Personal Finance for Dummies

Abridged
Author: Eric Tyson
Narrator: Eric Tyson
Genres: Business, Personal Finance
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Date: September 2008
Length: 1 hour, 30 minutes
Ratings:
  • Book Rating: 3/5
Formats:
  • CD

Overview

Of course you work for your money. The question is, does your money work for you? You know you owe it to yourself and your family to make the best possible fiscal decisions. So why aren't you managing your money better? Perhaps you think that you don't have enough extra cash to bother learning more about money management (a common myth). Or maybe phrases such as "mutual funds," "long-term bonds," "annuities," and "whole life vs. term" make your head spin.

For all those people who don't know the difference between the commodities market and the supermarket, here is expert and trustworthy advice from a financial counselor and lecturer who speaks your language. Cutting through the jungle of statistic complexity, Personal Finance For Dummies®, shows you how to make easy work of your own finances, no matter what your income or experience level. Greater return for your money, with less anxiety -- that's a bargin if we ever heard one.

Reviews (1)

very basic over view

Written by Anonymous on July 30th, 2006

  • Book Rating: 3/5

This book isn't bad for beginners. It covers a lot of important topics but does so in a very superficial manner. I think there are much better books out there but you can also do a lot worse. 2 CDs, about 45minutes each, was an easy listen. Of note, this was the 1996 version, so few minor information out of date, such as the amount you can contribute to IRA. And no mention of Roth IRA, don't think it existed at that time yet (I could be wrong.)

Author Details

Author Details

Tyson, Eric

" Eric Tyson is one of the best-selling personal finance book authors in the country and has penned five national best sellers (he is also the only author to have four of his books simultaneously on Business Week's business book bestseller list). Among others, he is the author of Personal Finance for Dummies, Investing for Dummies, Mutual Funds for Dummies and co-author of Home Buying for Dummies (Wiley). His syndicated newspaper column, ""Investor's Guide,"" is read by more than 4 million people nationwide. Eric was a columnist and award-winning journalist for the San Francisco Examiner.

Eric's work has been featured and quoted in hundreds of local and national publications and media outlets including Newsweek, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, Kiplinger's Personal Finance magazine, Money, Worth, Parenting, USA Today and on the NBC Today Show, ABC, CNBC, PBS Nightly Business Report, CNN, and on CBS national radio, NPR's Sound Money and Bloomberg Business Radio. He's also been a featured speaker at a White House conference on retirement planning.

Tired of working as a management consultant to Fortune 500 financial service firms, which were more interested in maximizing short-term profits than in providing sound financial products and services, Eric founded in 1990 the nation's first financial counseling firm, which works exclusively on an hourly basis. He started his new company with a simple mission: to provide objective, cost-effective personal financial advice, especially to non-wealthy Americans. Through family and friends, Eric had seen many otherwise intelligent people make horrendous mistakes in managing their money, in part, because the failure of our schools and colleges to teach personal finance.

In addition to his counseling work, Eric also hoped to make an impact in the writing and media fields. Much of the personal finance writing and reporting he saw and heard was biased, jargon-laden and, in some cases, filled with bad advice. For example, rather than telling people the hard truth -- that one must live within one's means as a prerequisite to building wealth -- many publications offer up hyped and unrealistic ""get rich without making sacrifices or taking risk"" type approaches.

In addition to his writing and counseling, Eric also taught the nation's most highly attended personal financial management course at the University of California, Berkeley. A dynamic and provocative speaker, he has spoken at many corporations and non-profits such as Levi-Strauss, the College of Notre Dame, Stanford University, Technology Assessment Group (a division of Quintiles Transnational), San Francisco State University, the University of California at San Francisco among others.

His educational background includes having earned his bachelor's degree in economics at Yale and an MBA at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. "