“Pound Foolish” author Helaine Olen debunks the advice of personal finance gurus. Here is a direct video link for American viewers. Here is a direct video link for Canadian residents.
The criticisms of the financial industry and media are all those I have discussed for many years. (I wrote about many of the same issues and players in Juggling Dynamite). But it is also critical to appreciate, that individuals play a leading role in their own repeated hardship in this sphere through self-destructive financial behaviours like short-term thinking, impatience, willful blindness and greed that leaves them susceptible to “get-rich-quicker” schemes and risk-sellers that tell them what they want to hear.
Case in point: all those who are being courted today by new brokers and financial firms promising that they can buy you attractive stocks at every price in every market cycle, do yourself a favor: ask what their client returns were like in bear markets like 2001-03 and 2008. Down market returns will tell you whether the guru is just a constant risk rider or an actual risk manager worth a fee. Everything else is sales puff.
