Money Made Simple: How to Flawlessly Control Your Finances in Minutes a Year

by Stacy Johnson

Book Overview

Fiddling with family finances can be time-consuming, frustrating, or even frightening ... especially when you feel like you're not qualified to make those big money decisions. But here's an expert who... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0345455657
• ISBN13: 9780345455659
• Release Date: February 2004
• Publisher: Ballantine Books
• Length: 320 Pages
• Weight: 0.62 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.1" x 0.6" x 5.5"

Customer Reviews

The Only Book on Money You'll Ever Need

This is easily the most accessible, reliable and entertaining book I've ever read on money management and investing. Anyone can understand it, and everyone could benefit from it enormously.

Money Made Simple

Straight forward (easy) approach to managing money. Stock Brokers and other investment professionals are going to hate this book because it shows you how to invest wisely and cut out their fees. You get to keep the difference! Oh, some pretty good humor too. Buy it, read it, and prosper.

GREAT ideas about living well, retiring young.

Money Made Simple is a plain English guide for normal people with normal incomes, if there is such a thing, to make the most of what they have, and turn it into something more over time. The book has great tips that anyone can follow about getting out of debt, where to invest, minimizing tax liability, finding hidden bargains and all kinds of ways to save and make money. But the best part is it's FUN to read. It's very conversationally written, it's humorous, and it skewers a lot of the mumbo jumbo so many of the so-called experts will use to convince you that you can't possibly grow some wealth out of an average income without some hired gun expert to show you the way.This book should be required reading for anyone who ever wonders where the money went at the end of the month, or how the heck they're ever going to retire or pay for the kids to go to school. I told my wife that if I keel over from a heart attack or get run over by a truck tomorrow, all she needs to do is read this book and follow its advice, and she and the kids will be fine, financially at least.The author, Stacy Johnson, is a CPA and former stockbroker who now does syndicated personal finance reporting for about 90 TV stations across the country. He really does have some great "inside knowledge," particularly about bad investments to stay away from (things he used to sell), and the holes in the wonderful-sounding sales pitches you'll hear if you're looking for the right place to grow some money. (Disclosure: I'm the news director at one of the TV stations that airs Stacy's reports. I buy Stacy's TV news reports to air on my station. I met him once at a convention for about three minutes, and I speak with him by phone two or three times a year for a minute or two at a time, but we're not acquaintances otherwise. I have no financial interest in the success of Stacy's book, and he's not cutting my station any special deal to say nice things about him here.) Stacy shows how to organize your finances, and keep things simple without creating a bunch of extra work. In fact, he shows how you'll probably spend less time being organized than you do being disorganized. And you can jump right in on Day One and do the things he recommends. He doesn't advise you to become an expert at picking stocks or anything like that. Just the opposite, in fact. He's specific. He names names, telling which companies he does business with, and why, and he tells you some to stay away from. Which insurance coverages are redundant (or just a terribly bad deal), and ways to cut middlemen out of transactions. All kinds of great stuff like that in a whole bunch of categories ... retirement plans, real estate, vehicles, vacations and more. And best of all, unlike SO MANY of the other finance books I've read, he's not trying to sell you anything else. He does mention another book he wrote a time or two when he lifts a quote from it, but that's it. He doesn't try to push you to a website to buy

Advice from your broker? Get a second opinion...yours!

Super topic and super read. Stacy provides an intuitive, easily digested work that takes it back to the basics, reminding me that yeah, I probably know more about investing FOR ME than those I pay to advise me. Finally, someone in the industry willing to say: "the emperor has no clothes." I found insight and critiques here that restored confidence in my own investment strategies; confidence that my broker...for a commission...had effectively taken away. Stacy playfully frolics through the topic, and yet left me with insight I didn't realize I was gaining as I read. The book was, essentially, "interactive", making me smile, nod and comment/laugh out loud as I went (much to my children's amusement). It reads with the ease of idle and comedic "chit chat" among good friends, and yet effectively dissipates the "smoke and mirrors" of financial marketeers. Two parts wisdom and one part irreverence, mixed well, made for a fun and very snappy read.