Introduction "Why are you callingme? These children are only ten years old. You should be calling the high schools." The year was 1986, and I was beginning my career as a financial advisor. Because I wanted to teach people about personal finance -- more about that later -- my wife, Jean, and I began offering college planning seminars to elementary-school PTA groups. Every time I telephoned a PTA president, I got the same reply. "Why are you callingme?" he or she would say. "These children are only ten years old. You should be calling the high schools.

" Back then, parents of young children never thought about college. The only issue pertaining to college was choosing one, a decision easily avoided until the child was a junior in high school. It never occurred to parents that college costs were skyrocketing and that they'd need many, many years to accumulate sufficient savings. It might be obvious to us now, but in the 1980s, college planning was a revolutionary idea. In fact, it wasn't just revolutionary -- it was unheard of. So too were the other aspects of investing and personal finance. For example, in 1989, as my reputation as a financial educator grew, I was invited for the first time to appear on the radio. After a brief introduction, the host presented me with a thoughtful question.

"What's a mutual fund?" he asked. My, how far we've come. Just two short decades ago, few people had ever heard of financial planning. Employers (not workers!) picked the investments for 401(k) plans; Individual Retirement Accounts were still fairly new (and when surveyed, most people said IRA meant the Irish Republican Army). Nobody worried that Social Security might go broke, and no one had ever heard of long-term care. College planning, retirement planning, estate planning -- none of these concepts was a part of mainstream America. Today, of course, all of this is well known, and everyone, it seems, knows the importance of saving for the future. This year's newborns will spend more than $250,000 to obtain a college degree, while today's middle class must accumulate millions of dollars if they want to retire in comfort and financial security.

Americans are rising to the challenge. They are spending more attention to personal finance than ever, and the marketplace has responded. When I started offering financial advice and education in 1986, the only consumer resource was Money magazine. Today there are dozens of magazines, two daily newspapers, an entire television news network, many radio programs, and literally thousands of books devoted to the subject. Personal finance peppers the general media as well -- even sitcoms feature story lines around household finance issues. All this demonstrates an unprecedented level of consumer awareness. And that awareness has led to action. Nearly 60% of all working Americans now contribute part of their paycheck to a retirement plan at work, and tens of millions have an IRA account.

Section 529 College Savings Plans are very popular (for reasons you'll read about in this book), and at cocktail parties, people are as likely to talk about mutual funds as sports. Retail mutual funds are, by far, the most popular investment vehicle in the country -- more than half of all American families, or 54 million households -- own them. With more than 8,400 funds holding $10 trillion in assets, it's not a stretch to say that retail mutual funds are almost as common and indispensable as automobiles. So. You now understand the need to engage in financial planning, and you're investing to meet your long-term goals of college and retirement. That's great news. But a new problem has developed, and this is why I've written this book -- a book I never imagined writing. Just as I gave you the truth about money in my first book, I must now alert you to the lies that are placing your financial security in jeopardy.

Some of these are lies.