Keep Your Heart Away from Your Wallet: How to Make the Smartest Money Moves

by Max H. Bazerman

Book Overview

Praise for Smart Money Decisions "If you need to negotiate anything . . . from a pay increase to buying or selling a house-this book covers all the bases. [Bazerman] has taught, tested, and proven his theories with thousands of executives and MBA students."-Donald P. Jacobs, Dean, J. L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management, Northwestern University "Max Bazerman provides a fascinating, easy-to-understand look at how we make money decisions and offers...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0471296112
• ISBN13: 9780471296119
• Release Date: August 1999
• Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 1.17 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.4" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

Read it, but do not expect to solve your financial problems

This book from Prof. Bazerman is very interesting and give us some useful hints about money management and negociation in general. Some ideas about our mistakes (for instance our tendency to possess inappropriately positive assessments of ourselves and our tendency to overweigth vivid information) can guide us through everyday life. But do not expect miracles.

Holy Moly, this book helps!

Read the whole book last night. I consider myself reasonably savvy when it comes to negotiating and thinking about how I spend money. But this book demonstrates the common money decision mistakes that even smart people make. Why not know what the car salesmen or realtors know about this stuff? I highly recommend it.

A must - even for experts

I have read lots of books about behavioral decision-making and behavioral finance. When I bought the book I initally expected it being similar like many other books covering this subject. But while I was reading I just could not stop, though I found many examples I knew already. But the style of Bazerman's writing attracted me (though English is not my mother language) so much, that I studied the book from the first to the last page. The examples of bounded rationality of many human decisions and its 'sub-optimal' if not sometimes costly results are very well explained. The solutions to improve the decision-making processes are presented very clearly at the end of each chapter. For those who work in the area of behavioral decsion-making or behavioral finance the book is an excellent comprehension and an 'add-on' to the basics that are partially covered in other publications. For beginners the contents is easy to understand: The examples deal with important decision problems everyone of us is confronted with at least once in her/his lifetime. If people try to follow Bazerman's advices, they probably will not only imrpove reasoning, but might save some money at the next purchase of a new car or at other occasions. Most important for me was the description about the value of time.

What's stopping you? Use your money to your best interests

This book has the effect of sitting down to a heart to heart talk with an admired family friend who knows you well enough to appreciate your strengths, forgive your shortcomings and believe in your capacity to change.After the first chapter, even an unregenerate spendthrift like me will be thinking about patterns we didn't recognize as obstacles, especially in the realm of money management. And that is the key, says Prof. Bazerman. The very idea of money mistakes may be daunting, but what this book does very clearly -- painlessly and with good humor -- is prescribe ways to prepare for, circumvent and correct them. Every chapter takes examples with which it is easy to identify, from buying a car or a house to negotiating a new job, and explores alternative strategies to show how they actually do affect the outcome. And recapping key pointers at the end of each chapter reminds us (for instance) that not just cold cash but time is money, and a critical element we might not recognize in many of our decisions.What I like best about Smart Money Decisions is it gets right down to business without condescending or pandering to late-blooming readers like me, who will really benefit by being honest with ourselves about what we need to do to change our fiscal ways. Read it and reap!

How to come out on top in real life financial situations

This book is great - really worth buying.Bazerman is well known as a management and negotiations guru. What's special about this book is he doesn't write like an academic. Instead he gives specific, easy-to-use tools you can literally copy down and use step-by-step. If you've ever felt like an idiot in real life dealing with situations like managing money for your retirement or encountering a high-pressure real estate hawking your dream house, this is the book for you. Bazerman's book is easy to read, and it's specific. His "Advice" tips at the end of every chapter tell you exactly what to do in personal situations that range from buying a car to making decisions about insurance to job negotiations. This book - unlike a lot of academics' work - not only analyzes the dynamics of situations, it tells you exactly what to do to come out on top. And it's human and readable to boot. I really related to what he was saying, and I laughed when he wrote about his own experiences and his wife's reaction to them (she sounds like a hoot).I wish I'd had Bazerman's Advice "tips-list" about real estate next to me the first time I bought and sold a house. It would have saved me a bundle!This is one self-help book I've bought I'm actually USING.