Business-plan

I'm very interested in buying this book, but need more information. Please send me the Table of Contents from the front of the book. Thanks

This is a book for personal finance. But it only concentrate on 2 main topics - setting up goals and picking up mutual funds. On goal setting, it is one of a few books that give such an emphasis (and proportion) on this topic. It is important, critical, but somewhat over-long. (Imagine listing several pages of places/events that help you to pick up for your goal?) The good side is that the importance of goal setting is applicable is many other areas - not just personal finance. The second half of the book is about mutual funds, and there are some very interesting 'facts' - e.g. Morning Star ratings, index fund, tax benefit, etc. Since the author is quite humorous, it is a very easy read for the 300+ pages. One thing I only like is that some of the footnotes are totally pointless - they are there just for the sake of being funny?? Maybe Ric can consider 2 labelling of footnotes - one is useful and the other is only joke.

Most financial books are boring at best and many times written by unqualified people. This new book by Ric Edelmen is like a fireside chat with a warm and funny advisor. Edelmen's writing style is clear and understandable and the material is comphrehensive and fresh.

In Discover The Wealth Within You, Ric Edelmen willt ake you on a journey to self discovery. Edelmen shows you how to choose fun, enriching and rewarding goals and gives you a simple straightforward plan to achieve them.

You'll discover that creating wealth isn't all that difficult, once you set the right goals. According to Ric Edelmen, all you need to do is decide what you want to do with your money. With enticing personal goals in place, you'll motivate, excite and suatain yourself in your quest for wealth.

After using Ric's worksheets to help you set goals properly, you'll embark on a detailed exploration of personal investing. You'll discover Ric's formula for creating a plan to achieve your goals, build your financial future and finance your dreams--all through his unique, time tested investing strategies.

By following Ric's plans and guidelines, you can achieve a healthy, balanced and richly rewarding life. Anyone can do it, says Ric, with the tools and techniques he provides.

Informative and entertaining, Discover The Wealth Within You is a must read in everyone's personal financial planning and investment libraries.

What a pleasure it is to read someone like Edelman who is not only uniquely qualified to write on the subject of money but also writes in such a breezely easy to read style.

I just picked up this book after reading "What You Need to Do Now" and "Ordinary People, Extraordinary Wealth" by Edelman. The previous books helped me more than anything to overcome the bad advice I got from reading other financial books.

Besides Ric's books, I also recommend "The Road to Wealth" and "The Laws of Money" by Suze Orman. I believe that Ric and Suze are the two best financial authors out there right now. Both are CFP's and Ric's firm is ranked among the top 5 firms in the country by Bloomberg. Obviously Edelman would not have this many clients if he didn't know what he was doing now would he?

This is the ultimate demonstration of GIGO (garbage in; garbage out). They start with defining all readers as a stereotypical babyboomer husband and wife team who are so work driven they get nothing out of life. Authors as lawyer-savior-savant advise them to quit their jobs, or at least think as if they quit, tear up their credit cards and work the rest of their lives while spending all they have and dying broke. Not every baby boomer, much less average American, is what they describe as the party to whom they are giving advice. While there is good advice in some of the book, the idea of proceeding from a stereotypical description of a person leads to a conclusion that might be of value only to that stereotypical person. The conclusions and advice given cannot apply to most people, much less all people. There remain in the society hard workers and slackers; brain surgeons and dullards; computer programmers and ditch diggers; driven producers and fourth generation welfare recipients. Ovbiously, this book is not for food stamp recipients or clients of the welfare system. Never the less there is good advice that is worth taking and understanding. The credit card system, whereby one obligates himself to pay without the pain of shelling out hard earned cash, allows one to build debt without feeling it. This book is really for those much too busy to read it.

My opinion of this book changed a few times while I was reading it.

First, I thought that this book was pretty good in that it gives a "radical" new approach to personal finance. I enjoyed this book because of this. It takes a topic that can be very vanilla in its ways, and gives a brand new thought process. I guarantee you that you will see some ideas that totally contradict what other personal finance consultants would say. For example, the author actually makes an argument for leasing instead of buying a car. Seeing that argument was a first for me, especially in this type of book.

Then, the author became very repetitive, and actually started to use examples and paragraphs that were previously used in this book. This was quite annoying.

Finally, the book finished it's 4 part radical plan, and began to add commentary about various topics in personal finance. After being annoyed, this section kind of got me back on track. Again, it was interesting to read opinions that were not necessarily mainstream, on topics that have been discussed to death in other books.

Overall, I would say that people should give this book a try. Beware of the redundancy, and go in with an open mind.

You won't read about having to live under your means, or about how accumulate the most wealth to give to your heirs. Instead, you will see how to make the most of you money, live at your means, die broke, and leave people a minimal estate. Through the use of annuities, insurance, and reverse mortgages, one can have money till the day they die. However, the book does come up short when it talks about actually implementing this program. For example, there was no mention on the typical price of an annuity, nor how one would actually purchase these annuities with a minimal savings account. If it was mentioned, it was given the justice it deserved.

Enjoy!

Die Broke is an extremely seductive book. Stephen Pollan's idea is that you'd be a fool to save your money for a rainy day. He says spend it now, which is contrary to what evey other personal finance expert advises. Take a round-the-world cruise, buy that new Mercedes, or better yet, lease it. This advice goes against the grain, and I found myself fascinated by such an original approach. It's tempting to adopt his methods and live for the present, but my advice is listen to the book, but don't take it too seriously.

"Die Broke" grabs your attention, all right, but the advice included is contradictory. The author says that a job is just a money-generating mechanism, but then says you should work until age 70. If your real enjoyment comes from things outside work, then doesn't it make more sense to invest early, retire early, and devote more time to whatever gives you the most satisfaction? Conversely, if you want to work until 70, then shouldn't you be working at something you love?

If you follow his overall advice, you WILL have to work until you're 70, because you won't put enough away to provide for yourself. Yet many of the sub-components of his theory are perfectly sound and should be obvious to anyone who's ever balanced a checkbook: live within your means, don't use your credit cards to buy things you can't pay off when the bill comes, don't count on real estate appreciating like it did in the past.

My Midwestern grandmother expressed the rules of financial planning much more concisely years ago: "Save ten percent, give ten percent, spend the rest with thanksgiving and praise."

As baby boomers that lost it all and is in the process of rebuilding our life, we found this book to be very helpful. In addition, it points out the hardest lesson that we've learned - your employer is not loyal to you and you can't count on them to take care of you.

This book isn't going to make you wealthy, and that is not its intent. This information in this book, paired with info from Suze Orman, are powerful tools for protecting yourself from future crises.

It isn't always right on the money, but it offers food for thought and practical advice. You won't find any book that has all the answers - if that were true, we'd all be rich.

"Die Broke" was an interesting read although not what I was looking for.

I got the broke part down years ago with out much effort. Now I just need to decide on how to best achieve the rest of the formula.