I think one problem is that most people never set specific income goal for retiring early. When I ask them how much money they will need to retire, very few people have an answer.

It’s much harder to achieve a goal if you don’t have specific and measurable goal in place.

Let’s try to set the income goal for a typical reader of this blog.

A typical reader of this blog works in the high tech industry, makes 6-figure salary, well educated, single or have a young family, lives in middle class to upper class suburban neighborhoods in SF Bay Area, Seattle, Boston, NYC, Chicago or other major cities, carries a sizable mortgage (e.g. 400K – 800K)

To pay off his mortgage, he will need $400K to $800K.

To prepare the funds to pay for two kids’ private college education, let’s assume he needs to put aside $50K/year * 4 years * 2 kids = $400K.

Let’s assume that a monthly passive income of $10K will allow him to continue to live the life style he wanted, and he is very conservative in term of investing his money. He will get all of his passive income from bank interests. Given the interest is so low right now, let’s assume 2% bank interest rate. He will need $6 millions in the bank in order to get $120K a year (i.e $10K/month).

So, he will need $800K + $400K + $6 million = $7.2 million

Is $7.2 million the magic number for us to retire with enough of a financial cushion?

Do you want to retire early and young? How much money do you need to retire?

I beg to differ. My family cell phone recently expired. I was shopping around. I need to four lines in total, plus two data lines. Here is what I found:

• Most online mobile stores have essentially the same discount structure – Amazon.com, Dell.com (yes, Dell is selling cell phone plans), Newegg.com, etc. – their online discount is more or less the same.
• Amazon.com offers great discount on phones. However, they require the purchase of expensive data plans. For example, most carriers nowadays offer tiered data plan. In the case of T-mobile, you can start with 200MB/month, which is enough for my use. However, Amazon don’t offer the lower-tiered data plan. Almost all data plans on amazon.com are unlimited, which is much more expensive.
• I ended up buying from Costco. Although I paid about $100 more for the phone, I saved much more on the two-year voice and data plan. In total, for two years, I’ll save more than $250.

One friend hasn’t gotten any pay raise for three years. He works for a Fortune 500 company and he had no performance issues.

Most people I knew got 2-5%  annual pay increase in the past couple of years.

Even if you switch jobs, the pay raise is no longer the 10-25% you can normally expect.

My suggestion to you: do NOT bet on salary increase by your employer. It really does not matter. Let’s say you get a 5% increase. How much more money will you get per year? Per month? It’s a pretty small amount.

You need to figure out a way to generate side income — you can give yourselves a much bigger raise, and you’ll diversify your income, which will make you more layoff proof.

I believe everyone should be working on side projects.

Let me tell you: the income I generated from this blog in the past year is more than the raise I got from my previous employer. Plus, this blog itself worth something — if I sell this blog, I can also make some money back. This is the difference between creating asset vs. working for someone.

There are many ways for you to take on side projects to generate second, third, or even fourth stream of income:

• Take on consulting projects in your area of expertise. Nowadays a lot of startups are taking a "lean and mean" approach in building their business. If you have the right skills and experience, they’re willing to pay you for part-time consulting work.
• Teach one or several classes online. There are people who teach several classes online, and make 6-figure annual income. The trick is to teach the same class at several online universities so that you can reuse your course materials, and make yourself more scalable.  If you’re interested in teaching online, you should read Make Money Teaching Online: How to Land Your First Academic Job, Build Credibility, and Earn a Six-Figure Salary
• Start an affiliate marketing business. I worked for one of the largest Affiliate programs in the world, and got to know a few super affiliates. Let me tell you: there are serious money to be made in the affiliate space.  To get started, you might want to check out Super Affiliate Handbook.
• Purchase a franchise. This will cost some money, and you need help from family and friends to help since you still have a full-time job. But, I’ve known people who successfully did this — they held their full time job, and own retail stores through franchise. This could be a cash cow if you pick the right franchise. 
• Become a tutor to help people prepare for SAT/GRE/GMAT/LSAT/other exams. 
• Become a part time MBA admission consultant. A well-known business school admission consultant charges as high as $3,000+ for one school’s application. 
• Start an online retail business on eBay and/or amazon.com Marketplace.
• Write and sell eBooks. If you can pick the right niche and you can provide content that readers cannot find else where, you can make serious money from selling eBooks.
• …
  Take actions now and give yourself a big raise this year.

Unfortunately, I needed a car. And I didn’t want to get ripped off. So, I was determined to get a good deal while minimizing my pain. Here are 11 lessons I learned from hard-nosed negotiation with car salesmen.

1. Start price negotiation below invoice price. Dealers will tell you that they cannot sell you at invoice because they will not make any profit. Never believe what dealers tell you. They will make money if they sell the vehicle to you at invoice price because of dealer hold-back. My initial offer was $800 below invoice. Everyone thought I was crazy. The car salesmen laughed at my offer. But, I had done plenty of research online. I knew the market. Trust your data. Don’t let other people’s opinions and negotiation tactics sway you.
2. Set an one-hour time limit when you walk into a car dealership. This is a common tactic used by every car salesman I talked to: I made an offer. They said that they needed to talk to their manager. They then disappeared for 20 to 30 minutes. They would finally came back and said that they couldn’t take the offer. They asked for a compromise. They would then repeat this process. They wanted to make the negotiation process as time-consuming as possible so that the customer would give up in the end. Don’t fall into this trap. When you walk into a car dealership next time, tell them that you will only have an hour to talk to them. You must leave in an hour.
3. Plan two weeks of time to purchase your car. — test drive your desired vehicle in the middle of a month, but wait until the last few days of the month to purchase the vehicle. Car salesmen have monthly quota. You’re likely to get good deals in the end of each month. I bought my car three days before end of the month, and got a pretty good deal.
4. You should research car data on multiple auto web sites and forums. Don’t trust a single source. I mostly used Edmunds.com, and TrueCar.com. I also frequented Edmunds.com’s message board to check actual paid price reported by users in my area. TrueCar.com is a fairly new site, but it provides very useful reports of actual price paid by customers in your area. However, you should still cross check data across multiple sites.
5. Car dealerships don’t expect to make a lot of money from new car sales. Most car salesmen will tell you that they cannot sell you a new car at such a low price because they have a big building with a lot of employees and the owner has to pay the bills. But, they will not tell you that car dealerships make most of their money from used cars sales. They don’t make much money from new car sales since the prices for new cars are much more transparent. If you’re buying a new car, don’t let this argument sway you during negotiation. 
6. Don’t buy cars from a dealership with fancy building and flashy advertisements. One dealership I visited has a super nice building. It has a young lady whose job is to serve free coffees/cookies/drinks to customers. It’s really nice. But, someone has to pay for the ambience! If you’re a value buyer like me, stay away from those fancy dealers. They will charge you more. 
7. You can do much better than the Costco auto buying program. A common negotiation tactic I encountered at almost every single car dealership was that they would offer me the Costco car buying price as the lowest price. They said that it’s backed by Costco. It’s non negotiable. Since I’m a value buyer, it’s the best program for me. In my opinion, the Costco auto buying program is being abused by many dealers. Costco is damaging its brand by partnering with dealers. My advice: never buy a vehicle at Costco price. You can do much better than the Costco price.
8. Cut the price for dealer-installed options by at least half. It’s very likely that the dealer has installed several options on the car. Tell them you don’t want these options. The price they quote you will give them 50% or more margin. You can easily cut it by half, if not more.
9. Find yourself a good car salesman who takes care of customers. I once heard a quote: "when did car salesmen lie? When they moves their lips." However, there’re good car salesmen. They tend to stay at the same dealership for five years or more. They have established a happy customer base who will go back every few years to purchase cars from them. You should ask around for referrals. A good car salesman will make the purchase process much easier for you.
10. You want to be a tough negotiator, but not an unreasonable negotiator. Remember that car salesman needs to make a living as well. You should give them a reasonable margin, which is about 3-5% for new cars. 
11. Don’t negotiate for pennies. Here is the formula I used: if I can save $600 for two-hour negotiation, I’m making $300/hour, which is much higher than my paycheck rate. However, if I spend a few hours to save $100, it doesn’t worth my time. Keep your perspective during negotiation.

Related posts:

• Will you still buy Toyota?
• My "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" lesson on New Year Eve: How one family with $70K annual income owns five houses in the San Francisco Bay Area
• Should parents pay for the full amount of their kids’ college education expenses?

Excellent resources:

• Bargaining for Advantage: Negotiation Strategies for Reasonable People 2nd Edition
• Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In
• Getting Past No

I’m not a car enthusiast. When I buy a car, all I need is a safe and reliable vehicle that can move me from point A to point B.

I’m not the most mechanical inclined person. I don’t like to do work on my car. All I want is to bring the car in for periodic maintenance. I want a worry-free, reliable car.

Toyota fits the bill. Eighteen months ago, when we needed a mini van, we got a Toyota Sienna. It is not sexy to drive a mini van around, but when it’s time to change diapers while we’re out or go on a long road trip with extended family, you cannot beat the space and convenience of a mini van.

For the past two weeks, I have been shopping for a commuter car. On January 20, 2010, after visiting several dealerships, I made up my mind to purchase another Toyota vehicle. I didn’t make the purchase because I wanted to wait until the end of month, which should put me in a better position to negotiate with the dealer.

I was lucky that I didn’t pull the trigger. On the next day, Thursday, January 21, 2010, Toyota announced the recall of 2.3 million Toyota vehicles.

The situation got even more serious and confusing this week as Toyota announced that it was temporarily suspending sales of selected vehicles and it was extending the recall to Europe and China.

I have decided that I will not buy a Toyota car this time around. I don’t know if my thinking is representative of a typical Toyota consumer psychology, but let me share with you my rationales for not buying Toyota.

First, Toyota lost my trust.

When Toyota announced its recall last year, I didn’t take it seriously. I thought it was blown out of proportion by the media. But, the most recent recall surprised me. It made me think that Toyota did not get into the bottom of the issue last year. Even now I still don’t feel that Toyota’s management has a good handle on the situation. Just looked at their announcements in the past week. They first announced the recall of vehicles in the U.S. They then suspended sales in the U.S. They then added vehicles in Europe and China to the recall list. I don’t feel that they have done all of the homework and come up with a thorough, well-prepared plan to address the issues. They were making up plans as they investigated the problem.

Toyota just announced today that they have a remedy. But, as a consumer, my question is: "Will the fix work?" Given the series of recent events, Toyota has to prove to the public that it has gotten into the bottom of the issue. It must re-establish trust with its customers. Only time will tell.

Second, there are plenty of alternative products in the market. Honda’s reputation is as good as Toyota’s. GM and Ford are making good commuter cars. Hyundai and Kia have done very well in the North America market. I don’t have to buy Toyota. The switching cost is very low — I’ll lose very little by switching to another brand.

Third, at least in my household, my wife calls the shot for big purchase. She has told me that we will not buy a Toyota. Women’s role is incredibly important in the auto purchase decision process. It was funny that I was chatting with a Toyota sales person a couple of weeks ago. He told me that he estimated over 75% of the cars he sold were decided or heavily influenced by women.

Toyota’s belling selling car is Camry, which is a family sedan. Who is the key influencer in purchasing family sedans? Women. That’s why I think Toyota has dug itself a deep hole in the marketplace.

I browsed a Toyota message board on Edmunds.com recently. One guy was talking about his dilemma after the recall. He recently bought his wife a brand new Toyota Avalon. But, his wife basically told him that there was no way that she would continue to drive the car. He had to get rid of it. This might be an extreme case, but it showed female auto consumers’ preference for safety, and aversion toward uncertainty.

Will you still buy a Toyota car?

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• Is Amazon Fresh the future of grocery shopping and more?

• Why I don’t like Sequoia Capital’s "R.I.P Good Time" presentation

• Should parents pay for the full amount of their kids’ college education expenses?

Excellent reading:

• Crisis Leadership Now: A Real-World Guide to Preparing for Threats, Disaster, Sabotage, and Scandal
• The Brand Bubble: The Looming Crisis in Brand Value and How to Avoid It
• Buyology: Truth and Lies About Why We Buy

Uncle John is a long-time family friend. On New Year eve, Uncle John’s family came to our folks’ house for dinner.

As we were finishing eating our dinner, Uncle John started chatting to me. He hadn’t seen me for a while since I’ve been living in Seattle. We had a lot to catch up.

Uncle John retired a year ago at the age of 62. He had worked for the United States Postal Service for almost two decades. He told me that although he was eligible for receiving social security checks, he decided not to take it now because there was a penalty for people to take out social security before reaching age of 65.

He has a very active life style after he retired. He takes two international trips a year. He has taken several cruise vacations. He also does a lot of traveling locally. He is taking classes at the local community college. Let’s put this way: he has a great retirement life. He looks great.

His wife is still working because she loves her work, but her job is not very well paid, neither. So, I raised the question to Uncle John: "Now, you retired, but you told me that you’re not taking any social security benefit. How do you support yourself with your reduced household income?"

Uncle smiled. And he told me his story. I’ve known him for many years. But, this was the first time I got a chance to hear his wisdom with respect to personal finance. I felt that I was getting my "rich dad, poor dad" moment.

Uncle John immigrated to the United States when he was in his late 30s. Coming from a very humble background, he had only three years of formal education. A voracious reader, he learned pretty much everything on his own.

When he moved the United States, he had a wife and an infant to support. He spoke no English. It was incredibly difficult. The only job he could get was in the construction industry, working for a subcontractor to build houses. The work was low-pay, physically demanding, and dangerous.

He persevered. He took night classes to learn English while he worked full-time. He started to pick up new skills at work. Once his English got better, he quitted his job and joined another subcontractor with better pay.

He told me that he was paying rent at the time, and he hated to pay rent. He felt that the rent money he paid was gone forever. He couldn’t get a penny back. He was determined to buy a house.

He was very frugal. Three years after he came to the United States, he bought his first house. It was a very small house in a good neighborhood. It was the mid 1980′s. The housing price in the bay area was still relatively reasonable. But, still, the mortgage payment was a stretch for Uncle John. He told me that he felt he was still fairly young at the time, so he was willing to take the risk. He made sure that he would have enough saving for 3-month of mortgage payment in case he lost his job.

Uncle was also worried that as he grew older, he wouldn’t be able to continue to do the physical work. He wanted to make every single dollar he had to work for him.

Two years after he bought his first house, he bought his second house. He used his first house as collateral, borrowed money to make down payment on his second house. Again, it’s a small, two-bed room house in a good neighborhood. Before he bought his second house, he researched the local rental market. He figured that if he rented the house out, the rental would cover most of the monthly mortgage payment.

Soon after he bought his second house, Uncle John had a freaky accident. He fell while he was working on the roof at a construction site, and broke several bones. He eventually recovered, but he couldn’t continue to work in construction.

He was in his 40′s. He enrolled in a community college course, he studied books, and he passed the postal worker exam. An entry-level postal worker job wasn’t paid well, but it provided stability to Uncle John.

The accident didn’t slow Uncle John down. Once he got the postal worker job, he started to scouting for houses again. With the same strategy, he bought 3 more houses over the next 8 years. Initially, rental payments covered most of the mortgage payments. After a few years, as the rent went up, he started to make a small profit from rentals.

As he approached his retirement age, he lived in one house, and received positive cash flow from four rental properties.

Uncle John told me that assuming he can live another 20 to 30 years, he plans to sell one house every few years, which would net him a good chunk of money to support his retirement. He would be able to live comfortably with or without social security.

Finally, he said to me: let me give you some advice, young man.

• You’re young. You must plan ahead for retirement.
• If you know how to play the stock market, go for it. But, in my case, I feel real estate is more real. It’s hard asset. Over a long time, it’ll appreciate.
• You need to make money work for you. If I have your salary, I’ll definitely own more than one house. 
• You need to have regular, passive income to have a good retirement. Social security only pays you $2000. It probably will not even be there when you retire. 

I want to share with you a few of my own thoughts after I talked to Uncle John.

I totally agree with Uncle John’s point of making money work for you. It’s important to generate passive income.

However, I do think there is a luck factor in Uncle John’s success. When he purchased his first two houses, the gap between monthly mortgage payment and monthly rent in the bay area housing market was small. Therefore, he was able to cover his mortgage by collecting rent payments.

It is much harder to do that today in the bay area. Houses are  so expensive that there is no way to cover the mortgage by collecting rents.

I raised the question to Uncle John. He said that it’s true that the housing price is getting too high in the bay area. But, he would buy houses in cheaper areas in California such as Tracy, Sacramento, etc. Disclaimer: I don’t have specific knowledge about the real estate markets in areas such as Tracy, Sacramento, etc. So, please don’t take this example literally.

But, I believe the lessons still hold: make money work for you, generate passive income stream, invest wisely.

Related Posts:

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• How much should I deduct for 401K, HSA, and FSA during recession?
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Excellent Resources:

• Cashflow Quadrant: Rich Dad’s Guide to Financial Freedom
• Secrets To Creating Passive Income and becoming financially free – even in a slow economy
• Make a Fortune Promoting Other People’s Stuff Online: How Affiliate Marketing Can Make You Rich
• How I Made My First Million on the Internet and How You Can Too!: The Complete Insider’s Guide to Making Millions with Your Internet Business

John was laid off last week. His severance package will last for another 6 weeks. Given the depressing state of current job market, he probably will need several months to search for a job. Will he have enough cash to support his family until he gets his next job?

Michael and Mary will have an addition to their family in a few months. They rents an apartment in San Jose, CA, but they would like to buy a house in a good school district in the Silicon Valley. Although they both have six-figure income, it’d still be a little bit of stretch financially for them to purchase a single family house in the expensive Palo Alto, CA. Can they really afford such a house given their current level of expenses?

To answer any of the three questions above, you need to know how much cash you’re burning each month.

You might argue that expense is different from cash burned. For example, you can borrow $1,000 on your credit card, but only pay off $50 in cash this month. The $1,000 plus interests are the actual expense, while the $50 is the cash payment for this month.

For the sack of this article, I’m focusing on the fifty dollars cash payment. It’s your obligation to have the cash to make the payment.

Cash is king. Ironically, I know very few people who know their monthly burn rate. Every month, they have their paycheck directly deposited to their bank account. But, they don’t really track how much are spent each month.

You should know your cash burn rate before you get burned financially. It’s really personal finance 101.

Here is how I track my cash burn rate.

I use a single checking account to pay off my bills. Every month, I’ll download a copy of the monthly statement from the bank web site. I’ll add all of the expense items, which gives me the cash burn rate for the month. Having a single bank account to pay off bills make this process simple and easy.

To drill down my expenses, I go to Mint.com, which automatically uploads all of my bills, and generates nice charts to show me the sources of my cash expenditures. It also lets me set and track budget goals.

It only takes a few minutes each month, but give me a lot of peace of mind.

Do you know your cash burn rate? If the answer is no, I suggest you to spend an hour to get a better understanding of your cash burn rate.

Know your cash burn rate before you get burned financially.

Recommended resources:

• The Intelligent Investor: The Definitive Book on Value Investing. A Book of Practical Counsel (Revised Edition)
• Crash Proof 2.0: How to Profit From the Economic Collapse
• A Gift to My Children: A Father’s Lessons for Life and Investing
• TurboTax Deluxe Federal + State 2009 + efile

"I don’t think parents should pay the full amount of their kid’s education expenses. They can get scholarships and loans for their education, but we will not be able to get scholarships and loans for our retirement."

Looking around me, I know several different kinds of parents with regard to paying for their kids college education:

• Wealthy parents who provide everything to their kids. 
• Middle-class parents who could barely afford to pay for their kids’ education. But, they have to live a very frugal life, save, save, and save.
• Middle-class parents who could only afford part of their kids’ education expenses. They feel tremendously guilty about their inability to fully support their children.
• Low-income parents who simply cannot afford. To a large extent, they let their kids to figure out how to pay for their education.

I have two little ones. When they get a little bit older, I’ll tell them that I’ll help them, but not much. They will have to earn their way to finish college and beyond.

This has nothing to do with my own financial means or ability to pay. I guess you can call it "tough love". Let me explain from my own experience.

As I wrote in I grew up in the hood, I had a humble beginning. From early on, I knew that I had to figure out a way to pay for college education myself. During my senior year in high school, I spent a lot of weekends in the public libraries to research about scholarships, grants, and other forms of financial aids. I read every financial aid book the library had. I applied every single scholarship that I was eligible for. I submitted my financial aid application on the first day that I was allowed to submit.

The process of applying scholarship was like selling a product. The more cold calls/sales visits you make, the more sales you’re going to get. I applied hundreds of scholarships, and ended up with several thousand dollars of free money.

The summer before I started college, I calculated my budget on a spreadsheet. I went through a similar budgeting process before every semester. I tracked my expenses closely. I worked every summer during college.

The result? I was able to self-finance 100% of my college education. I never asked for a single cent from my parents. I never ran out of money. I didn’t have any financial worry during college, which allowed me to focus on my study.

This experience was extremely beneficial to me:

• I learned to be very resourceful since I had to rely on myself to get the funding for my education.
• I acquired personal financial literacy early on.
• I learned to be financially disciplined and responsible.
• I learned to save.

While I was in college, I was amazed by how little some of my classmates knew about money matters. When they ran out of money, they just called their parents. Some of them complained about how expensive college had become, but they never took any initiative to figure out how to work the system to get more free money for their education.

A few years ago, I had the opportunity to speak to a group of under privileged high school students in rural Montana. Most of them never thought about going to college. I told them:

"It’s true that college tuition keeps going up and it’s getting harder to pay for college education. But, this country still provides many resources to help students to make through college. Nobody in America should be prevented to go to college because of financial reasons."

A lot of people will disagree with my statement. But, I really believe that with the proper planning and resourcefulness, you’ll figure out a way to pay for your own education.

When my kids go to college, I want them to learn to be resourceful, and figure out how to pay for their own education. I’ll be there to provide support, but I don’t want them to be fed with a "silver spoon".

Amazon.com stock is trading at $130.15/share this afternoon. Its P/E ratio is 76.74. Google’s P/E ratio is 36.56. Apple’s P/E ratio is 32.28. Given Amazon’s thin margin, its current stock price is absurd. It’s the kind of number we saw during the last great Internet bubble.

The national unemployment rate is 10.2%. And the broader measure of unemployment rate stands at 17.5%. In the past 30 days, we have seen layoffs from Electronic Art (3,000), United Online (71+), Microsoft (800), RealNetworks (70), Sun (3,000), etc. I’m getting busy again to update GeekMBA360.com Great Depression 2.0 Layoff Tracker. Job creation is absolutely crucial for economic recovery. It’s not getting better at all.

Nouriel Roubini, an economist and NYU professor who correctly predicted the current economic crisis, warned that Mother of Carry Trades Faces an Inevitable Bust. Roubini recently said:

"Eventually there’s going to be an end to this carry trade. When that snapback of the dollar is going occur it’s not going to be 2 percent or 3 percent, it’s going to be more like 25 or 20 percent. And then everybody will have to close their shorts on the dollar, they’ll have to sell these risky assets across the world and you could have this huge asset bubble going into an asset bust." 

Golden Sachs is looking to buy millions of dollars of tax credits from government controlled mortgage giant Fannie Mae. Warren Buffet is joining Goldman in bid for Fannie Mae Tax Credits. So, the taxpayer bailed out the banks. Now, banks are trying to save more money by "bailing out" Fannie Mae, which is controlled by the government. Who is at short end of all of these? Taxpayers.

I don’t want to sound like a pessimist. But, I’m a realist. Our own employment, security, personal finance and family well-being have a lot to do with the overall economic environment.

I want to share with you my concerns. The economic crisis is far from over. It’s not time to relax. Save. Diversify your income. Hold onto your job even if you don’t like it. Prepare for a rainy day.

I wish I’m wrong. But, until then, I’m working my tail off.

Related posts:

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• How much should I deduct for 401K, HSA, and FSA during recession?
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Excellent resources:

• The New Paradigm for Financial Markets: The Credit Crisis of 2008 and What It Means
• Hot Commodities: How Anyone Can Invest Profitably in the World’s Best Market
• The Dollar Crisis: Causes, Consequences, Cures , Revised and Updated

• I don’t have interest/passion in tracking individual stocks. I’d rather spend time doing other things I enjoy doing.
• I want to have a good night of sleep every night. I don’t want to spend time worrying about my investment.
• In my opinion, stock trading doesn’t create any real value. I want to become wealthy by creating real values. I believe that one major cause of our current financial mess is that we’ve too many bankers, and too few builders. I like to succeed the old fashion way by working hard, working smart, helping others, and creating values.
• I believe stock market is NOT efficient. Some people have information advantage over others.
• I understand that it’s very hard to beat the market if I have to pay extra fees to personal financial advisors and fund managements.
• I agree with Mark Cuban — Stock Market is for Suckers.
• I respect and admire John Bogle. I believe in his philosophy of index investing. Following his advice in The Little Book of Common Sense Investing: The Only Way to Guarantee Your Fair Share of Stock Market Returns (Little Books. Big Profits), The Bogleheads’ Guide to Investing, and Enough: True Measures of Money, Business, and Life, I earned positive returns for my 401K in 2008 while most people I know lost 40% or more in their 401K accounts.