Jane Bryant Quinn
The shortest period of time lies between the minute you put some money away for a rainy day and the unexpected arrival of rain.Collection: Funny
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.Collection: Money
Savings will not make you rich. Only canny investments do that. The role of savings is to keep you from becoming poor.Collection: Money
Financial planners who take commissions have a built-in conflict of interest...even with disclosure, my choice would be a Fee-Only planner.Collection: Choices
hindsight is not a strategy.Collection: Planning
The chief function of stock-market forecasters is to make astrologers look respectable.Collection: Looks
Buy a friend; hire a lawyer.Collection: Lawyer
Never try to time the bond market. Anyone who claims to know the future of interest rates is certifiable.Collection: Trying
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.Collection: Money
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.Collection: Retirement
You get the most out of what you need the least.Collection: Needs
Where you stand should not depend on where you sit.Collection: Political
The best real-estate investments with the highest yields are in working-class neighborhoods, because fancy properties are overpriced.Collection: Real
Lawyers are operators of the toll bridge across which anyone in search of justice has to pass.Collection: Law
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.Collection: Money
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.Collection: Stay Strong
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.Collection: Money
Auto insurance is a toll bridge, over which every honest driver has to pass.Collection: Bridges
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.Collection: Money
Everyone needs a small-town banker. Especially in a big town.Collection: Money
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.Collection: Appreciation
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.Collection: Smart
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.Collection: Running
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?Collection: Real
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.Collection: Brain
It's a fact: stock investors sometimes lose money on their way to wealth. Get over it.Collection: Way
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.Collection: Real
Equality is never given, it is taken.Collection: Taken
You normally don't get a margin call unless your securities, minus the debt, are worth 30% or less of their nominal market value.Collection: Debt
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.Collection: Years