Index Investing For Dummies Book

The book is easy to understand, at least for the most parts, comprehensive, and terribly entertaining. It is really helpful if you have a basic understanding of mutual funds, especially pros and cons of having them, before reading this book; otherwise, it is a good idea to do some reading about mutual funds, including front and back loads, no load funds, and which mutual fund companies are the ones with the lowest expenses. Also the book very briefly mentions that when you own stocks, you pay capital gains taxes only after selling them, but if you own mutual funds you may end up paying taxes for thousands of dollars at the end of each tax year (capital gains), even if the mutual fund performs below the market, just because the fund manager sold some stocks during the year. If you buy index funds instead of managed ones, not only the amount of capital gain taxes you pay may be lower, since the turnover rate of the stocks in an index fund is lower, but also index funds spread the risk more so than managed ones, since they have a large number of stocks in them.
Although I wouldn't expect this from a book about investing, this book made me laugh and smile from the beginning to the end and I appreciated the author's sense of humor that made the subject matter easier to learn. I recommend this book to new investors as well as seasoned ones because the book has a lot of information about investing in general such as how to find a stock broker/financial advisor/money manager, the expenses involved in investing, how to identify the hidden fees/ your return, and how to shop for a mutual fund.