How Decisions Were Made

How Decisions Were Made

If you're interested in how the guide writers choose the recommended financial services, investing strategies, and more then this is the page for you.

If you have any questions after going through the information below, please send them over by clicking here.

Because this page is quite long to provide all the explanations behind the guide's choices, you can always use the "Table of Contents" to skip to the part that you are interested in.

If you have any questions regarding anything on this page—or have a suggestion—please let us know by clicking here.

Books read

Besides conducting a lot of our research online, we made sure to go back to the classics and the new finance books in order to provide the most up to date information. Down below you'll find the books that we read extensively ordered by year published:

  • The Intelligent Investor (1949), by Benjamin Graham
  • Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits (1958), by Philip A. Fisher
  • A Random Walk Down Wall Street (1973) by Burton G. Malkiel
  • One Up on Wall Street (1989) by Peter Lynch
  • Beating the Street (1993) by Peter Lynch
  • Stocks for the Long Run (1994), by Jeremy Siegel
  • Learn to Earn (1995) by Peter Lynch
  • Rich Dad Poor Dad (1997) by Robert T. Kiyosaki
  • The Neatest Little Guide To Stock Market Investing (1998) by Jason Kelly
  • Common Sense on Mutual Funds (1999) by John Bogle
  • Irrational Exuberance (2000) by Robert J. Shiller
  • How to Make Money in Stocks (Fourth edition, revised 2009), by William J. O'Neil
  • The 3% Signal (2015) by Jason Kelly
  • The Essays of Warren Buffett: Lessons for Corporate America (Fifth edition, revised 2019) by Warren Buffett and Lawrence Cunningham

As for which ones we recommend, the books by Jason Kelly were the most data-driven and well written. Controversial, we know. Start there and if you want to read more, consider reading any of the books published from 1990 to the present day.

Personal Capital

We choose to use Personal Capital because of these pros and cons:

Pros:

  • Free
  • Easy to use
  • No ads
  • Comprehensive view of overall finances
  • In-depth investment checkup
  • Supports web and mobile
  • Investment account fee analyzer
  • Upcoming bills notifier

Cons:

  • Budging tool can be improved

As you can see, the pros of Personal Capital far outweigh the cons. Of course, there are more pros and cons than those listed above, but these are the ones that we are considered for our users.

For a more in-depth look at Personal Capital, check out these reviews:

M1 Finance

We choose to use Personal Capital because of these pros and cons:

Pros:

  • Zero fees
  • User friendly
  • Low account minimums
  • Fractional shares investing
  • Management free
  • Large selection of ETFs and stocks
  • Automated

Cons:

The pros of M1 Finance provides far outweigh its cons. Of course, there are more pros and cons than those listed above, but these are the ones that we were concerned about for our users.

The biggest reason that we choose M1 Fiances over other investing platforms is that M1 can be almost completely automated, something that we did not find done well anywhere else.

This would make sure that as long as the readers of the guide keep feeding M1 Finance money, they would eventually become millionaires.

The lack of tax-loss harvesting hurts M1 Finances' overall score in our opinion, but its pros and automation capabilities more than makeup for that.

For a more in-depth of M1 Finance, check out these reviews:

💸The Automatic Millionaire