Showing posts with label Harold Pollack. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Harold Pollack. Show all posts

Wednesday, July 19, 2017

The Index Card-9 Rules of Personal Finance



Back in 2013 Harold Pollack, a social scientist at the U of Chicago, while interviewing a UK personal finance writer, Helaine Olen, struck upon an idea that all the Personal Finance advise you ever need could be written down on an index card.
After blogging about this idea, and getting requests from readers, he actually set down his 9 rules for Personal Finance on a 4 x 6 inch card.

The article I read about this can be found HERE.

This has proved so popular that he and Olen have collaborated on a book called The Index Card: Why Personal Finance Doesn't Have to Be Complicated which came out earlier this year.  I guess personal finance wasn't as simple as listing 9 points on an index card after all, since they seemed to need to explain/elaborate a full book's worth of information.  ;-)

Here are the original tips Pollack wrote out--
1. Max your 401(k) or equivalent employee contribution.
2. Buy inexpensive, well-diversified mutual funds such as Vanguard Target 20xx funds.
3. Never buy or sell an individual security. The person on the other side of the table knows more than you do about this stuff.
4. Save 20% of your money.
5. Pay your credit card balance in full every month.
6. Maximize tax-advantaged savings vehicles like Roth, SEP and 529 accounts.
7. Pay attention to fees. Avoid actively managed funds.
8. Make financial advisers commit to the fiduciary standard.
9. Promote social insurance programs to help people when things go wrong.

So what do you think of these rules?

Sluggy