This updated version of Beth Kobliner's work (5/2000) can help the folks in their 20's and 30's get a handle on their finances. Even with a college education, most students fail to come away with sufficient knowledge on how to manage their dough. This book is an easy read, not filled with useless info. There is special emphasis on paying off college loans, getting credit cards, buying a car, and financing a first house or apartment. Things that you really need to know. The main chapters include: Figuring out Where You Are and Where You Want to Go, Finding the Best Loans and Getting Yourself Out of Hock, How to Get the Most from Your Bank for the Least Amount of Money, All You Really Need to Know About Investing, Living the Good Life in 2030 !!, Getting an Apartment or House of Your Own, What Insurance You Need and Don't, Finding the Right Policies and Forgoing Coverage You Don't Need, Making Your Life Less Taxing. There is info on using the Web to help you save, spend and invest wisely, how to refinance your high-rate debt and avoid hidden fees and traps, taking advantage of the latest tax breaks- including deductions for student loans, and planning your long range savings program. In addition, there are details on car leases, credit reports, mutual funds, and more. A wealth of information available for less than 12 bucks. Highly recommended. A great gift. Get a Financial Life: Personal Finance In Your Twenties and Thirties
I bought an earlier version of this book way back in 1996. I had just gotten my first job and I was looking for information on how to manage money and to find out how much I could "afford" when buying a car and/or other expensive stuff. This book helped with all of that. It helped me understand the basics of personal finance, loans, insurance, 401(k), etc. There's lots of good advice in there, so I'd certainly recommend buying this book. The information is this book is beautifully organized and very easy to digest.Unfortunately, I haven't learnt a whole lot about personal finance since reading this book. I've read numerous books on personal finance after this one. All of them tend to say more or less the same things as this book, but they haven't said it as well. Bottomline, if you understand the basics of personal finance (such as the principles of compounding, the importance of investing early in a 401(k), why it's bad to have credit card debt, etc.), you can probably afford to skip this book. Otherwise, it's a must have.
I bought the original edition of this book after seeing Ms. Kobliner on a morning news program. I was rather uninformed about my finances at that point. I had several thousands of dollars of credit card debt, was about to finish grad school and get married, and didn't have a job waiting. Worried about merging my bad financial life with my future husband's relatively well-organized one, I bought this book.Together, my husband and I read it and developed a road map for what we thought we needed to accomplish. It gave us the basics to get our financial life on track, including paying off all the credit card debt (we carry none at all), getting a mortgage, buying a new car, and starting retirement plans. Now that we arethinking about insurance, starting a family, planning for college funds, etc., this was the first place I thought to turn for well-seasoned advice. This book covers a lot of topics in an accessible format, but I acknowledge that for someone who is already aware of their finances and has some knowledge, it may be repetitive. But I always find myself wanting to go back to it when I have questions--so today I'm buying the updated edition, and letting a financially challeneged friend keep the other one.
First, I would like to disagree with the two extremely negative commentators that found this book patronizing. Although this book is obviously intended for beginners, I don't think Kobliner intended for anyone to take the beginner level content personally. For example, Kobliner did not insinuate that Gen. X-ers can't use credit cards responsibly. For those who can't, however, or for those who feel overwhelmed with the amount of debt they have taken on, Kobliner provides the financial framework for knowing why you should pay your credit cards as soon as possible. I think that the summary of the book & the cutesy cover should have given these two readers a clue that the book was intended for those with a limited financial background. Lynch would be terribly heavy reading for people unfamiliar with the business world.That said, I found this book very informative. Obviously, personal finance is a vast subject and so this book serves as a brief overview of such topics as different types of bank accounts, paying your student loans back, saving for retirement, what to look for when renting an apartment, and how to buy a house. I bought this book a couple of months before my dad cut the purse strings and I graduated from college. Although I majored in accounting, I learned mostly theory in school. I found the investing content particularly informative and I opened my IRA ASAP. It is now been a little more than a year and I do think that I have "outgrown" most of the subject matter, but I still use this book for reference. When I buy a house, I will now know about the different types of mortgages and how much I should set aside. Of course, if schools taught personal finance, I wouldn't need this at all.I do agree, however, that this book needs to be updated, if not for the creation of the Roth IRA alone. That is the only reason I'm not giving it five stars. Internet resources would be helpful, too. I would recommend this book to people who are starting out in life (early twenties) or to those in their mid to late twenties who have no clue when it comes to personal finance. I plan on giving a copy to my younger sister for Christmas. I would not recommend this book to anyone in their thirties, though, despite what the cover says. I think the only topic that a thirty-something might find useful would be the house-buying chapter. Here in San Francisco, though, that is how long it takes to save for a down payment on a house, so you might not even need it in your neck of the woods. - Personal Finance - Finance'
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