Here are some sample sections from Financial Mistakes of New College Graduates:
“Example: let’s compound out between now and retirement age, real quick, paying taxes every year, or letting the money accumulate in a tax shield. For simplicity let’s say taxes are going to be 33%, and you put aside $5k a year, earn 9% per year like clockwork, and it sits there for 40 years. If you do this, it’s called a Roth IRA by the way, you would have $1,689,412. If you pay taxes every year along the way, so the 9% really becomes 6% after one third goes to the taxman, you have after 40 years (drum roll please)….$773,810! A difference of almost a million dollars for just being a little smarter! That’s real money ladies and gentlemen. You get that, in your pocket, for just taking advantage of what is in the Code, but doing everything else exactly the same as your buddy who wasn’t quite as smart. Think of the money they have to pay as the stupid tax.”
or
“Now, we don’t want too much cash sitting around, because at the top of the Savings level is the Inflation Line. Things cost more over time, which is the way of the world. What did a beer cost when you were a freshman? Now? I remember quarter drafts on Mug Night! Ten bucks doesn’t buy what it used to. Things below the Inflation Line lose ground over time.”
and of course, to abuse the Red Sox Nation:
“And remember that there are two ways to make money: people at work and money at work. Money at work is much more efficient than people because my money that is in the market is still working when I am sleeping or watching the Yankees thump the Sawx.”