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Your money for your life
REVIEWS BY SHARON H. SECOR
Strange topic for a bunch of people who had gathered to hike and mountain-bike in the autumn woods? Maybe, but a few years later, one couple moved to California to start new careers. They lived on savings for six months. Another couple financed a start-up company and graduate school. Two couples bought houses and built their financial reserves. All learned to manage their money for their lives. After all, you're not living just to earn money; you're earning money to finance the life of your dreams. This month, four new books help readers of all ages gain financial control and create financial freedom. Debt-Free by 30: Practical Advice for the Young, Broke, & Upwardly Mobile by Jason Anthony and Karl Cluck perfectly describes many former 20-somethings because both Anthony and Cluck have walked in those shoes. Self-described "clueless and carefree" spenders with $27,000 combined debt, the pair worked together to eliminate their financial messes by age 30. In this hysterically funny book, they share their "road to recovery" with us. Debt-Free by 30 manages to preach financial fitness to 20-somethings in a way that gets through the financial haze surrounding a 28-year-old's head. The authors first offer the Seven Debtly Sins. These would make anyone cringe, not just the debt-laden. The First Sin: Thou Shalt Not Count on Future Earnings to Pay Present Debt. The Second: Thou Shalt Not Be A Slave to Immediate Gratification. Another: Thou Shalt Not Pretend to be Too Busy To Think About Money. We've all transgressed when it comes to the Debtly Sins. Ultimately Cluck and Anthony offer sensible first-step approaches to saving money and, more importantly, refraining from spending all of it. They remind us that ATM stands for "Automatically Takes your Money" and share the confession of a friend, a money junkie, who took out $20 from an ATM four times a day. Practical, positive and painless, Debt-Free by 30 is the GenX guide to freedom from "limping toward the big 3-0 one minimum payment at a time." Financial freedom can be cool.
Practical Advice for the Young, Broke, & Upwardly Mobile By Jason Anthony and Karl Cluck Plume, $12 ISBN 0452282136
What's accumulating wealth all about anyway? Once you're financially healthy, Schwab says, you can enjoy the wonderful things your money can do for the causes and community you love. "Giving Back," a superb chapter on charitable giving, tells you how. Clearly, the chairman and founder of the international brokerage service knows what he's talking about. As an over-50 investor himself, Schwab understands the obstacles many in his generation face. Most baby boomers will care for aging parents in coming years. More than 90 percent of women will be solely responsible for their financial well-being at some point. And let's not mention those financially bereft GenXers who will return home to live. Nonetheless You're Fifty has a positive message: make retirement a time of freedom and fun, not a time of worry and doubt. Get financially healthy now and stay that way. Three cheers to Schwab for making life after 50 sound like so much fun.
Investing for the Second Half of Your Life By Charles R. Schwab Crown Business, $24 ISBN 0609605623
52 Weeks to Financial Fitness: The Week-by-Week Plan for Making Your Money Grow is the personal trainer to help you meet your goals. 52 Weeks is an easy-to-follow, week-by-week primer on financial topics. Loeb starts the workout gradually as you analyze your financial strength and set goals. Then he takes readers on a series of money exercises that include the whole family. By spring the kids are learning about money on the Internet. In early fall DRIPs and other no-load investment vehicles are added to the weekly workout. By year's end, you'll know how to tell a Roth IRA from a regular IRA and know the advantages of both. 52 Weeks doesn't promise to help you lose those 20 pounds or promise to put money in the bank, but it's a sensible, simple approach to financial fitness.
The Week-by-Week Plan for Making Your Money Grow By Marshall Loeb Crown Business, $25 ISBN 0812933370
Bridgforth, a former assistant vice president at Wells Fargo Bank, runs her own financial investment firm and has the financial credentials to back up her avant-garde approach to financial planning. Her exuberant, smart style runs through every page of this book. If Bridgforth can't encourage you to start a financial plan for whatever stage of life you're in, no one can.
A Sister's Guide to Healing Your Bank Account and Funding Your Dreams in 7 Simple Steps By Glinda Bridgforth Broadway, $19.95 ISBN 0767904877
It Takes a Prophet To Make a Profit: 15 Trends That Are Reshaping American Business by C. Britt Beemer and Robert L. Shook. Hockey player Wayne Gretzky once said, "I skate to where the puck is going, not to where it has been." Skating towards the future and spotting emerging trends is the meat of this enlightening new book. Detecting and understanding trends spur business innovation, but only certain companies know how to turn prophecy into profit.
15 Trends That Are Reshaping American Business By C. Britt Beemer and Robert L. Shook Simon & Schuster, $26 ISBN 0684865467
Mastering the Politics of the Business Inner Circle By Kathleen Kelley Reardon, Ph.D. Doubleday, $24.95 ISBN 0385495277
Sharon Secor is a Nashville-based business writer.
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Not long ago, in a cabin by an Adirondack lake, four couples sat by a roaring fire and compared their debt. One couple had amassed $15,000 in credit card debt. Another barely got by month-to-month and had defaulted on a student loan, despite MBAs and two good jobs. A third spent every penny earned and had no savings for the down payment on a starter-house. None of us, (oops . . . I mean them) had a budget or knew how to make one.
Parents, before you leap out to buy Debt-Free for your financially troubled progeny, take a minute to assess your own financial future with You're Fifty -- Now What?: Investing for the Second Half of Your Life by Charles R. Schwab. Whether you are approaching 50 or already past it, you will appreciate Schwab's upbeat message to a generation with its own financial quagmires. Insurance, estate planning and regularly revisited financial plans are just a few of Schwab's many practical solutions for the years approaching retirement.
So you're not 26 anymore but 50 still seems like the distant future? In between car pooling and soccer games and a 9-to-5 job, there's not much time to read The Wall Street Journal. Hope for your financial future is also at hand. Marshall Loeb, formerly managing editor at both Money and Fortune magazines, gives you a year to whip your financial strategy into shape. It works at the gym, so why not at the bank? If you want to lose 20 pounds, start working out. Loeb says if you want to be financially fit, commit to it.
So all this information about financial fitness and getting out of debt still doesn't motivate you to start reading? Your best choice might be Girl, Get Your Money Straight!: A Sister's Guide to Healing Your Bank Account and Funding Your Dreams in 7 Simple Steps by Glinda Bridgforth. Although this guide was written with African-American women in mind, Bridgforth's holistic and even historical approach to understanding why we can't manage our money is refreshing and useful for Sisters, Brothers and even new Fathers. The book is a refreshing and victorious look at managing money to fulfill your dreams. Girl, Get Your Money Straight offers a clear, concise guide to managing money through life's decades. In one's 20s, she advises saving 10 percent of income and maintaining an emergency fund. In the 30s, keep no more than two credit accounts and build your emergency money up to three to six month's salary. In the 40s, she stresses the importance of building equity in home ownership or a business.
The Secret Handshake: Mastering the Politics of the Business Inner Circle by Kathleen Kelley Reardon, Ph.D. While we all wish it weren't so, there is a "secret handshake" which distinguishes the inner circle from the outer in many corporations. These days, competence and even excellence in a chosen profession seems not to be enough for advancement. This effective and powerful book, written by a management professor, conveys the "secret handshake" of poise, professionalism, visibility and political savvy that inner circle leaders share and others can learn to master.