3
Introduction
most efficient and worthwhile improvements necessary to turn around your
finances.
Before you know it you'll be tracking where your hard-earned dollars go,
easily maintaining a household budget, trimming away unnecessary spend-
ing, finding ways to make extra money, and even tackling that ugly but impor-
tant beast: your credit report.
Book II: Managing Home and
Personal Finances
Here is where we delve a bit deeper into how you deal with the money that
comes in and goes out every month. Your home is your castle, as they say,
and here is where we explore concrete and detailed ways of turning your
household into a strong financial fort. In recent years, the American dream
of owning a home has suffered seriously from the popped housing bubble,
the housing market slump, the credit crisis, and rising mortgage defaults
nationwide. That's why it's more important than ever to understand how to
find and maintain the right kind of mortgage for you and how to avoid trouble
with it down the road.
Housing is usually the largest piece of your monthly financial pie, but another
increasingly large slice goes to health insurance and other health-related
expenses. We devote a whole chapter on health insurance and ways to
reduce your medical costs. And we address ways of using the greatest infor-
mation tool of all time, the Internet, to help you in your new quest for finan-
cial self-empowerment.
Book III: Dealing with Debt
"In the midst of life we are in debt, et cetera," sang one of the great bands
of the 1980s (The Smiths, in case you have to ask), and truer words were
never spoken. There's little you can do to totally avoid debt in your life, and
in some ways that's not a terrible thing. You may be surprised to learn that
some debts are a lot better than other debts. What you want to do is reduce
your "bad" debts before worrying too much about your "good" ones.
The first step is to find out how much you owe and to whom. The next is to
gain a little knowledge about what exactly credit is and how the different
types really work. Remember: Knowledge is power. For those in need of a
little bit more aggressive help credit-wise, we tackle the issues of debt con-
solidation (in which you bundle your debts into fewer payments), negotiat-
ing with creditors (yes, it is possible and in many cases very advisable), and
seeking professional help from knowledgeable credit counselors who can size
up your particular situation.
