Ordinary People, Extraordinary Wealth: The 8 Secrets of How 5000 Ordinary Americans Became Successful Investors-And How You Can Too [Hardcover]

My recommendation is..The library

The book is simple to read, to understand, and to apply.

For the most part these people do not own their own businesses and do not work for Internet start-ups. Rather they average 57 in age, $120,000 in annual income, have $500,000 in savings, and own a home worth $256,000 with a mortgage of $142,000.

These people carry a long-term home mortgage, even though they could pay off their mortgage. The benefits are that they are more liquid financialy should job-related adversity strike, get more tax deductions, and have more funds to invest.

They invest their retirement accounts into a diversified set of stocks. That asset allocation decision gives them the ability to compound money rapidly over time. They make frequent, small investments (usually through monthly savings) that give them the benefit of dollar cost averaging -- which gives you more stock when the prices are lower. They rarely trade.

They have helpful mental habits, too. They focus on a goal of how fast they want their money to accumulate, rather than comparing their results to market indices. This allows them to avoid taking on risks or getting emotionally confused. Further, they spend little time thinking about their investments. They track costs to trim them, rather than doing elaborate budgeting. Many use Quicken to help them.

There are several other valuable sections. One is on how to avoid making mistakes, which identifies stalls that can cause losses from harmful emotional states like fear, greed, overconfidence, lack of confidence, regret, loss aversion, and fixation. I especially liked the section on the biggest mistakes that people had made in their lives (not starting investments soon enough, making a bad investment, getting bad financial or tax advice, and taking on too much credit card debt). There is also good material on what people did right.

The book's main weakness is that it does not give any advice on how to create greater wealth through entrepreneurial activities. Most of the wealthy people I know are entrepreneurs, not people who saved money while earning normal incomes working for someone else. With a slightly different methodology, Mr. Edelman could have helped his readers with that information, as well. I graded the book down one star for missing this important area. See Rich Dad, Poor Dad and Cash Flow Quadrant if you doubt the importance of this point.

After you finish reading this book, ask yourself how the future will probably be different from the past so that you should adjust what you do to create a more favorable risk-reward ratio. Copying what worked well in the past is seldom a perfect recipe for future prosperity.

Each section begins by going into detail about something each of these successful people share in common. I loved the stories about life from real people called 'In their own words' at the end of each section with. The stories are about the smart, foolish, happy or sad experience in their financial lives. Some of the stories are very moving... don't be surprised if you get choked up or shed a tear while reading. The special 'mind over money' section about psychological/emotional investing was very insightful.

This book packs all the motivation you'll ever need! It's the sledgehammer of common sense that we all need to get hit with to get us going.