Smart and Simple Financial Strategies for Busy People [Bargain Price] [Hardcover]

Jane Bryant Quinn (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 3, 2006

Are you too busy to pay much attention to your money? Do you worry that maybe you haven't been doing the right things? This book is for you, from Jane Bryant Quinn, the most trusted voice in personal finance today. Her classic bestseller, Making the Most of Your Money, guided a generation toward smart and sensible financial choices. Here she strips away the extras, choosing the best financial ideas and products available today. They're all you need to create a successful and long-lasting financial plan. It's money management the No Worry way.

To start with, she tells you to forget all the complicated stuff the financial industry sells. You don't need it, it costs too much, and some of it is downright bad. It's designed to make the banks, brokers, and insurance companies rich, not you.

The best ideas (a super-short list!) are simple, low in cost, and easy to use. They're also sophisticated and smart. The strategies shown here are followed by some of the most successful planners and money managers around today, yet they're something everyone can understand. They'll give you what you need from your money -- regular savings, financial security, long-term investment growth, personal control, and best of all, peace of mind.

Once you've set up a No Worry plan, you won't have to pay much attention to it. The choices you'll find here are all good ones. All you have to do is arrange for automatic payments and contributions and then get on with the rest of your busy life. You can focus your energies on your job, family, leisure, and friends, secure in the knowledge that your finances are okay.

Here's what you'll do on the No Worry plan:

• Save more money without feeling pinched
• Get rid of debt the automatic way
• Keep yourself safe, with the right amount of insurance at the lowest cost
• Zero in on the right mortgage, every time
• Pick the best college savings plan for your kids
• Understand your finances, in ways you never did before
• Find the smartest and simplest ways of investing money, to earn superior returns over the long run

The investment ideas alone will open your eyes to the newest strategies for accumulating wealth (without making big mistakes!). Jane Bryant Quinn will change the way you think about money. She has the answers busy people need.

--This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Quinn's latest guide to personal finance covers the usual terrain: budgeting, consumer debt, mortgages, college funds and investments. However, not every financial writer is blessed with Quinn's charm-a blend of Pollyanna and Mary Poppins with a snappy wit thrown in-and her sensible approach to streamlining one's financial life make this a stellar entry in the genre. Quinn's most useful observation is that people seldom spend money they can't lay their hands on. Hence, she advocates the use of automated account debits to "disappear" paycheck earnings into savings. Credit card debt is dispatched with admirable simplicity: request lower rates from lenders, switch to a cheaper card, or convert credit card to mortgage loan debt. While such solutions aren't foolproof, Quinn explains the caveats of such methods. Some of the more confusing, recent mutations in home mortgages-Option and FlexPay Adjustable Rate Mortgages (ARMs)-are explained and wisely cautioned against, though Quinn could easily be more emphatic in her warnings. She also addresses the topic of college tuition with a sensible bargain-hunter approach: despite the prestige of the Ivy League, many state or small private colleges offer equivalent or superior educations for considerably less money. Quinn's anecdotes about her own monetary struggles add credibility to her advice and uphold her well-deserved reputation as a source of sound financial guidance.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

From Booklist

No newcomer to the personal financial world, Quinn is best at conveying the simple rules of success--under many different guises, like Jordan E. Goodman's Everyone's Money Book (1993). Here, the emphasis is on streamlining financial plans and actions in today's no-time-for--anything environment. The answers? One: use automatic payments for money obligations, such as the employer retirement plan, college funds, and mortgages. Two: investigate all the insurances, and understand necessities versus nice-to-haves. Three: rely on diversified mutual funds (and continue rebalancing your portfolio) for retirement savings. Four: ensure you've compiled checklists for your critical information and know where to find your files. Her best yet? "You can't see the future. If you're saving steadily, that doesn't matter. Only a few things work, and you've found them here." Barbara Jacobs
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster; 1 edition (January 3, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0743269942
• ASIN: B0013L2ED6
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.4 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (38 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,000,985 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Jane Bryant Quinn is the author of the bestselling Making the Most of Your Money and Everyone's Money Book. She writes regularly for Newsweek and Good Housekeeping. She lives in New York City.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

68 of 72 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Ideas!!! A++++, January 12, 2006

By 

Learning All The Time "It's Never Too Late to... (USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

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This review is from: Smart and Simple Financial Strategies for Busy People (Hardcover)

This outstanding book motivated me to overcome nine years of inertia regarding financial planning. My husband and I have been vaguely worried about not saving enough for retirement or college, but we kept procrastinating research into the myriad of competing plans and investments and strategies.

Fortunately, Jane Bryant Quinn has done the research and makes clear, solid recommendations about how to manage family finances. She covers all of the financial bases (including insurance and wills), so that you can be confident you haven't left anything out.

She helps you establish clear financial goals, and explains which type of investments work best for various goals. Once you create your financial plan and set up automatic deposits into your investment/retirement accounts, she recommends you leave them alone and make adjustments as needed once a year! No time and energy wasted on buy/sell decisions after each stock market wiggle.

Now granted, this investing program is unlikely to provide the spectacular returns that some lucky people have made in real estate or by timing the market. But Quinn argues that people who earn huge returns on their investments are really few and far between. Furthermore, she points out that those investors take on a lot of risk in order to get those kinds of returns.

Her book is more than "common sense" however, - in fact, some of her ideas fly in the face of popular belief. For example, I was convinced any financial plan would have to begin with a strict budget that would ruthlessly prune lattes etc... out of our lives. Quite the contrary - Quinn says that the "latte factor" is not a significant factor in a family's financial health - it's the big ticket items that show up on credit card statements.

Rather than attempt to budget and plan in ADVANCE where non-essential money goes, Quinn recommends you automate deposits to your savings/retirement accounts because you, in turn, will automatically, subconsciously, and painlessly start reining in your expenses to match the size of your checking account. It's an interesting theory, and one I want to start ASAP, as my efforts to budget every expenditure and invest anything left at the end of the month have not been very successful. She does say, however, that if you are habitually living beyond your means, racking up major credit card bills, etc..., you'll need to get that under control before you can really implement/benefit from most of the strategies in this book.

All in all, an excellent book full of sound, straight forward ideas that anyone can implement - no matter how busy.

23 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The best personal finance guide for the average person!, November 11, 2006

By 

Jason E. Smith "Impatient Reader" (Maryland) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

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This review is from: Smart and Simple Financial Strategies for Busy People (Hardcover)

Over the past five years I've read at least three dozen books on personal finance--everything from Marshall Loeb's classic tome to Ben Stein's contrarian books--and Quinn's latest is easily the best read I've encountered for the *average* person.

Quinn effectively covers budgeting, insurance, wills, investing/retirement, and buying a home. She writes clearly, concisely, and avoids financial jargon. All of the financial advice is sound, there is nothing unorthodox here.

Her defining trademark however, is her emphasis on 'Set it and Forget it' solutions that insure your well laid plans are automatically executed without too much intervention on your part. Quinn is one of the few financial experts that actually understands that most people can't spend hundreds of hours managing their money. If you ask folks to do that then it is just a matter of time until life, family, or work interfere and cause damaging mismanagement.

Most people are either misinformed about financial management or simply too lazy to do the things which they ought. Quinn's book nicely tackles both sorts with straightforward information and low-effort solutions.

HIGHLY Recommended without reservation.

48 of 53 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fantastic Financial Book, January 9, 2006

By 

Emerson M. (Bethesda, MD United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Smart and Simple Financial Strategies for Busy People (Hardcover)

I've been searching for a personal finance book like this for years! I bought this book because it's Washington Post columnist Michelle Singletary's Book Club selection for January. I was skeptical at first because I've read so many personal finance books that just confuse and bewilder me. This one, however, is perfect. You don't need to work in a brokerage firm to figure out how to invest your money. The strategies and advice are simple just like the author promises.

I now feel like I can form a solid financial plan and stick with it. I've already made changes to my work's 401(k) plan based on her recommendations. I opened an online banking account, checked my credit report, and am opening up an account with Vanguard to start a "Cushion Fund" through a Roth IRA or money market fund.

If you're like me and you've been procrastinating on how to start a retirement plan because the array of choices is too overwhelming, this book is ideal. It's a quick read but every chapter has worthwhile information. And I cannot stress enough how simple and straighfoward the advice is. The author includes websites, phone numbers, specific funds etc. She's done all the work.