Customer Reviews

You Can Do the Math: Overcome Your Math Phobia and Make Better Financial Decisions

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This book was fabulous. It explains in simple detail how you can overcome your math phobia and apply simple math concepts to such decisions as: should I buy or lease a car? should I invest in a tax-deferred account or a regular account? and, what type of insurance is best for me?

The author, Ron Lipsman, also has a companion website where you can plug in your own situation and arrive at the appropriate financial decision given your facts and circumstances. What could be easier than that? I always wondered about buying vs. leasing a car, but I never understood how to calculate which option was a better deal. Ron Lipsman explained it all in an easy to follow format.

I would recommend this book to anyone who doesn't understand the math behind every day decisions that affect the financial goals in his or her life. You can save a tremendous amount of money and a great deal of anxiety if you only know the math behind these important decisions. You never have to be afraid of walking into that new car showroom again. You need not fear the mortgage process again or listen to someone who may know less than you do on financial decisions.

I enjoyed reading this informative book and Ron Lipsman's lively examples make it easy to understand some (what I thought were) difficult concepts. The book gives you the power to make your own decisions because you now understand the concepts behind the decision.

A "must read" especially for people in their twenties and thirties who have many financial decisions ahead of them. This book is witty and informative on some of life's biggest decisions.

I was excited to find this book. Math wasn't my strongest suit at school and I thought this might be a good layman's guide to financial math that would help my investment decisions. By "layman", I mean someone who - like myself - is okay with basic algebra but starts hearing circus music if the equations get too complex.

Alas, it seems that the author of this work (a University of Maryland math professor) has spent a little too much time with his high-level students and has fallen out of touch with the mathematical skill level of the average Joe on the street. Within a few pages I was already having to read and re-read his convoluted descriptions of a compound interest equation (V=Dx(1+r)n.) to make sense of it all. By chapter 4 I closed the book and returned it to the library with no small degree of frustration.

I have little doubt that the math presented here is accurate and useful to those who are already mathematically inclined. But this book was marketed toward the layman (it's subtitle reads "overcome your math phobia" for crying out loud!). This marketing is misleading and inappropriate. The book would have been more accurately titled "You can ALREADY do the math", and perhaps it should have carried a subtitle that read: "So why do you need to read this book anyway?".

If you really DO have math phobia, or if - like myself - you're not afraid of numbers but just a little befuddled by them, this is NOT - Repeat NOT - the book for you.

If, however you sailed easily through your math classes in school and just want to refresh yourself on financial equations - you might find some value here.