Investing for Survival

 Investing for Survival from Morgan Housel

   One Sentence Financial Rules (21-40)

21. No one attending private school should be on student loans. Most should utilize community and state schools, which provide just as good an education for a fraction of the price.  

22. You shouldn't feel strongly about any investment you haven't spent at least a week thinking about.

23. Holding 60% of your assets in stocks and 40% in bonds isn't perfect for everyone; but I can think of a thousand worse strategies.

24. Respect the role luck has played on some of your role models. 

25. Don't take out $100,000 in student loans for anything other than medical school (if that).

26. Change your mind as often as the facts change. 

27. Ignore people who refuse to change theirs when the facts change. 

28. Read last year's market predictions and you'll never again take this year's predictions seriously.

29. Warren Buffett's folksy talk misleads people into thinking that what he's accomplished is easy. It's not.

30. Sleep on every investment decision for a week, then run it by a trusted friend before acting.

31. Two things you can do to make yourself a better investor are increase the amount of time you're investing for and the humility you put into your ideas.

32. Just as you should dress appropriately for your age, you should spend appropriately for your income, and not a penny more. 

33. Warren Buffett has the best explanation of dumb risk-taking: "To make money they didn't have and didn't need, they risked what they did have and did need. And that's foolish. It is just plain foolish."

34. You can probably afford not to be a great investor -- you probably can't afford to be a bad one.

35. You're twice as gullible as you think you are.

36. Learn more from your bad investments than your good ones. 

37. Judge investors by the quality of their arguments, not the performance of their last trade.

38. You can realistically afford probably half the home the mortgage broker approves you for.

39. Teach your kids about money before they're old enough to earn their own. 

40. Admit when you are wrong.