6
Managing Your Money All-in-One For Dummies
Icons Used in This Book
You'll see a number of funny-looking little graphic elements sprinkled
throughout this book. Here's what they are and what they mean:
Marks concrete tips and tricks that you can put to use in giving you more
control over your financial life.
Highlights passages that are good to keep in mind when it comes time to
make decisions.
Alerts you to common mistakes that can trip you up and cause trouble when
managing your money.
Notifies you that something is a bit more complex than usual, and that you
can safely skip it if you're in a hurry or only want to skim the surface of the
topic.
Where to Go from Here
If you already have a specific interest in one particular area of managing your
money, or have a sense of what you really need to tackle first, by all means
flip to the Table of Contents or Index and zip straight to that section. You cer-
tainly are not expected to read this book cover to cover. On the other hand,
if you're here because you are well and truly lost when it comes to handling
your finances, you may as well begin at the beginning with Book I, Chapter 1
and go from there.
However you end up using this book, we hope you at least gain some insight
into better and smarter ways of keeping more and wasting less of what you
work so hard for. And we hope you find the determination to apply some of
the ideas here to your life. You'll be very glad you did, we promise. Just keep
in mind that even in tough times like these, there are a surprising number of
things you can do to beat the system, even if it seems stacked against you.
The idea is to empower yourself. No one is going to stop you if you try, and
no one is going to do it for you. So, buck up and steel yourself to look at your
life more critically and honestly. We all have bad habits. Recognizing them
is half the battle. Get ready to take charge of your life and get more out of it.
Good luck! We know you can do it.
