Jordan E. Goodman

There are many vehicles that allow you to accumulate debt and many voices explaining how to get out of debt, but Goodman wants us to learn how to manage debt to our advantage. He's distilled the knowledge and techniques he's learned during his almost twenty-year stint at Money magazine.

This book is time-sensitive, as Goodman himself admits, because the rules of credit and debt are changing more quickly than ever before. He aims to teach us how to borrow money when we need, pay it off as quickly and inexpensively as possible and “sleep well at night.”

Does he accomplish those goals? I believe he does, but you have to be willing to do your part. Like all good educators, he wants to teach us how to learn and think for ourselves. He not only provides worksheets, web sites, toll-free numbers and contact information to various helpful governmental agencies, associations, and private companies that might help us, he teaches how to analyze our current situation and our future goals. This is toolkit of sorts. To make something worthwhile with it, you have to pay attention to technique and process.

You also need to be aware that the companies he recommends he has personally vetted. Whether or not you chose to approach them will depend upon how much you trust him as a guide to the ever-changing, rather complex world of personal finance.

I personally enjoyed this book and hope to implement many of Goodman's suggestions because he has taken care to explain how and why the rules have changed. Many of things I thought I knew, he has challenged for me, sparking additional research which seems to confirm his recommendations.

No one book can solve everyone's financial challenges, but this book has gone a long way in helping me resolve mine.… (más)

A comprehensive directory and reference book for investors thath includes a 5,000-term financial dictionary, an analysis of 30 key investment opportunities in today's uncertain financial market, explanations for laymen on how to read corporate reports and interpret financial news, and an up-to-date directory of more than 6,000 publicly traded corporations in the United States and Canada; names and addresses of all brokerage and mutual funds firms, banks, savings and loan companies, insurance companies, federal and state regulators, and major investment publications. -- Global Investor… (más)