Negotiating Your Investments : Use Proven Negotiation Methods to Enrich Your Financial Life

Life would be much simpler if every aspect of personal finance was always honest, straightforward, and fairly priced. The truth is, though, managing your money means succeeding in relationships with advisors, stockbrokers, fund managers, banks, accountants, lawyers, and others. Even market transactions contain elements of negotiation. Master negotiating strategist Steven G. Blum knows this better than anyone, and in this book he applies his negotiating insights to the world of individual investing. Once reserved for students of Blums award-winning class at the University of Pennsylvanias Wharton Business School, this pioneering approach to personal finance is now available to all. To many of us, it seems foreign to think of investing as a type of negotiation, but Negotiating Your Investments presents an innovative perspective that could change the way individual investors operate. Financial advisors and other middlemen are often viewed as neutral service providers, like telephone repairmen or supermarket cashiers. Sometimes they are deeply trusted like doctors or clergy. Steve Blum explains that, in reality, buying securities is a lot like buying a house or a car, and we should constantly be on the lookout for ways to make investment deals that favor us, not the salesmen. Before negotiating investments, we need to understand the basic principles and concepts that apply in all negotiation scenarios. In this book, Steve Blum reveals the negotiating framework used by the worlds top negotiators. Starting from the process of defining outcomes and alternatives and progressing through the closing phase, this method has gained prominence in top businesses and law firms. The authors conversational style makes these bargaining techniques accessible even to people who are intimidated by the thought of the negotiating table. Individual investors could pay millions of dollars in fees, commissions, and other investment costs over the course of their lives. But many have no idea whether theyre getting value for their money, simply because they fail to use the tools of a negotiator. In Negotiating Your Investments , readers learn that the impact of this passivity can make or break a familys wealth. This book applies a proven negotiation process to personal financial management in a way that allows readers to ensure that, in their approach to investing, they come out on top.