No-nonsense & easy to follow financial advice

This is a very informative book that is designed for the novice who is quite inexperienced in managing their money. If you are a somewhat savvy investor, you may wish to skip the book, but may still learn a few tips in it.

Jane is an intelligent no-nonsense financial writer. Her presentation is straightforward and doesn’t talk down to you. Her assumption is that the reader is intelligent but somewhat uninformed.

Target audience: Young people, people who are always behind the 8-ball with their finances, those who want to learn a bit more, those who need to focus on their financial skills.

Some of the advice in this book I’ve known for a very long time. An example is about life insurance. Many people have the wrong insurance or insufficient insurance. A young family’s breadwinner should have at least $500,000, preferably more. This will help the family to continue with a comfortable lifestyle if something were to happen. She also is very critical about whole life insurance. It is good only in very rare cases; it is best that this breadwinner have considerable amounts of term insurance rather than a significantly smaller whole life policy.

There is considerable talk about retirement funds, be they 401k, Roth IRAs, SEP accounts, regular IRAs which is informative and discusses their unique advantages.

Other sage advice is with use of a financial planner. They are useful, but you have to be careful who you get advice from. It is best to get the advice from someone who plans and is not a salesman. The latter is concerned about their bottom line; not yours. Plus they may charge an hourly fee to sell their products!

She provides many websites for people to avail themselves of additional information. There are websites that have mortgage, finance calculators which will assist someone in finding the best deal for the biggest investment of their life. She doesn’t tell you where to buy any of these products, but she does talk about T. Rowe Price, Vanguard, and Fidelity with authority.

There is additional advice on how to deal with credit cards, your credit rating, your retirement, education expenses for you (or your family). There is considerable write-up about special accounts you can set up to put away cash for your children’s education. This is another investment parents make in their futures. In addition, she provides additional advice or opinions about using your home as an ATM to get cash. (you don’t…goal is to pay down your home mortgage not increase it). Yes, you can obtain a tax deductible loan to pay for a new kitchen, college for the kids, pay for a vacation, or purchase a car. Some of these may be good ideas; others are NOT. Read the book to find out. Common sense should tell you that a home equity loan is not a good way to go on vacation. As to purchasing a car; that is fine, providing you can pay it off quickly. You don’t want to be financing that car at 5.25% for the next dozen years. That will cost significantly more than a four year loan at 7%.

The attitude of this book is not to be wearing a hair shirt and not enjoying life. However, one needs to make certain decisions and sacrifices if they wish to have a healthy retirement. Fancy vacations, clothes, dinners, and cars are wonderful but they are no longer there in the future.

Although I view myself as somewhat savvy with my personal finances, I did learn a few things in that I can allow myself a few pleasures but she also talks about some painless methods to put away additional cash for your future.