How To Really Ruin Your Financial Life And Portfolio

Hilarious advice on what NOT to do with money, from financial funny man Ben Stein
Everyone's searching for the secrets to financial success, but what about the best ways to lose money . . . fast?! In How To Really Ruin Your Financial Life and Portfolio, bestselling author, economist, financial commentator, and media personality Ben Stein explains exactly what to do . . . to go bust! The ultimate "how-NOT-to" guide, the book gives readers invaluable tips that should be avoided at all costs. Written in Stein's own inimitable style, this hilarious guide provides essential financial advice on what not to do when it comes to managing money.
From reading and acting upon investing newsletters to trading on a margin, from investing in bonds to breathlessly following CNBC, and from buying stock in firms you do not understand to believing in your own genius at stock picking to keeping as little cash on hand as possible, Stein presents the rules that every would-be investor needs to know, so they can do the exact opposite and actually make money. Fully revised and updated, this new edition presents all-new missteps that can destroy any portfolio.

* Fully revised and updated edition of the tongue-in-cheek bestseller that shows investors what not to do with their money
* Written by acclaimed author economist, financial commentator, and media personality Ben Stein
* Loaded with indispensable pieces of bad advice that readers should avoid at all costs

A laugh-out-loud approach to personal finance, How To Really Ruin Your Financial Life and Portfolio is an accessible guide to money from the funniest man in finance.

Ben Stein is a respected economist known to many as a movie and television personality, but he has worked in personal and corporate finance more than anywhere else. He has written about finance for Barron's, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and Fortune, was one of the chief busters of the junk-bond frauds of the 1980s, has been a longtime critic of corporate executives' self-dealing, and has co-written numerous finance books. Stein travels the country speaking about finance in both serious and humorous ways, and is a regular contributor to CBS's Sunday Morning, CNN, and Fox News. He was the winner of the 2009 Malcolm Forbes Award for Excellence in Financial Journalism.

Introduction
1: Trade Frequently
2: Trade Foreign Exchange
3: Believe In Your Heart That You Can Pick Stocks
4: Assume That Recent Trends Will Continue Indefinitely
5: Pour Continuer.... Sell When Things Look Bleak....And Stay the Heck Out of the Market!
6: Know In Your Heart That This Time It’s Different and Act on It
7: Dividends Are For Spending-Not Investing-Just Ignore Them Or Use Them to Buy Baubles
8: Cash is Garbage-Except When it’s not
9: Put Your Money into a Hedge Fund
10: Try Strategies That No One Else Has Ever Thought Of. You Can Out Think the Market
11: Use the Strategies That University Endowments and the Giant Players Use
12: Commodities Are Calling. Will You Answer The Phone? Everything That Happens In Your Life Involves Commodities
13: Go On Margin for Everything
14: Sell Short
15: Do Not Have a Plan for Your Investing or for Your Financial Life Generally
16: Do It All Yourself
17: Pay No Attention At All to Taxes
18: Believe That Those People You See On TV Can Actually Tell the Future
19: Do Not Start Even Thinking about Any of This until the Absolutely Last Moment
20: Don’t Believe That Any of This Matters Very Much, This Money Stuff
21-49: How to Ruin Your Greatest Asset—You
21: Choose a career with no possibility of advancement
22: Choose a career with little chance for a good income
23: Choose lots of education over lots of pay
24: Show no respect for your boss or fellow workers
25. Don’t learn much about your job, industry, or employers...just ‘wing it.”
26. Do the minimum to “...just get by....”
27: Show up in torn jeans, unshaven, unwashed, any old way you feel like showing up
28: Show no regard for the truth
29: Display open contempt for your job, your fellow workers, your boss, and your clients/customers
30: Act as if you are morally superior to your job and your colleagues
31: Do not be punctual
32: Don’t hesitate to have a cocktail or two at lunch
33: Gossip and sow divisiveness at work
34: Second guess everyone around you at work, especially your boss
35: Threaten your boss and employer with litigation
36: Look for grievances at work
37: Make sexual advances to anyone you find attractive
38: Make excessive phone calls, texts, and e-mails on company time
39: Play video games at work and make loud noises as you do
40: Make and keep lots of personal appointments on company time
41: Listen to your colleagues’ conversations and snoop on their e-mails
42: Talk about how much better earlier employers were than your current employer
43: Brag about your great family connections
44: Pad your expense account
45: Borrow money from your fellow employees and don’t pay it back
46: Question, mock, and belittle your tasks.
47: Flirt with your colleagues’ significant others
48: Prosyletize at work and belittle anyone who doesn’t share your political or religious beliefs
49: Say anything you want that comes into your head