What I am reading

Malkiel makes the case for efficient markets: the idea that a stock's price already reflects the information available about the company, so consistently picking winners or timing the market is far harder than it looks. If the price already accounts for what is known, then most of the effort spent trying to beat the market is wasted.

From there he argues for low-cost index investing. Rather than paying active managers who try to outperform, he shows that over long stretches a simple, broad, low-fee index fund tends to beat most actively managed strategies once costs are taken out.

Richards argues that most financial planning fails because it is too complicated. The elaborate spreadsheets and long projections look rigorous, but people rarely follow through on them, so in the end they do not matter.

His fix is to strip a plan down to what actually matters to the specific person: their real goals and the few decisions that move them toward those goals. If it does not fit on one page, it is probably more detail than anyone will use.