Plan Your Prosperity

In Plan Your Prosperity, Ken Fisher demonstrates how you can better prepare for retirement by planning ahead and being aware of investor pitfalls—including investing myths.

Ken hands readers the tools and confidence they need to better plan for retirement, no matter what stage in life (or retirement) they are. Plan Your Prosperity can help you invest smarter and plan better for retirement, whether you’re in retirement, just getting ready to retire or 5 to 40 years out.

Plan Your Prosperity: The Only Retirement Guide You’ll Ever Need Starting Now—Whether You're 22, 52, or 82

by Ken Fisher with Lara Hoffmans
John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
November 2012
Hardcover: 192 pages

About the Book

In Plan Your Prosperity, Ken Fisher’s 9th book, he shows you why retirement investing isn’t different from any other long-term investment. Thinking otherwise may cost you dearly in the long run, perhaps long after employment ends. The book looks at common investor traps and how they can be overcome—like picking an appropriate portfolio benchmark and starting to save as soon as possible. (But please note, the book does NOT provide any concrete recommendations, because no book can do that. It simply can’t because it doesn’t know you. It’s a book!)

The book provides key principles aimed to increase the odds you’ll achieve your long-term goals. It also provides easy to follow exercises so you can better understand your current financial profile and estimate future, inflation-adjusted cash flow needs.

In Plan Your Prosperity, Ken Fisher highlights common investor pitfalls—and shows you how to avoid them. His ninth book debunks the idea that retirement planning is only appropriate at certain times, asserting instead that retirement planning is essentially the same as financial planning. Throughout the book, you will gain salient investing advice no matter what your age or investing goal. Get your copy today!

Ken Fisher, founder and Executive Chairman of Fisher Investments, is a self-made billionaire and ranks among America's wealthiest individuals. His prestigious Forbes “Portfolio Strategy” column ran from 1984 through 2016, making Ken the longest continuously running columnist in the magazine’s history.

  • Hardcover: 192 pages
  • Publisher: Wiley; 1 edition (Oct. 30, 2012)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 1118431065
  • ISBN-13: 978-1118431061

Planning for Retirement

In Plan Your Prosperity, Ken Fisher demonstrates how you can better prepare for retirement by planning ahead, being aware of investor pitfalls—including investing myths.

For example, just because stocks historically have returned roughly an annualized 10% doesn’t mean they return 10% each year—annualized returns are an average over long periods of time. Meaning some years stocks may return much more, but also some years stocks will be down more. Therefore, it’s unrealistic to believe you can skim 10% off the top each year without impacting long-term survivability of your portfolio. Known as the “10% Myth,” this is covered in more detail in the book, along with these other common pitfalls:

  1. Capital preservation and growthas your investing goal—Not possible! Growth requires volatility. Capital preservation requires none. These goals are not synonymous.
  2. Age doesn’t equal asset allocation—A realistic assessment of your goals and objectives provides much more insight to asset allocation than age alone.
  3. Ignoring opportunity cost—Investors all too often underestimate how much growth they need because they are ultra-focused on just one kind of risk— volatility risk.
  4. Unrealistic expectations—Not understanding what’s “normal” for stock returns can increase the odds you get scammed by a Ponzi con artist. Average returns aren’t normal. Normal returns are extreme.
  5. The All-High Dividend Portfolio—Primarily relying on high dividends and coupon payments is potentially a harmful way to get retirement cash flow.

To avoid pitfalls like these, Plan Your Prosperity guides you through proper steps of retirement planning, like selecting an appropriate benchmark. Picking an appropriate benchmark is critical to long-term investing success, yet many investors don’t do it. They may not even know what a benchmark is or that they should have one! This book gives you principles and concepts they can use to better pick for themselves an appropriate benchmark, or have more productive conversations with a professional.