Your Money_ The Missing Manual - J. D. Roth [3]
About the Outline
This book is divided into three parts, each containing several chapters:
In Part One: Blueprint for Financial Prosperity, you'll learn how to lay the groundwork for success; a little advance planning will pay off big in the long run. Chapter 1 explores the relationship between money and happiness, and suggests some ways of finding balance. Chapter 2 helps you set financial goals. In Chapter 3, you'll learn that budgeting isn't necessarily evil; in fact, it can be a great way to help you defeat debt, which is the subject of Chapter 4.
Part Two: Laying the Foundation teaches you the importance of cash flow—the difference between what you earn and what you spend. In Chapter 5, you'll learn frugal tactics to help you save money on everyday spending. Chapter 6 looks at the other side of the equation: How to boost your income.
Chapter 7 helps you find the best bank accounts for storing your money, and Chapter 8 will help you get your credit cards under control. Chapter 9 discusses how to be smart when buying big items, and Chapter 10 covers the biggest expense of all: housing. Finally, Chapter 11 provides the basic info you need to deal with taxes and insurance effectively.
Part Three: Building a Rich Life shows you how to use your financial foundation to build a rich life—both today and in the future. Chapter 12 gives you a brief intro to investing, and Chapter 13 explains how and why to save for retirement. Chapter 14 wraps things up with a look at the relationship between love and money.
There's no way for one book to cover everything there is to know about personal finance. I've covered the essentials and included pointers to where you can learn more about any given topic by doing further reading in other books, on various websites, and in magazines. Along the way, I also share real-life stories from people like you.
Frequently Asked Question: What Are Tiny URLs?
This book mentions lots of great websites where you can learn more ways to be smart with your money. But sometimes that info is on a very specific part of a site, and the Web address that takes you to that spot can be awfully long. That's where Tiny URLs come in.
URL (short for Uniform Resource Locator) is the geeky name for a Web address. For example, http://www.google.com is the URL that tells your Web browser how to get to the Google home page. But not all URLs are that short. To read a great Get Rich Slowly article about bonds, for instance, you have to go to http://www.getrichslowly.org/blog/2009/04/21/investing-101-how-bonds-work/. That's a lot of gobbledygook to type in, and you have better things to do with your time.
In 2002, a guy named Kevin Gilbertson started the website TinyURL.com. The site's mission is simple: to shorten ungainly Web addresses. All you do is copy the address you want to shrink, head over to http://tinyurl.com, and then paste the address in the box. Click the Make TinyURL button and voilà—the site gives you a much shorter address (which starts with http://tinyurl.com) that takes you to the same exact spot as the long one.
Throughout this book, you'll see TinyURLs used in place of giant, clunky ones. To get to the GRS page mentioned above, for example, you can use http://tinyurl.com/GRS-bonds instead. Just type that address into your browser and your computer will get you to the right place. Better yet, head to this book's Missing CD page at www.missingmanuals.com, where you'll find clickable links to all the sites referenced in this book.
About MissingManuals.com
At www.missingmanuals.com, you'll find articles, tips, and updates to Your Money: The Missing Manual. In fact, we invite and encourage you to submit such corrections and updates yourself. In an effort to keep this book as up-to-date and accurate as possible, each time we print more copies of it, we'll make any confirmed corrections you've suggested. We'll also note such changes on the website, so that you can mark important corrections into your own copy of the book,