People who promise that they can make you truckloads of cash and help you keep it as long as you follow their simple five-points program aren't telling you the whole story. Easy steps turn out to be not so easy, and advice that seemed great in theory turns out to be next to useless in practice. I suspect that many of these people have never made a dime except in book sales! I read a ton of these personal finance guides because every time someone writes a new one, which seems like every five minutes, the publisher comes to me to pen the introduction and give it my seal of approval. Many of these books are well-written, some of them by terrific people, but they generally don't tell you what you need to know. I swear, more books have been written about creating and keeping wealth than any one person could read in a lifetime, but I have yet to find a single one that actually tells you, in detail, what you must do during every stage of your life to develop enduring wealth and ensure that you never have to worry about your money again. So I decided to fix that problem by writing this one. For most people, there are few things that are more confusing and frustrating than trying to manage their finances. I can't tell you how many people I've spoken to who agonize over trying to pick the right mutual fund and end up giving up, their money still in a checking account, because the decision was too hard and reliable information was too scarce. If you're looking for a financial plan, it's easy to get a broad outline, but very hard to find anyone who will give you specific, detailed advice. But that's exactly what I'm going to do. Others are more than willing to show you the forest: save money, pay off your credit card debt, contribute to your 401(k), start an IRA. But no one will identify the trees, where the money is actually grown. How should you manage your IRA? What, specifically, should you own in your retirement and discretionary accounts? Which of the most popular mutual funds available in your 401(k) plan is the best place to put your money? I'll even recommend the best mutual funds, using all the data available as I write this book.

Too many books about money go wrong because they try to offer timeless advice. There's no such thing as timeless advice. The really useful financial information is time-sensitive. I don't know if the people who try to write timeless advice do it to create financial planning books for the ages or to avoid exposing themselves to risk. Nobody will every get pilloried for telling you that the best long-term investment is a low-cost index fund, like the Vanguard 500, which is the classic cheap Standard & Poor's 500 index fund. Never mind that unless we're talking about John Bogle, the man who invented the index fund, no one dispensing this advice is adding even an ounce of value to the conventional wisdom. Timeless advice is the lazy man's way out, and though I've been called almost every unflattering word in the dictionary, I've never been called lazy. Instead of regurgitating eternal principles, I've rolled up my sleeves, Mad Money-style, and found the best places to put your money right now.

When I select the best actively managed funds, I am choosing the best mutual funds that you should invest in today. It would be nothing short of miraculous if every single mutual fund I highlight in this book beat the market over the next few years, but I have total conviction that most of these funds will be winners. I would rather stick my neck out by giving you specific, timely advice than play it safe with timeless but vague suggestions. I'll tell you how I go about ranking funds too, but the point isn't just for you to use my methods, it's for you to try to make money in the mutual funds I recommend. I was a manager who beat almost every other manager. I know what to look for that others don't. I grade them the way a professor grades kids in college, except I grade them hard. As I say at the beginning of every Mad Money show, I am not about making friends, I am about making you money, and you must know that when I recommend a fund, it's not to please anyone but you. Unlike so many others, I have no skin in the game. I don't get rebates, referrals, kickbacks, percentages, commissions. Nothing. Just the satisfaction of knowing that I am using my twenty-five years of successful money management to help you become wealthy.

Sure, I've got plenty of things to say that will still be true a hundred years from now, when these mutual funds likely will no longer even exist. I'll explain everything you might need to know about creating wealth, from the day you're born until the day you decide you have enough dough. That means you'll read some things in this book that you've read before. I'm going to tell you to save money, to invest in your company's 401(k) if it has one, to start an IRA, and all the other boring but good advice. The difference between this book and all the other books that have been written about personal finance is that I don't stop there. I don't think it's helpful to tell people to start an IRA without telling them how to manage it and giving them some specific ideas about what to buy for it — nuts and bolts that will make you more money than the other guys because that's what I was put on earth to do.

If you're looking to build your wealth over the long term, to ensure prosperity for yourself and your family, then stick with me and I'll teach you how to get rich, stay rich, and stay mad for life!

Excerpted from “Jim Cramer's Stay Mad for Life” by Jim Cramer. © 2007 by J.J. Cramer & Co. Excerpted by permission of Simon and Schuster. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

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