The Complete Personal Finance Handbook: A Step-by-Step Instructions to Take Control of Your Financial Future With Companion CD-ROM
Product Description
Personal financial planning is the process of establishing your own financial goals and creating a way to reach them. The ongoing process involves examining all existing resources, developing a plan to use them, and systematically implementing the plan to achieve your short and long-term goals. They must be monitored and reviewed periodically to make adjustments to assure that they continue to move you toward your financial goals. Your family’s financial future depe… More >>
The Complete Personal Finance Handbook: A Step-by-Step Instructions to Take Control of Your Financial Future With Companion CD-ROM
This book is touted as a step-by-step guide to take control of your financial future and it is everything and more than that. Each chapter can be read independently of others so if readers only want information on retirement plans, that chapter stands on its own as a useful source of in-depth information. Other topics covered include: how to break bad spending habits, banking options, accumulating “good” debt versus “bad,” how to choose credit cards, investment options and strategies and daily ways to save that can add up over the course of a year. This chapter is particularly interesting as it shows real life examples of going cold turkey on those daily lattes or cigarettes and how those savings can be invested instead.
Another useful chapter is the one on debt and divorce. Considering the 50% divorce rate in this country, this is good information to have on hand when stress and emotions can overtake common financial sense.
Overall, this book is a reference guide on most every topic having to do with financial stability that college students, working professionals and retirees will find beneficial.
Rating: 5 / 5
The Complete Personal Finance Handbook provides extensive information on how to handle your personal finances effectively. It is especially useful for people who: a) need to know how to make and keep a budget; b) want to set financial goals and consequently achieve them; c) want to learn how to save and make saving a habit; and d) want to stay out of debt and avoid bankruptcy. This book is also for those who are financially sound and are in need of information regarding retirement and investment options.
Teri Clark clearly presents the information in a very organized manner. Found at the beginning of each chapter are definitions of important financial terms, written in boxed captions for easy reference. Additionally, each chapter ends with a summary of the most important points covered, which facilitates easy recall of what has been taken up. The author also provides appendices that offer practical tips and useful worksheets in financial management; and a glossary for easy look up of financial terms. This personal handbook is certainly complete and encompasses a wide range of topics in personal financial management such as budgeting, banking, saving, insurance, retirement, credit, debt and bankruptcy and investing.
Overall, this great and complete handbook can assist readers in taking control of their financial future. The instructions are quite easy to follow because they are presented in a step-by-step fashion.
Rating: 5 / 5
I’m pretty bad with money, I like to wear the nicest clothes, eat out at least five times a week, and it seems as if I never have enough money for my bills. After reading The Complete Personal Finance Handbook by Teri Clark I had learned about all of the important basics of personal finance. What’s great about this book is that it’s practical. The first lesson that she teaches is about how spending money on your habits can cost you a lot in the long run. Clark figures out how much a coffee a day for a year can cost you and how much it costs to buy paperbacks instead of checking them out from the library. This handbook has just about everything that someone would need to understand about how to budget their money or, if they are already into trouble with their money, how to get out of debt. Some of the topics covered are making a budget, choosing and buying stocks, ways to set up a retirement fund, paying off your debt, filing for bankruptcy, checking your credit rating, getting a mortgage or car loan, buying the type of insurances that you need, and more.
It’s hard for me to recommend who this book would be good for, because I think it would be a practical read for everyone. It’s great for someone who is going into college, because they would benefit from the chapters on paying for college, credit cards, and budgeting. It would be good for someone starting their first job; they could learn about setting up retirement accounts and insurance. And everyone can learn about their credit, getting a mortgage, making a livable and realistic budget, and getting out of debt.
I would recommend this book for everybody. Even if you think you know everything there is to know about money, you’ll learn something. The Complete Personal Finance Handbook book is easy to read, interesting, and filled with a lot of great facts. The book is really practical, and comes with a CD-ROM that has worksheets, charts and tables, and information to help you work through some of the topics in the book. I rated this book five stars because, for a book about money, it speaks to everybody. The way that it’s written makes it easy enough for everybody to understand, and the case studies that are sprinkled in between and the graphs and charts really drill in the importance of a lesson. For a book that’s just under 300 pages, it sure is filled with a lot of useful and up-to-date information.
Rating: 5 / 5
People tend to take two basic approaches to managing their finances–they either avoid it until something bad happens or they do what they can to understand how money works and how they can make their money work the best for their situation. The Complete Personal Finance Handbook not only makes a strong argument for the latter approach, it presents a straightforward, easy-to-understand approach for doing so.
The author starts at square one with budgets–what they are, why they’re important, and how to create them–and moves on to the various elements of money management from there. Terms and concepts are clearly defined along the way.
There’s nothing really new about the information presented in this book, but if you need help with the basics–how to establish a budget, how to determine the best places to put your money, how to protect your investments, how to start planning for retirement–this is a solid guide that will get you up to speed quickly.
Rating: 4 / 5
The Complete Personal Finance Handbook: Step-by Step Instructions to Take Control of Your Financial Future
By Robin C. Springer
January 15, 2008
Have you ever wanted someone to wade through the mountains of financial information that’s available “out there” and just tell you what to do to handle your money well? If that describes you, then this Personal Finance Handbook might be exactly what you are looking for. This is a comprehensive guide to handling every major aspect of your personal finances. Beginning with a discussion of budgeting and its benefits, it then clearly instructs the reader, step by step, on exactly how to create and live within a budget.
From there, a lesson on banks and banking procedures introduce the reader to the “larger picture” and how their own finances are affected by banks. It is a very enlightening chapter, and one that anyone who deals with banks ought to read and understand.
The strongest message contained within the book is the importance of creating and growing savings. This topic is very well covered, from the first “Why Save?” question to how compounding interest can work for you, to very practical chapters on specific practices and opportunities, depending on one’s circumstances.
Also well-covered are topics such as insurance, financial advisors, the wise use of credit, debt correction and avoidance, real estate and its role as an investment tool, stock market investing methods, and even taxes and their impact on your wealth. There is a very helpful appendix at the end of the book with worksheets, tables and graphs to help with specific tasks, all designed to help you along the road to financial well-being.
I would highly, highly recommend this book to anyone whose knowledge of the world of money might not be complete. The author is very clear, concise, and sensible about his instructions to the reader. It is truly a hands-on, tell-me-what-to-do guidebook to building one’s wealth.
Five Stars
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Rating: 5 / 5