Name: Fail-Safe Investing
ISBN: 9780312263218

Fail-Safe Investing

Do you worry that you're not paying enough attention to your investments? Do you feel left out when you hear about the clever things other investors seem to be doing? Relax. You don't have to become an investment genius to protect your savings. Distilling the wisdom of his thirty years' experience into lessons that can be applied in thirty minutes, Harry Browne shows you what you need to know to make your savings and investments safe and profitable, no matter what the economy and the investment markets do. There are no secret trading systems here, no jargon to learn. Instead, Harry Browne teaches you in simple terms to, among other things: -Build your wealth on your career -Make your own decisions -Build a bulletproof portfolio for protection -Take advantage of tax-reduction plans -Enjoy yourself with a budge for pleasure

What Hacker News says

mattmFeb 2018

"Fail Safe Investing: Lifelong Financial Security in 30 Minutes" by Harry Browne

"The richest man in Babylon" was also a good read for me early on. It's told in a story format.

"Your money or your life" is also good for the principles although it's a little outdated.

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lackbeardSep 2017

Masters Of Doom - The value of an unbalanced life and focused hard work. Also, how to start a startup. A really fun read, to boot.

Fooled By Randomness - a) Survivorship bias. b) If you look at revealed preferences, people choose regular small gains with a rare huge loss over regular small losses and a rare huge gain even though that choice is -ev. c) Much more!

Hackers and Painters - One of the most insightful, subversive, and surprising texts out there.

C Interfaces and Implementations - Great examples of good API design and how to build clean modular code.

The Paleo Manifesto - Explains how the origin of religion was probably as a set of models for coping with the transition from hunting/gathering to civilized agriculture. The part of the book where he points out that the story of the fall of man in the Bible is probably the story of this transition is super interesting.

The Game - Made me realize that the narrative told by boomer and gen-x parents about how to attract a woman is probably doing young men (and women) more harm than good. I would not try to treat this as a how-to manual, though. A fun yarn.

Starting Strength - After years of fumbling around in the gym this cut through a lot of bad ideas about fitness, exercise, strength, and health. It lead to the first real (and lasting) progress I've ever made physically.

Understanding Comics - Understanding art and visual communication.

Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! - Up there with Hackers & Painters in its rate of insight & surprise per page.

Fail Safe Investing - Thought provoking ideas about why we invest and how best to go about doing that. (The ideas stand up, IMO, but some of the concrete advice on how to implement those ideas is very dated.)

Good Calories, Bad Calories - It turns out that even scientists can be dishonest and corrupted by politics.

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kingmanazSep 2016

"Fail Safe Investing" by Harry Browne and "The Intelligent Investor" by Benjamin Graham.

Discussion of the former here:

http://www.gyroscopicinvesting.com/forum

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snikerisApr 2016

I'm a big fan of Harry Browne's thoughts on the subject:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fail-Safe_Investing

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snikerisOct 2015

Check out Harry Browne's Permanent Portfolio:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fail-Safe_Investing

It's a relatively low risk way to invest.

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joshkaufmanFeb 2010

I'd use Harry Browne's "Permanent Portfolio" allocation - it performs as well or better than other passive portfolios while experiencing far less volatility. Here's a detailed analysis of historical returns: http://crawlingroad.com/blog/2008/12/22/permanent-portfolio-...

It's also simple enough that you don't have to pay a tax/financial advisor exorbitant fees to manage your money - you can do it yourself, saving a lot of money in "wealth management services" you don't really need. Remember, you're a financial advisor's dream come true, and they'll try to sell you everything they can.

Here's a review I wrote of "Fail Safe Investing," Browne's book: http://personalmba.com/review/fail-safe-investing/

Here's more solid supporting information: http://crawlingroad.com/blog/2010/02/06/permanent-portfolio-...

Hope this helps!

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