
Title : Wall Street on a Shoestring: Financial Success for Just Five Dollars a Day
Author : Clare La Plante
Rating : 4 Stars out of 5.
Summary : FINALLY, a book for now-small, future-big investors!
Clare's crystal-clear writing style helps the novice investor make sense of it all. A way to START NOW, with pocket change. Great book!

Title : Grown-up's Guide to Running Away from Home
Author : Rosanne Knorr
Rating : 5 Stars out of 5.
Summary : Solid, Nuts-and-Bolts Advice for Adults
Filled with practical advice covering both the philosophical ("Don't you love your country?" objections) and the practical (a recommended cat carrier), Knorr breaks a complicated, life-changing idea into specific, do-able tasks. Anyone who has thought about living overseas for months or years must read this book.
Beginning with a personality assessment for the would-be expatriate, Knorr guides the reader through a step-by-step analysis of moving overseas. As the title implies, this is a book for adults who may be encumbered with houses, aging parents, life-long living patterns and other apparent obstacles to making a major life change.
Knorr's cautious approach and practical information are designed to produce either a successful sojourn overseas or the avoidance of what might turn out to be an impulsive mistake.

Title : A Peaceful Retirement: Complete Unabridged
Author : Miss" "Read
Rating : 5 Stars out of 5.
Summary : A lovely and entertaining read, a book to get lost in.
Miss Read, again manages to captivate the feelings of those who to are approaching retirement; and also of those who aren't. Her characters are all someone you know in your own life. Always feeling that they could be so and so. I always felt as if I was included in the story, like I was a friend. I'm an avid reader of her books but it seems this is the last one? She puts such warmth and feeling into this book it spills out from every page. It is obvious that her friends are as devoted to her as she is to them whatever happens. The frequent requests of marriage from John Jenkins are bittersweet and has nearly succumb once or twice. Her lifelong friend Amy, trying so hard to matchmake over the years, tries not to let John Jenkins slip through Miss Reads' fingers but alas fails again. She gets great support from Henry Mawne, who has also been a suitor in the past but Miss Read also gently refused him. She looks forward to retirement with joy and some trepidation, however handles the situation very well. I hope there will be more stories from her in the not to distant future.

Title : You've Earned It, Don't Lose It: Mistakes You Can't Afford to Make When You Retire
Author : Suze Orman
Rating : 5 Stars out of 5.
Summary : Every woman's book on pitfalls in planning: Read this FIRST!
I grabbed this book on impulse, knowing that I have a bad track record with money management subjects. I thought it would be laying around gathering dust for awhile...
Was I surprised when I started reading the first page and then plowed right through it in 1-1/2 nights! So easy to read and understand. (The Wall St. Journal series, with all their glitzy colored pictures couldn't do what Suze did with her real-life stories as examples.) Maybe it's the woman's touch, but she got through to me. The whole picture of retirement issues and planning became clear.
I highly recommend this as a first book for financial planning -- it's NOT JUST ABOUT RETIREMENT, it's more about protecting women by arming them with vital information... every woman should READ THIS BOOK BEFORE MAKING ANOTHER DECISION involving money (or before someone makes one for her).

Title : How to Retire Rich
Author : James O'Shaughnessy
Rating : 5 Stars out of 5.
Summary : A Nobel Prize for O'Shaughnessy!
The main message of _How to Retire Rich_ is that if you want to retire rich, or retire at all for that matter (ever!), you must invest in the stock market. You just don't have a choice in the matter. Sit down and let James O'Shaughnessy take you through the math---you'll quickly see that that is just the financial reality. The good news, however, is that investing in the stock market, when done properly, is not what you think it is. It's not about outsmarting all the other investors out there. It's not about trying to get a 'ten-bagger' so you can buy a cool car and brag at parties. It's not even about shrewd business savvy and scanning financial reports. It's about picking an effective strategy and sticking with it year in, year out until the day you retire, never pulling your money out of the market.
But if that sounds hard, don't worry. One of HTRR's strongest points is the wealth of wisdom it provides on the mental aspects of investing over the long term. What do you do if your portfolio tanks? What do you do if it soars? This is a problem? You'd be surprised! O'Shaughnessy is probably the only author with a completely rounded, mature outlook on the emotional aspects of investing. Reading HTRR will give you the confidence you need to invest and stay in the market through good times and bad.
So how do you invest? O'Shaughnessy breaks it all down for you, telling you exactly what to do. We're not talking the usual vague, feelgood accepted wisdom here such as 'buy market leaders' or 'buy on weakness, sell on strength'. Throw all those books in the trash! HTRR will tell you how to quickly find the precise stocks you should buy. You'll finish the book at 2 o'clock and have a list of the stocks to buy in your hand at 2:30. Yes, it's just that easy. You'll also know exactly when to buy them (now) and when to sell them (a year from now), and what do after that (repeat the process until you retire). What could be simpler?
O'Shaughnessy should be nominated for a Nobel Prize. He is a modern-day Charles Darwin with a theory that has all the hallmarks of a revolution in scientific thought. The theory is simple, but deceptively so. Many readers come away thinking they have understood it, only to later demonstrate that they clearly haven't. Even Motley Fool was apparently unable to grasp Reasonable Runaways (one of the strategies in HTRR). They tried to test it with a universe of stocks picked from Value Line (!). When it wasn't performing well after six months (!), they wondered how they could tweak it (!) to "make it dance" (their words). You'll understand just how ridiculous all of this is when you read HTRR.
Perhaps the reason for this widespread misunderstanding is that while the theory itself is simple, its ramifications are not---and without understanding its ramifications, it is impossible to truly understand the theory. Like Darwin, O'Shaughnessy has taken 'God'---the human element---completely out of the picture. That's what readers find so hard to grasp. O'Shaughnessy has shown that not only is human intervention in portfolio management not necessary, it's downright harmful. Given enough time, any human intervention will only lower a portfolio's returns from the optimum returns that could be obtained using a simple model.
I hesitate to include the returns I have earned over the past four years using the Reasonable Runaways strategy in this review, because I don't think they're typical. I have earned 93.15% (CARR of 17.88%) versus 1.17% (CARR of 0.29%) for the SP during the same period (July 15, 2001 to July 15, 2005). And this is during a time period that includes 9/11. But as you'll discover from reading HTRR, four years is a meaninglessly short amount of time over which to gauge performance. Also, giving out exciting returns numbers shifts the discussion away from the real message of the book---get in the stock market and stay there (investing properly of course). It's the only way you'll ever be able to retire, rich or otherwise.
For UK readers, Ifd also like to point out that if you invest in the US stock market and live outside the UK (as I do), itfs tax-free. How can you go wrong?

Title : Iras, 401(k)S Other Retirement Plans: Taking Your Money Out (IRA's, 401(k)S Other Retirement Plans: Taking Your Money Out)
Author : Twila Slesnick
Rating : 5 Stars out of 5.
Summary : Excellent even if you're not 59 1/2 years old
This is a great resource--clear, concise, easy to digest, well indexed, and written for the lay person. Knowing the rules for taking money out of your retirement accounts is important even if you're still putting money away--it allows you to make much better decisions about your investments.