How To Get Rich With Security

WHAT IS THE AUTHOR UP TO?

This is my third book—all written about long term or life­time investing. This one, I think, is better done than the others, and of course is more up to date.

Nearly all of the books on investing have been written by people making a business of selling investments, or charging a fee for advice about investments, or by professors who may have done considerable studying, but whose practical exper­ience as investors has been quite limited. Also, these writers have not experienced the necessity of paying family living expenses with income derived solely or mainly from their own invested savings.

By contrast, this book is written strictly from the viewpoint of an owner of investments, who has no other connection with any financial institution than as an ordinary investor. In reading this book, you need have no fear that it is the first round of a clever plan to lure you into paying expensive fees or subscriptions. I have nothing to sell, except my knowl­edge and experience, and you have paid for this by buying my book.

Like its predecessors, this book is based on personal ex­periences, including both mistakes and successes, as well as some observation of other people’s attitudes. Out of a mod­erate salary, my wife and I accumulated enough capital, and invested it well enough, that at the age of fifty-eight, think­ing we were reasonably safe financially, I retired from earn­ing a living.

Soon afterward, I discovered that the rise in cost of living had already cut our buying power below what I had estimated, and was likely to force us to lower our standard of living. So, for the first time in my life, I began a serious study of in­vesting. I found that our trouble stemmed not from a lack of capital, but from a failure to invest sensibly. Since then, I have concentrated on improving my selection of invest­ments, and on trying to explain, in books, how I do it.

Now, at the age of seventy-two, and in spite of the drop in the stock market this year, my wife and I own stocks and bonds with a market value considerably larger than when I retired fourteen years ago; and that value has risen faster than the cost of living. We are not rich, and don’t want to be, for capital much in excess of what is needed for comfortable living, is likely to be a troublemaker. This book being in­tended mainly for people of moderate income, its usefulness should be enhanced by the fact that the writer’s income is also moderate.

This book emphasizes the advantages of an investor’s put­ting much of his capital into the common stock of corporations, preferably selected investment companies of the mutual fund type. Anyone offering such advice should have considerable understanding of the nature of corporations. After attending Harvard Business School, just a few years after it opened, I spent thirty-four years in business offices, mostly at the head­quarters of the Dixie Cup Company (now a division of American Can Company) at Easton, Pennsylvania, just across the Delaware River from our home. My office work always involved a good deal of figuring, and I still would rather figure than write out an explanation of how to do it.

One final point: Why do I go through the sustained struggle of writing books about investing, knowing that the financial reward will probably be quite modest? You can take your choice of these answers: 1. The books are my excuse for existence. 2. Seeing people save money, only to waste much of it by poor investing, distresses me. 3. Our economic and social structure will be improved, I believe, if more people have sufficient capital for comfortable living in old age, and if more people are substantial owners of equity capital, in­cluding corporate common stock. With the rise in our national income level, such ownership is becoming possible for a large and increasing portion of our people.

E.S.G.

Phillipsburg, New Jersey August 1, 1962