—and then invest using that benchmark as a road map—and you remove one major uncertainty from investing. You won’t be stabbing in the dark collecting a variety of products and hoping the mix all turns out ok in the end.

So good luck, and enjoy the journey to your prosperity.

Get Plan Your Prosperity: The Only Retirement Guide You'll Ever Need, Starting Now--Whether You're 22, 52 or 82 now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.