Dr. Bernstein starts with a simple three-fund portfolio. The Total Stock Market Index, Total International Stock Market Index, and the Total Bond Market Index are spot-on for those who already have the basics of a diversified investment solution. Others may scratch their head or shrug their shoulders, and return to fiction. Unknown obstacles may occur when they ask their employer’s plan administrators for these three indexes, only to be told, “no, we don’t have those three indexes, but we have yadda, yadda, yadda.” The millennial may respond, “huh”?

Other potential investors may think, “Shall I delay,” given the gyrations of the stock market’s current volatility? “Whom can I ask for professional help?” or “What in the world is a fiduciary, some exotic bird sanctuary?”

But don't fret millennials! Dr. Bernstein comes to the rescue and lists and addresses these concerns for newbies in five categories of “Hurdles” and follow-up reading material for each:

Hurdle one: Excessive spending. Recommended reading: The Millionaire Next Door by Thomas Stanley and William Danko. (I also recommend a blog, Mr. Money Mustache. He writes imaginative and practical articles about the most boring and unappealing characteristics of personal finance, frugal living).

Hurdle two: Not understanding the basics of theory and practice of finance. Recommended reading: Jack Bogle’s classic, Common Sense on Mutual Funds. This book is probably the best introduction to basic finance ever written.

Hurdle three: History. A colorful and interesting stock market history does exist! Three recommended books: Devil Take the Hindmost by Edward Chancellor, The Great Depression: A Diary by Benjamin Roth, and in a recent interview he also suggested Extraordinary Popular Delusions and The Madness of Crowds by Charles Mackay.

Hurdle four: Know thyself. Recommended book, Your Money and Your Brain, by Jason Zweig (details below). .

Hurdle five: Recognizing the financial industry professionals for whom they really are--self-serving. Evolving to a Do-It-Yourselfer (DIY) is the best advice offered. The reading assignment is the same as Hurdle Number Two: Common Sense on Mutual Funds by Jack Bogle. If you devour the details of this book, you will know more about investing than most professionals. If you know how to invest, you will see what the financial industry is up to and you will avoid their sales pitches with confidence.

Dr. Bernstein’s book is an aggrandized “Cliff Notes” to focus and encourage Millennials to begin a serious study for the next year or two of additional readings.

Hurdle Four

I want to elaborate on Hurdle number four. “Know thyself” cannot be learned from reading alone. Even Sir Isaac Newton lamented, “I can calculate the motion of heavenly bodies, but not the madness of people." Newton struggled bitterly trying to find out what went wrong with his investments during the 1746 South Sea investment crash.

The surest way to build mental toughness and discipline is to experience losses with your real money. Readers who understand their emotions will benefit by knowing their unique balance between taking on too much portfolio risk or being too cautious. If novice investors have prepared themselves to suffer through short-term losses and experience recovery, you will be okay. Recall the title of this book, “… Get Rich Slowly”. There is only one part of the financial industry you can trust, and that’s the worldwide economies will grow overtime. Be patient. Time is on your side.

Jason Zweig’s excellent book (Your Money and Your Brain) will focus your understanding of how other investors react to stock market gains and losses. Investors need their own experience in the school-of-hard-knocks. After reading Dr. Bernstein’s recommended books, most novice investors must experience by living through stock market volatility to understand their reactions when Mr. Bear Market comes growling. Why? If an investor is not prepared mentally, a carefully constructed low-cost portfolio is abandoned faster than a cockroach scurrying from your kitchen light.

This reviewer learned the hard way and took a working career to comprehend the investing process and balanced thinking, but never regretted massive investing mistakes. In hindsight, losing 70% was painful with the incessant question, what was I thinking? However, those mistakes turned out to be valuable learning experiences, saving tens of thousands in excessive investment costs in subsequent years with an appropriate risk and return, low-cost balanced portfolio.

Congratulations for finding this excellent book--you will thank yourself 30 years from now. Learning to be a DIY takes time, and for some, perhaps a painful experience or two. Don’t be discouraged if you stumble. Always remember, mistakes can be valuable learning experiences, far more valuable than spending several percentage points year-after-year when you turn your decisions over to a financial adviser or broker.

Final note: The author praised the genuine greatness and unpretentious John Bogle, the founder of the Vanguard Group. For decades, Bogle has been the only person in the financial services industry who gave Vanguard’s profits back to clients. Subsequently, Vanguard has grown to be the largest and most respected investment company in the world. Twenty million investors with over four trillion in assets (Feb. 2017) participate in Vanguard, agreeing with Bogle’s over-the-top concern about giving us regular folks a fair chance against Wall Street’s innate greed

This tiny pamphlet is a good, quick read for beginners. It can be a good refresher course for more knowledgeable investors, too. It lays out a plan in the first few paragraphs -- save 15% of your income, invest in a three-fund portfolio, rebalance periodically, take advantage of retirement accounts and keep your investing costs low. This part could fit on an index card. The rest of the booklet explores how to execute such a plan.

The author correctly compares investing to losing weight -- simple, but not easy. He also describes this booklet as more of a roadmap than a complete tome. However, its brevity is why I recommend it to friends and family. Not everyone has the time to sit down and read Bernstein's online essays or his many wonderful books. This booklet offers an excellent starting point, as well as a good reading list for future studies.

This book was very easy to read and is a good start for learning how to save and invest for our future. I enjoyed reading it and as the author had suggested, will reread it several more times while putting the ideas into practice. I was surprised by how short the book was. However, because I got it for free from Amazon, I can't really complain! I've read many books on how to save and how to invest, etc. and there is always something different as well as something consistently taught about the subject. This one is no exception and I've learned a few things here. Overall, I liked the book. It was a quick and easy read so I would recommend it for those who don't want to spend a lot of time reading but still want the gist of what can be done now to get rich...slowly. I would give it a 4.0/5.0. - 08/28/2014.

Very easy primer on getting ahead by managing your money. Good for young people just getting out of school. After a quick read, I gave this to a twenty-something man who'll hopefully put it to great use for his future.

I am not the intended target audience of 20-somethings, but that is ok! I am one of the late bloomers (er, Boomers) who started late in life with their saving/investing. At age 50 I am just now starting to read everything I can get my hands on! As Dave Ramsey says regarding TIME: "All you've got is all you've got. So let's work with what you've got."

And therefore I read this booklet as if I were one of the youngsters just starting out. For so many new savers, the investing world is Complex and Confusing. I want to know WHAT to read, HOW to do things, IN WHAT ORDER; Just give me a good map and I can follow it! And that's what this is. It coincides with many of the proven classics of Personal Finance I have read already...when you start to read things over and over in other books, you start to see patterns, you start to understand, and you begin to implement.

This is a personal journey for me, researching all this stuff. Fearing it was all over my head, I decided to proceed with self-learning. It's not as confusing as it first seemed. I LOVE this little eBook! In one compact place it laid out all the basics (that's why it is intended for young people just starting out) but I needed it too! And it gave me a list of several other books to read, which I promptly ordered from Amazon (using points and gift card balances so as not to go into DEBT to get them. Ha!)

Knowledge is POWER! I will see to it that my 16 year old son reads this before he graduates high school! He has taken an interest in personal finance because he is seeing his mother do it! This book is for everyone!

This book provides excellent advice for readers of all ages, but especially for younger readers. It is NEVER too soon to start saving and investing. The sooner you start, the sooner you will have accumulated wealth. If you follow the advice in this book and do the "homework reading assignments", you will be financially smarter than 99% of the populace, including most financial advisors. This small book is an excellent starting point for anyone wanting to accumulate wealth for any future purpose. It will also provide the basics for "living the life" of a smart investor, as wealth misspent or poorly invested is little better than having no accumulated wealth at all.

Remember, the definition of wealth is the difference between what you earn and what you spend. If you earn $25K and spend only $24K and invest the remaining $1K, you will become wealthy over time. If like so many, you earn $90K but spend $95K, you will never have wealth and will never be rich, even if today your toys are shinier than your neighbors.

Highly readable, this book provides a simple savings and investment plan for the young who likely will not have pension plans and whose work life will span many jobs. It emphasizes the absolute need for saving and evaluating the actual need for any purchases made. Bernstein also reinforces the now widely held idea that index funds, stock and bond, are the way to go because of their performance and their low service fees.

Keeping a simple formula working is doable for most people, and this e-booklet is simple enough in content that most readers will believe they can actually save for their own futures.

Finally, an interesting fact included was that the most common vehicle among US millionaires is the Ford F-150 truck and not that Porsche or Benz one might expect.

Review: If You Can: How Millenials Can Get Rich Slowly

If You Can is William Bernstein's financial planning booklet for people starting out in their careers. It is normally $0.99 at the Kindle Store (free today), but you can download it for free from Bernstein's website. At 27 pages long, it is short and can be read in a couple of hours. However, if you actually do do the homework in the book (which only of reading other financial books), the claim is that you will know more than most financial professionals about investing.

The prescriptions in the book are fairly straightforward: save money (at least 15% of your income), pay off all debt, invest in a diversified portfolio (the suggested 33% even splits between domestic stocks, international stocks, and bonds is a fairly good one), learn a bit about finance and financial history, rebalance your portfolio about once a year, steer away from financial professionals who will try to steal your money and only buy indexed funds (preferably Vanguard ones).

Of course, straightforward doesn't mean easy. Being able to do all of these would qualify you to manage money not just for yourself, but for any one and any institution. Similarly, doing all of the homework assignments isn't easy, since it's actually substantial reading. Here's the reading list:

The Millionaire Next Door

Common Sense on Mutual Funds

Devil Take The Hindmost

The Great Depression A Diary

Your Money And Your Brain

How A Second Grader Beasts Wall Street

All About Asset Allocation

Bernstein carefully steers away from promoting his own books (which are very good), and leaves out several classics such as A Random Walk Down Wall Street , which are useful but also not as much fun reading as the above list.

In any case, the irony of all teaching is that the people who need it the most won't show up in class, hence the people who need this booklet the most probably won't read this book. But if you're the kind of person who gets asked for financial advice, in the interest of saving your time and your breath (since sadly, this type of advice is more frequently ignored than followed), this is a great little free booklet to point people at so you can talk about more interesting things.

Recommended.

This books covers a lot about how to get going in your own little investment world and have your motivation high enough for your journey. All the best

Regards

Shivraj

An excellent guide book for millennial, although I am an elder millennial, I found this book to be useful to refresh what I already knew.

Great guide, short and sweet

Perhaps one of the best and most readable summaries on investing and financial behaviour for young investors. Short and to the point, presented in well reasoned and concise terms, this little book is an ideal gift for any young adult about embark or already embarked on the path of investing for the future. Even "mature" investors can derive benefit from this excellent little book.

Some US centric jargon but the UK equivalents are easy to find. 401k= pension plan. IRA = ISA. For a UK all-in-one index fund check out Vanguard's LifeStrategy series. For wrapping that up tax-efficiently check out an Alliance Trust stock ISA or SIPP, or both. I'm only 2 months into my pension planning, and this book would have saved me most of the hard graft. with a booklet like this, here's no excuse for thinking that investing is some kind of magic.

Directo y sin rodeos, abordando el tema de la planeación financiera y pensar en el retiro de cada uno de nosotros, muy crudo y realista, lo recomiendo para todos que entiendan inglés y se preocupen por su futuro