Product Description
The Wall Street Journal Guide to Understanding Personal Finance gives you clear, simple explanations of the complextities you face every day in your financial life. This revised and updated edition also includes the information you’ll need to make smart decisions about — and avoid the pitfalls of — banking, credit, home finance, financial planning, investing and taxes.Amazon.com Review
Kenneth M. Morris and Virginia B. Morris update this now classic ha… More >>
Wall Street Journal Guide to Understanding Personal Finance
Tags: amazon, home finance, simple explanations, smart decisions, virginia b morris, wall street journal, wall street journal guide, wall street journal guide to understanding personal finance
The world of personal finance and investing has exploded, as witnessed by the growth of books on the subject. But for many people, the understanding of the difference between an IRA and the IRS is a bit hazy. That’s what this book is for. It is not a deep analysis of how to invest. It is however a quick primer to bring you up to speed for the more detailed books. Issues are covered on a high level, but are meant to introduce the reader to what Personal Finance encompasses – banking, investing, buying a home, paying taxes. It is a springboard for starting to learn more, or to just grab when you’re unsure what a convertable bond is compared to a zero coupon bond. Today it is taken too much for granted that people know what they need to in order to even start making financial decisions. This book is a good cheat sheet for those who just want to get a basic understanding.
Rating: 4 / 5
this book is a great introduction to personal finance, including banking, loans, investing, taxes, and retirement planning. it covers all of the basics, provides a nice, clear description of the processes and the structures of documents, and a glossary of important terms.
however, it’s just an introduction. the book doesn’t spend more than a few pages on any subtopic (ie the structure of a paycheck, the basics of a tax form). for details you’ll have to go elsewhere, so keep that in mind.
as such, i’d reccomend this book to someone who is just learning the basics of money and the world of personal finance. it’s a big world, you don’t need to start with all of the details, so this is a good place to start. but very quickly you’ll find you need more information, and you’ll outgrow this book.
Rating: 4 / 5
An excellent first step to understanding your financial activities. It really does start at the beginning: your local bank and its services, checks, ATMs, savings, monthly statements etc. In the other five chapters (Credit, Home finance, Financial planning, Investing, Taxes) most of the other money matters that you’ll encounter are explained.
Finance seems to be a mystery to a lot of folk so the writer’s and designer’s of this book have done their best to make it as straightforward as possible and rather than have page after page of what could be very dry text each spread has lots of smart graphics, colored panels and jargon-free text that flows between these visual elements. It is all very controlled and as a publication designer I can appreciate the creative input that has gone into these pages. (I liked it so much I included it in my Listmania ‘Ten of my favorite well designed books’).
If you think you know all about your money this is not the book for you but if you don’t then get this book and find out about your finances in these very user friendly pages. The same editorial folk have done another excellent book, ‘Guide to Understanding Money and Investing’, using the same straightforward language and graphic techniques and although the subject is a lot more complex it is still easy to understand.
Rating: 5 / 5
A book that calls itself a guide should be full of information that the reader can take and use on his/her own. This book has a good overview of finances, but it does a poor job of relating one branch of finance to another. There is no building of knowledge for the reader, so it is as if you are reading a different book on each page. For a book issued by the Wall Street Journal, I was rather disappointed.
Rating: 3 / 5
Most of us have some gaps in our understanding of personal finances. This approachable guide lays it out briefly and understandably. Since my attention span is short for this topic, this is the kind of guide I needed.
For instance, the two-page section on DEALING WITH A LENDER, shows a loan application form with 6 boxed explanations for parts of the form.
You won’t learn everything you need to know in two-page bites, but it gets you briefed on everything from mutual funds, making a will, getting insurance, understanding credit card statements, 401(k) plans, your W-2 form, etc.
Once you grasp the basics, you can find a book specifically on wills or whatever you are dealing with at the moment.
Gaining control over your finances can start with this book!
Rating: 5 / 5