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?

hindsight is not a strategy.

Savings will not make you rich. Only canny investments do that. The role of savings is to keep you from becoming poor.

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.

Financial planners who take commissions have a built-in conflict of interest...even with disclosure, my choice would be a Fee-Only planner.

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.

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.