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Review:
The Wall Street Journal Complete Personal Finance Guidebook
and The Wall Street Journal Personal Finance Workbook
A
former co-worker of mine used to throw all her bills in a pile
and pay them whenever she had extra money--her idea of personal
finance savvy was pulling from the bottom of the pile in order
to pay the most overdue bills first. While it's easy to shake
our heads at such ghastly money decisions, most of us are still
making our own financial blunders. Two new books from The
Wall Street Journal aim to get us on the right track.
Authored by Journal financial reporter Jeff Opdyke, The
Wall Street Journal Complete Personal Finance Guidebook
and The Wall Street Journal Personal Finance Workbook
are sold separately. However, while each can stand alone, they
complement each other. The Complete Personal Finance Guidebook
is a primer into the world of personal finance, meant to be
read while sitting in a comfy chair. The Personal Finance
Workbook, on the other hand, is meant to be written in--your
own personal finance story. Shelling out an extra 10 bucks to
get both wouldn't be the worst financial decision you've ever
made.
The Complete Personal Finance Guidebook is 200-plus pages
of material, going from the very basic such as savings and checking
accounts to more ambitious tasks like setting up a spending
plan (basically a budget, but Opdyke suggests the "b" word is
too depressing to provide much motivation in creating one, much
less sticking to it), shopping for mortgage and auto loans,
investing wisely, and planning for retirement (instead of vaguely
hoping you'll have enough money to live out your life without
working at Wal-Mart or hitting up your children for funds).
If you're starting from Square One, the Guidebook can
certainly help you move from there to Square Two and so on.
While the Guidebook is good information, the Personal
Finance Workbook is good motivation--it encourages you to
break out a pencil and start writing down hard numbers. The
Workbook provides a good amount of the Guidebook's
information in condensed form, and supplements it with forms
you fill out to take stock of your own financial story. (The
book also directs you to additional forms online in case you
need more space or want to work through alternate scenarios.)
Included in the Guidebook are forms for creating budgets
and/or "spending plans", determining how much life insurance
to carry (if any), deciding between renting or buying a home,
calculating how much home you can afford, estimating how much
to put away for children's college expenses, calculating whether
to buy or lease your cars, understanding your investing risk
tolerance, determining asset allocations, calculating how much
money you may need in retirement, and more.
While most of us are smarter than to employ my ex co-worker's
bill pile method, it's hard to know it all, or to keep it straight.
These Wall Street Journal guides give you a handy set
of tools for understanding personal finance concepts as well
as for gauging your financial progress over time.
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