budgeting

This book will inevitably be compared to the newer work, The Road to Wealth by Ms. Suze Orman. Ms. Glink's book has the edge in having a simpler, easier-to-use format which is supplemented by many helpful work sheets. In most other ways, Ms. Orman's book is better as well as having more up-to-date information. Ms. Orman's book has the greatest relative advantage in her section on credit cards.

Like The Road to Wealth, this book will be of most value to those in the 17-25 year-old age group. For most people past 50, this book is at best a two-star effort. You learned most of these things a number of years ago unless you have or had a spouse who kept you away from finances.

The best sections in the book are on buying or leasing a car or truck, buying insurance, determining your net worth, measuring the economic impact of having two incomes, and deciding how much to spend on a home.

I thought that the sections on setting financial goals and investing in stocks were very below par. Both give information and general guidance that miss the mark. Setting financial goals is a small section. That's the most important thing you can do, and there's not enough guidance here. In stock investing, the point is not made that you can outperform over 95 percent of all professional investors by simply buying inexpensive indexed mutual funds. Instead, you get details about all kinds of ways of investing that most people should never do. The advice on how to select professionals to help you was also substandard compared to what you need.

Ms. Glink also emphasizes writing down all of your expenditures to create more frugal habits. Very few people are going to do that. On the hand, she omits the important subject of how to develop your income through your career decisions and actions. I thought the advice was thus imbalanced and impractical. A better thing to do would be to encourage people to write down what they spend on discretionary items and services. Most people could and would do that, and the results would provide most of the benefit with only a small portion of the time investment.

Although most of Ms. Glink's questions are good ones, she occasionally gets caught up in trivia like what a stock split is.

In most of Ms. Glink's sections, the advice is much less detailed than you would get in a specialized book on that subject. So, if you plan to take action in most of these areas, you should probably seek out the top book on that subject. You will see that instantly if you compare this book to Ms. Glink's superb book on being a first-time home buyer, which I highly recommend over the home purchasing section in this book.

Integrate finances into the full fabric of your spiritual, family, and personal life in a way where each supports the others!

You work hard for your money, and spend it on life's necessities and frivolities. But do you know how to make your money work for you -- to manage it, keep more of it, make it grow and protect it so you can enjoy it? There's plenty of financial information available -- magazines, books, newspapers, radio, television and the Internet. There are hundreds of financial companies trying to sell you their products and services. The problem isn't finding enough information, it's finding too much.

I've checked out many books on basic financial advice and the "100 Questions You Should Ask About Your Personal Finances: And the Answers You Need to Help You Save, Invest, and Grow Your Money" by Ilyce Glink is one of the best of the bunch. For anyone looking for a readable, reliable guide to everything they want to know about their money, I'd say this is the book. And this solid book is a book of answers.

I was very dissapointed with this book. I read the whole thing in a weekend only because I was hoping later chapters would have been worth the time and money I invested in this book. I did not learn anything new about finances and "HOW TO MAKE IT". I was hoping for tips and tricks on how to maximize my investments, retirement, and protect my estate from taxes. This is my first purchase of "Personal Finance" material and it was not a good choice. I hope I can return this book for another choice. Maybe I will wait for customer reviews before I purchase the next book on-line.