• Revenue Cycle Management
  • COVID-19
  • Reimbursement
  • Diabetes Awareness Month
  • Risk Management
  • Patient Retention
  • Staffing
  • Medical Economics® 100th Anniversary
  • Coding and documentation
  • Business of Endocrinology
  • Telehealth
  • Physicians Financial News
  • Cybersecurity
  • Cardiovascular Clinical Consult
  • Locum Tenens, brought to you by LocumLife®
  • Weight Management
  • Business of Women's Health
  • Practice Efficiency
  • Finance and Wealth
  • EHRs
  • Remote Patient Monitoring
  • Sponsored Webinars
  • Medical Technology
  • Billing and collections
  • Acute Pain Management
  • Exclusive Content
  • Value-based Care
  • Business of Pediatrics
  • Concierge Medicine 2.0 by Castle Connolly Private Health Partners
  • Practice Growth
  • Concierge Medicine
  • Business of Cardiology
  • Implementing the Topcon Ocular Telehealth Platform
  • Malpractice
  • Influenza
  • Sexual Health
  • Chronic Conditions
  • Technology
  • Legal and Policy
  • Money
  • Opinion
  • Vaccines
  • Practice Management
  • Patient Relations
  • Careers

A Few Simple Rules...

Article

Would you take investment advice from a cartoon character? How about the man who created him? Scott Adams, creator of cube-dweller Dilbert, has an economics degree and an MBA, and believes the average investor needs to take a simpler investing approach.

Would you take investment advice from a cartoon character? Or from the man who created him? Scott Adams, the one-time financial analyst who turned cartoonist and created Dilbert, the luckless, cubicle-bound corporate underling, uses his comic strip to toss zingers at a wide array of corporate stupidities. And he doesn’t spare the investment world.

For example, Dogbert, the strip’s scam-loving canine, launches a mutual fund staffed by monkeys because, he says, studies show that monkeys are better stock pickers than most professionals. And because he hires only the best, Dogbert says, his outrageously high fees are actually reasonable.

Adams, who has a degree in economics and an MBA from the University of California at Berkeley, believes that the average investor doesn’t have the tools to navigate complex financial markets successfully. A simpler approach is the best way to go, according to Adams, who spent several months doing research with the idea of putting his ideas into a personal finance book.

The result was somewhat less than a book’s worth of material. In fact, it boiled down to nine rules that Adams calls “Everything You Need to Know about Personal Investing.” Actually, the first three rules have little to do with investing and some of the others are only loosely related to investment strategies. Here’s the list:

  1. Make a will
  2. Pay off your credit cards
  3. Get term life insurance if you have a family to support
  4. Fund your 401k to the maximum
  5. Fund your IRA to the maximum
  6. Buy a house if you want to live in a house and can afford it
  7. Put six months worth of expenses in a money-market account
  8. Take whatever money is left over and invest 70% in a stock index fund and 30% in a bond fund through any discount broker and never touch it until retirement.
Related Videos
Victor J. Dzau, MD, gives expert advice
Victor J. Dzau, MD, gives expert advice