The bestselling mother/daughter coauthors of "The Two-Income Trap" now pen an essential guide to the five simple keys to lasting financial peace.

A New York Times correspondent shares his financial successes and mishaps, offering an everyman's guide to straightening out your money once and for all. Money management is one of our most practical survival skills—and also one we've convinced ourselves we're either born with or not. In reality, financial planning can be learned, like anything else. Part financial memoir and part research-based guide to attaining lifelong security, This Is the Year I Put My Financial Life in Order is the book that everyone who has never wanted to read a preachy financial guide has been waiting for. John Schwartz and his wife, Jeanne, are pre-retirement workers of an economic class well above the poverty line, but well below the one percent. Sharing his own alternately harrowing and hilarious stories—from his brush with financial ruin and bankruptcy in his thirties to his short-lived budgeted diet of cafeteria french fries and gravy—John will walk you through his own journey to financial literacy, which he admittedly started a bit late. He covers everything from investments to retirement and insurance to wills (at fifty-eight, he didn't have one!), medical directives and more. Whether you're a college grad wanting to start out on the right foot or you're approaching retirement age and still wondering what a 401(K) is, This Is the Year I Put My Financial Life in Order will help you become your own best financial adviser.

Suze Orman has transformed the concept of personal finance for millions by teaching us how to gain control of our money -- so that money does not control us. She goes beyond the nuts and bolts of managing money to explore the psychological, even spiritual power money has in our lives. The 9 Steps to Financial Freedom is the first personal finance book that gives you not only the knowledge of how to handle money, but also the will to break through all the barriers that hold you back. Combining real-life recommendations with the motivation to overcome financial anxieties, Suze Orman offers the keys to providing for yourself and your family, including: * seeing how your past holds the key to your financial future * facing your fears and creating new truths * trusting yourself more than you trust others * being open to receiving all that you are meant to have * understanding the lessons of the money cycle The 9 Steps to Financial Freedom is useful advice and inspiration from the leading voice in personal finance. As Orman shows, managing money is far more than a matter of balancing your checkbook or picking the right investments. It's about redefining financial freedom -- and realizing that you are worth far more than your money.

Explaining difficult concepts in plain English with a breezy style, this third edition has new material covering new tax laws, retirement savings strategies, a chapter on identity theft, and question-and-answer sidebars.

Personal money management advice that make sense In The True Cost of Happiness, financial journalist Stacey Tisdale and expert financial planner Paula Boyer Kennedy combine their extensive financial experience with a powerful series of interviews and real-world stories to help you make personal money management decisions that make more sense. They begin by discussing how the factors that drive our financial choices and behavior not only run deep, but also represent the way we define ourselves. From there, they reveal how this truth will determine if you can create the kind of financial harmony that not only supports the life you want, but also makes an honest statement of who you really are. The questions they pose are challenging, but essential, because if your financial choices and behavior are not aligned with your true values, you'll always feel like "something" is missing. And it is this disconnect that is at the root of most anxiety and unhappiness over money. Reveals how the first lessons we learn about money as children play out in our adult behavior Discusses how the messages that society sends us about the ways in which we should behave with money affect our financial choices Explores factors that can blind us to our true values, and prevent us from making the best decisions possible on issues such as debt, saving, and investing Illustrates how to create a financial plan that supports a truly happy life Filled with in-depth insights and practical advice, The True Cost of Happiness will put you in a better position to enjoy a life that doesn't compromise who you are.

The Truth Shall Set Your Wallet Free is aimed at debunking the myths that prevent people from achieving their wealth goals. And the first myth that needs to be bashed is that financial advisors are only for the very rich. In fact, there are more financial advisors who cater to modest-income Americans than those who cater to the rich. Myths propagated by the media, regulators, and even the financial industry itself harm every American, from those at the poverty level to billionaires and everyone in between. This is the first time a holistic view of the entire advice market has been written by a non-advisor industry insider, without bias from any of the financial services sectors.