This is the Year I Put My Financial Life in Order
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4.0 • 2 Ratings
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
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.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Veteran New York Times reporter Schwartz (Oddly Normal) takes readers on a genial, conversational, sometimes overly circuitous tour of all things money-related. Schwartz, who readily confesses his former ineptitude with finances, discusses myriad aspects of his subject, from spending and investment to estate planning and long-term care, in a folksy, down-to-earth manner. The book's 13 chapters are not equal in depth. The investment chapter is comprehensive and includes an extensive look at how different personality types approach investment and an assessment of risk comfort level. However, the bankruptcy chapter offers only a cursory view of the topic, with few examples but loads of warnings. Schwartz is open about his own finances throughout and readily admits that he's been lucky: he has a pension, a 401(k), and solid employment. He's not smug, though, and good-naturedly reprints a tweet criticizing his initial Times essay on retirement worries, acknowledging the dilemma faced by younger American workers. Though the title promises a year, the author admits it took him longer to get his finances together. With his lessons learned, the last chapter gives a 12-month outline of what to do including nothing at all for some months. Schwartz offers a personable, amused take on a subject about which most people quickly lose their sense of humor.
Customer Reviews
Great read
Easy read and very informative. The author’s experience is relatable.