Coffee Can Investing: A Better Idea Than Mutual Funds in an IRA or 401(K) Kindle Edition

This entertaining and easy-to-understand book made me feel a lot more empowered about investing for retirement. I've always left investing up to our financial planner because I found the myriad of options and jargon incredibly confusing and was scared to make a mistake. As a woman, that bothered me because women too often rely on men for financial decisions and I didn't want to fall into that trap/stereotype.Reading "Coffee Can Investing" really changed things for me. I now feel like I can make basic sense of the retirement options out there - and I know which ones are probably good for me and which ones are really bad news. I think it's going to help me avoid a lot of mistakes.Fundamentally, this book shows that most retirement investments are designed to make money not for individual investors, but for Wall Street brokers. This wasn't a huge surprise to me, but it did frankly shock me to learn from the book that individual investors often don't even keep up with inflation. However, because most people continually make contributions to their retirement accounts, the balance usually appears to go up over time, even when they're actually losing money.It isn't easy to see all this if you are a layperson, but the author (Terry Allen) takes you through various calculations that convincingly demonstrate that it's true. In fact, he shows that some retirement investments are actually so bad that you would do better if you put your money in a coffee can and buried it in your back yard (hence the title).The book is not all bad news, though - there are some reasonable investments out there and the final chapters are about how to choose them. There is no sales angle or anything - the author simply explains how to make the best of company 401K accounts and also suggests some other investments to explore with a qualified financial planner.I'm really glad that I bought this book and read it. I am ready to ask a lot more questions and assert myself a lot more when I meet with my financial planner. And, although this book is not intended for women in particular, I'm going to lend my copy to all my women friends.

Sometimes a little long winded, and usually with filler and excerpts from other authors that may or may not been taken out of contexts to match what the author is trying to get across, the Author drives his point home. I went through my 401k, and sure enough, discovered the dastardly truths that terry Allen describes. This book is not the end all be all in investing as it does very little to educate you in what to invest in except to point you in the direction of a "financial architect" that knows more than you and to stay in low-fee low trading index funds(this advice is worth the cost of this book). Some people do not have a Roth 401k option so I am stuck making the best choices possible but my wife does and we plan on rolling her 401k into the Roth. Good book that is easy to read (I read it on my day off and took notes to cross reference) but sometimes is a little pessimistic for better or worse on the outlook of the stock market and America in general. He has to be real careful not to cross into the "American economy is over" fear that some Authors throw out there just to sell books to the koolaid drinkers. All in all, a good book and it gives you real actionable advice, or at the very least, gives you a good direction on where to gain more knowledge. It would get 5 stars if a little more complete, but he does point you to his website (which may or may not be an up-sell) to gain more knowledge.

'Coffee Can Investing' has its origins an a fabulous article by Robert Kirby. This book has none of the elements. It's inaccurate (misstating a Vanguard expense ratio by 10 times), it's inconsistent (saying stay away from mutual funds but mutual funds mangers are smarter than we are), and it seems to say you can do better than a 401(k) by buying whole life insurance and doing option spreads.Not worth the read. Go read Kirby's article and Charles Ellis 'Winning the Loser's Game'. These are vastly better notion of a Coffee Can investment.

Terry Allen does a superb job of clearly illustrating some of the less apparent downsides to various types of investments that are often times overlooked by the typical investor. I look forward to implementing these basic principles he encourages. I highly recommend reading this book!

Easy to understand for the most part. Chock full o good info for novices. Highly recommended for all. Trust me.

Finally, someone has the nerve to point out the shortcomings in most people’s 401(k) / IRA plans and expose Wall Street’s media machine which has brainwashed most Americans. I wish I had read this book ten years ago when I first had to decide where to invest my retirement money. I would be several thousand dollars richer right now.I never knew what the Lipper Index was, and I am sure I wasn’t alone in that department. I also did not have any idea of how much the mutual funds were taking out of my investments each year, or how much switching into cash every once in a while was hurting me.The author better get some security around his house. He has offended many people with this book. I frankly felt vindicated in many of the things I have felt about Wall Street and the government retirement ideas for many years. He gave me lots of good numbers to support my beliefs.My parents enjoyed defined benefit plans (paid for by the companies they worked for). They did not have to depend on the stock market to pay their living expenses after they retired. Except for government workers who get pensions, these guaranteed plans are no longer around for most people. Too bad for all of us.This book is a long-overdue indictment of Wall Street. I hope the people who need it most (anyone with a 401(k) or IRA) will read it and make some changes in the way they are investing their money. I, for one, have got the message and made some changes thanks to this book.

A really good look at what I suspected was the true inside story of mutual fund investing. Very well researched and food for thought before you invest your 401-K dollars.