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Start to Finish: Dealing with money at all stages of life
REVIEWS BY ELLEN R. MARSDEN The way we relate to money starts at a young age, but it's never too late to correct bad habits. As you plan for 2006, these new books will help you no matter where you are in life: starting a new marriage, facing retirement or planning your legacy.
By Jordan E. Goodman Warner Business, $24.95 346 pages ISBN 0446578010
What's your number?
By Lee Eisenberg Free Press, $26 304 pages ISBN 0743270312
Making it easy
First of all, Quinn recommends that you start saving. Even if you have a paycheck-to-paycheck life with "no money to spare," she has a tried, true and simple technique to prove you wrong. And if you're already saving, she has ideas for how you can save more without feeling a pinch. She helps you assess your current situation and then provides effective strategies to get you to your financial goals in a smart way.
By Jane Bryant Quinn Simon & Schuster, $26 228 pages ISBN 0743269942
A series for life
Your home will probably be your most expensive investment, so you want to make the best buying decision possible. On the Road: Buying a Home helps demystify what can be a daunting process. It includes such topics as deciding what type of home is right for you and how to find it, finance it and close on it. On the Road: Surviving Divorce helps the newly separated get through this difficult time with clear, step-by-step information on weathering the financial part of the process. This book addresses issues such as what to look for when hiring an attorney, arbitrator or mediator; how to divide up assets, pension and retirement plans; making decisions about alimony and child support; and creating a new budget.
By Sheryl Garrett Dearborn, $15.95 256 pages ISBN 1419500473
By Sheryl Garrett Dearborn, $15.95 234 pages ISBN 1419500465
By Sheryl Garrett Dearborn, $15.95 158 pages ISBN 1419500414
Don't will it away
Creating the Good Will is organized around the seven laws of distribution—the people and personality issues that the will should take into consideration. Among the laws: Consider Your Values; Face Family Dynamics: It's Not Just About the Money; Recognize Fair Is Not Always Equal; It's Not What You Say, It's How You Say It . . . and If You Bother to Say it at All.
By Elizabeth Arnold Portfolio, $22.95 224 pages ISBN 1591841194
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Money is never just about money. There's always an emotional component to it, representing our fears, desires and doubts. In Master Your Money Type: Using Your Financial Personality to Create a Life of Wealth and Freedom, Jordan E. Goodman helps readers discover their dominant money values, attitudes and behaviors and discusses the emotional baggage standing in the way of improving one's finances. Host of the radio program "The Investor's Edge" and a regular contributor to American Public Media's "Marketplace Morning Report," Gordon is also the author of two previous best-selling books, including Everyone's Money Book. In Master Your Money, he contends that there are six money types, and that readers can work within their type to take action and change what's preventing them from doing better. Each chapter opens with a type profile and its particular strengths and weaknesses, followed by case studies and recommendations on making emotional and financial path changes that will help readers develop successful strategies to an improved financial plan. The book also includes easy-to-understand cash flow/asset and liability worksheets, quizzes and monthly budgeting worksheets.
Support your 
When it comes to their financial future, most people have a number in mind—the amount of money they will need to live comfortably—but many anxiously wonder if they can really make it. There are 77 million baby boomers in America, many of whom are just now realizing that the corporate pensions, Social Security and inheritances they were banking on might well add up to less than they had hoped. The Number: A Completely Different Way to Think About the Rest of Your Life by Lee Eisenberg, examines the most common financial and emotional issues related to "the number" and how to get a handle on them. Eisenberg, a former editor-in-chief of Esquire, writes with wit and insight as he urges people to examine the life they want to lead, not just how much money they need but what they need it for. While not a how-to book, The Number is designed to help people examine their goals, anxieties and dreams so they can better determine their "number" and create a financial plan for achieving it.
If you start off right by buying good insurance and setting up an automatic system for saving, investing and clearing debts, your finances can run themselves. From then on, it's hands off. Sound simple? It is, according to Jane Bryant Quinn in her new book, Smart and Simple Financial Strategies for Busy People. Quinn, a leading commentator on personal finance, award-winning Newsweek and Good Housekeeping columnist and author of several best-selling books on money, offers the most straightforward and sensible products and strategies she knows—and uses—to manage money and accumulate wealth without having to think about it.
The On the Road personal finance series from Dearborn includes three new titles to help navigate life's financial milestones. At $15.95 each, these straightforward guides, edited by Sheryl Garrett, CFP, are confidence-building resources in situations that could otherwise be a tangled money maze. You signed the marriage certificate, but are you on the same page financially? On the Road: Getting Married helps partners create a financial plan together to address everything from how to spend and save money, determining the kind and amount of insurance to buy, planning for the kids' college education and budgeting for retirement.
No one wants his or her will to cause trouble in the family. And by using the advice in Creating the Good Will: The Most Comprehensive Guide to Both the Financial and Emotional Sides of Passing on Your Legacy, it won't. With years of experience as an estate-planning attorney and now president of a consulting firm that helps families with wills and estate plans, author Elizabeth Arnold has written a comprehensive guide including nuts and bolts information such as what wills and trusts are and how they work. Moreover, she has written a very human book encouraging a process of self-examination including one's hopes in life, values and beliefs and what is wished for loved ones in order to help clarify what readers want to do in their will and why.