Product Description

Simple steps to peace of mind about your family's finances.

Every family worries about money, whether theyire strapped for cash and living paycheck to paycheck, or concerned about saving for college or retirement. And hardworking parents donit always have time to spare for reworking the budget or shopping around for the best college savings account.

The Busy Familyis Guide to Money is here to help and is now available in audio format, offering busy couples solid advice about how to use money wisely to care for their families now and in the future.

Written by top USA TODAY personal finance columnists Sandra Block and John Waggoner and veteran reporter Kathy Chu, the abridged audio collection covers the most pressing financial issues that families face. Listeners will find concise, sensible information on each 60-minute CD. The package also includes the complete, unabridged text of the original book on CD-Rom.

The Busy Familyis Guide to Money audio book is the perfect resource for busy families who need real, practical solutionsofast.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2871694 in Books
• Published on: 2009-11-30
• Format: Audiobook
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Audio CD

Review

"Contrary to what some popular money books would have you believe, we Americans are not idiots, we're not stupid - we're just BUSY! The Busy Family's Guide to Money dispenses with the disclaimers and digressions to offer stripped-down straight talk for people on the go. No time to read a money book? This one's for you." -- Jay MacDonald, contributing editor, Bankrate.com

"Money management books are in no short supply. What's been missing is a book that addresses the complexities of family finances in an easy-to-read style that doesn't dumb-down the content. The Busy Family's Guide to Money fills that vacuum." -- Patricia Kutza, Business and technology journalist

About the Author
John Waggoner is USA TODAY's investing columnist, and also covers personal finance, the stock market, and the economy. His investments column runs in a dozen newspapers via Gannett News Service. John writes an online question and answer column on USATODAY.com, and is a regular commentator for PBS's Nightly Business Report. He won the Strong/Medill Financial Writers and Editors for spot reporting in 2001. Waggoner is author of Money Madness: Strange Schemes and Extraordinary Manias On and Off Wall Street (Business One Irwin), co-author of The Parents' Guide to Money, an interactive CD-ROM (Vertigo Development), and author of The Fast Forward MBA in Investing (John Wiley and Sons). Before joining USA TODAY in September 1989, Waggoner was senior editor at The Independent Investor, an investment advisory newsletter. Prior to that, Waggoner was senior editor at The Donoghue Organization.

Kathy Chu is a reporter for USA TODAY, who has written about a financial topics from credit card fees to Hurricane Katrina's economic toll on businesses and homeowners. Before working at the paper, she covered personal finance, corporate bankruptcy and the aftermath of Sept. 11 for Dow Jones News Service. She has also written for the Wall Street Journal, Asian Wall Street Journal, and Newsday, worked on LIFE Magazine's Year in Pictures, and on the European edition of a 1997 Fodor's travel guide. Kathy was a 2006 finalist for the Online Journalism Award.

Sandra Block is a personal finance columnist/reporter for USA TODAY's Money section. Her "Your Money" column appears every Tuesday in the newspaper and online at USATODAY.com. She joined USA TODAY as a markets reporter in 1995 and then moved to the personal finance team in 1996. Prior to joining USA TODAY, Block also worked as a personal finance reporter for the Akron Beacon Journal in Akron, Ohio; held a Knight-Bagehot Fellow at Columbia University in New York; and was a reporter for Dow Jones News Service in Washington, DC.

Customer Reviews

Too Much Outgo and not Enough Income
This is essentially a guide on how to manage your money, especially if you're a busy family. My family's money problems can be summed up in seven words, "Too much outgo and not enough income." That being said there is something you can do between the outgo and the income. A budget is one thing and something I'd never really done before, that's good advice. Taking control of my healthcare, well, we've got the cheapest plan we can get, so we're doing what we can on that front. Planning for retirement, haven't started as we believe salting money away for out kid's college education is more important.

In short there is some helpful advice in this guide and some obvious advice as well. We learned somethings, somethings don't apply to us and somethings we'd already been doing. One thing we hadn't been doing was educating our kids on the importance of money management. Mostly they'd see something they want at Toys R Us and we'd just buy it for them. We're working on that now. That's part of the outgo we're cutting back on. These are tough times and it looks like they're going to get tougher, so like many, were cutting back on a lot of that outgo. And there is some good advice here on how to do just that.

A Saver and Investor I'm Learning to Be
This book is an excellent resource for family planning, money wise that is. I don't have kids yet, so I hadn't really given any thought to saving for college, but I am now. I've already started that savings account and my someday daughter to be isn't even a twinkle in my someday sweetheart's eye yet.

Though I'd never call this book an investment guide (the authors don't either) it's made me think about investing, which is something I never would have thought of before. I'm also thinking about starting a retirement account of some kind to go along with my future child's college account, also something I'd never have thought of before. Actually, I'm thinking a lot about money now and how to use it, which is good, because before I picked up this book I'd been treating it like it was only for spending and I couldn't get rid of it fast enough.

I don't know if I'd call my one people family a busy family as I have lots of time to myself, time for reading and reflecting, but someday when I have those kids and I'm rushing around to soccer games and pizza parlors, doing birthdays and school plays, well I'll be busy then, someday. And that's when what I've learned from this book will be put to good use.

Reviewed by Stephanie Sane

Very Good Basic Guide to Money
This is a very good basic guide to money, geared primarily to families. One of the big advantages of this book is the USA TODAY format, which makes it an easy read. No need to sit down and immerse yourself in this book for hours at a time. You can pick it up, open it to a section, read for 10 or 15 minutes, and come away with some useful information. Conversely, though, I can see why some people might consider this book TOO simple. The "McPaper" format that is USA TODAY--with short articles, lots of sidebars, the Snapshot features, etc.--might not go over well with people who take their finances very seriously. I, however, didn't have a problem with it. In fact, within about 20 minutes of picking this book up for the first time, I got some very useful information about income tax deducions for medical expenses. That information alone made the book very worthwhile. For someone looking for basic, easy to digest financial tips, this book is a great place to start.