1.
The shortest period of time lies between the minute you put some money away for a rainy day and the unexpected arrival of rain.
Jane Bryant Quinn
2.
The best real-estate investments with the highest yields are in working-class neighborhoods, because fancy properties are overpriced.
Jane Bryant Quinn
3.
Lawyers are operators of the toll bridge across which anyone in search of justice has to pass.
Jane Bryant Quinn
4.
Quinn's First Law of Investing is never to buy anything whose price you can't follow in the newspapers. An investment without a public marketplace attracts the fabulists the way picnics attract ants. Stock brokers and financial planners can tell you anything they want, because no one really knows what's true. The First Corollary to Quinn's First Law states that, even when the price is in the newspapers, you shouldn't buy anything too complex to explain to the average 12-year-old.
Jane Bryant Quinn
5.
Where you stand should not depend on where you sit.
Jane Bryant Quinn
6.
Financial planners who take commissions have a built-in conflict of interest...even with disclosure, my choice would be a Fee-Only planner.
Jane Bryant Quinn
7.
Savings will not make you rich. Only canny investments do that. The role of savings is to keep you from becoming poor.
Jane Bryant Quinn
8.
hindsight is not a strategy.
Jane Bryant Quinn
9.
Never try to time the bond market. Anyone who claims to know the future of interest rates is certifiable.
Jane Bryant Quinn
10.
It's daring and challenging to be young and poor, but never to be old and poor. Whatever resources of good health, character, and fortitude you bring to retirement, remember, also, to bring money.
Jane Bryant Quinn
11.
The rule on staying alive as a forecaster is to give 'em a number or give 'em a date, but never give 'em both at once.
Jane Bryant Quinn
12.
Everyone can get a little sloppy with cash and it's smart to notice. But what's squeezing you is the big stuff you ladle onto your credit cards.
Jane Bryant Quinn
13.
It seems like only yesterday that savers were dorks. They kept piggy banks. They drove last year's cars. They fished in their change purses for nickels while the superstars flashed credit cards. Today, values have changed. The new object of veneration is not money on the hoof but money in the bank - and the dorks all have it.
Jane Bryant Quinn
14.
For all the huffing and puffing of the doubters, a home of our own is still the rock on which our hopes are built. Price appreciation aside (and most houses will appreciate, eventually), homeownership is a state of mind. It's your piece of the earth. It's where a family's toes grow roots. It's where the flowers are yours, not God's.
Jane Bryant Quinn
15.
Life insurance can be numbingly complicated. Clients often turn off their brains and surrender their judgment to the very agent or planner who brought on their coma in the first place.
Jane Bryant Quinn
16.
You get the most out of what you need the least.
Jane Bryant Quinn
17.
A faithfully kept program of savings and conservative investments can give you more money and a better life than that of your neighbors who spend everything they get. This is probably the oldest financial advice in the world, but there are some things you can't improve on.
Jane Bryant Quinn
18.
The chief function of stock-market forecasters is to make astrologers look respectable.
Jane Bryant Quinn
19.
Buy a friend; hire a lawyer.
Jane Bryant Quinn
20.
You don't date an annuity, you marry it. An annuity isn't a mutual fund that you buy today and sell tomorrow. Nor is it a certificate of deposit, ready for any new use at maturity. When you buy an annuity, you are making (or ought to be making) a 15- or 20-year commitment, at least.
Jane Bryant Quinn
21.
Auto insurance is a toll bridge, over which every honest driver has to pass.
Jane Bryant Quinn
22.
Everyone needs a small-town banker. Especially in a big town.
Jane Bryant Quinn
23.
Three reasons not to have a [spending] plan: 1. You're rich enough to buy anything you want and still have plenty of money left over. 2. I forget the other two.
Jane Bryant Quinn
24.
Stock prices aren't real things. They're just froth on a wave. The wave is the only real thing, which investors forget when they're watching the ticket slither by.
Jane Bryant Quinn
25.
It's a fact: stock investors sometimes lose money on their way to wealth. Get over it.
Jane Bryant Quinn
26.
No one knows what stocks will do tomorrow, but the evidence is clear as to how they'll perform over 10 or 20 years. They will almost certainly go up.
Jane Bryant Quinn
27.
Equality is never given, it is taken.
Jane Bryant Quinn
28.
Everyone said, 'You can't lose money in real estate, because they're not making any more of it.' Hmmmm. Where did everyone go wrong?
Jane Bryant Quinn
29.
You normally don't get a margin call unless your securities, minus the debt, are worth 30% or less of their nominal market value.
Jane Bryant Quinn
30.
There is a secret to investing that cuts a path directly to the profits that you're looking for. The secret is simplicity. The more elementary your investment style, the more confident you can be of making money in the long run.
Jane Bryant Quinn