Table Of ContentOTHER BOOKS BY JEFF D. OPDYKE AND
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
The Wall Street Journal. Guide to the Business of Life
Nancy Keates The Wall Street Journal. Complete Money & Investing Guidebook
Dave Kansas The Wall Street Journal. Complete Personal Finance Guidebook
Jeff D. Opdyke Love and Money: A Life Guide to Financial Success
Jeff D. Opdyke
INTRODUCTION
PART 1
BUILDING YOUR FINANCIAL BASE
CHAPTER 1 Budgeting
The Personal Budget
The Spending Plan
Pay Yourself First
Emergency Savings
The Annual Budget
CHAPTER 2 Banking: Checking, Savings, and Certificates of Deposit
Checking Accounts
Certificates of Deposit— and When Breaking One Makes Sense
Building a CD Ladder
CHAPTER 3 Planning: Preparing for the Worst
Insurance
Do I Need Insurance?
How Much Insurance Do I Need?
CHAPTER 4 Borrowing: Accumulating and Managing Debt
Warning Signs You Carry Too Much Debt
Is Your Debt Too High?
Paying Down Debt
Buying a Home
Renting Versus Buying: Weighing the Trade-Offs
How Much Can You Afford?
Shopping for a Loan
Tax Savings
Calculating the Equity in Your Home
To Refinance or Not
The Old College Try: Saving for a Child's Education
How Much to Save?
Buying a Car
The Ins and Outs of Auto Leases
Turning a Money Factor into an Interest Rate
Comparing Leases
CHAPTER 5 Be Prepared—It's Not Just a Motto for the Boy Scouts
The Wallet Register
Financial Accounts
Safe-Deposit Boxes
PART II
BUILDING YOUR ASSETS
CHAPTER 6 Investing
Determining Your Net Worth
Rating Your Tolerance for Risk
Short Term? Long Term? Something in Between?
Compounding: The Most Powerful Force in the Universe
First Things First
Brokerage-Firm Basics
Wall Street in Words and Formulas
Calculating Your Rate of Return
Index Investing: No Effort Required
Exchange-Traded Funds: Minimal Effort Required
Dollar-Cost Averaging
CHAPTER 7 Retirement Planning: Feathering the Nest Egg
How Much Will I Need in Retirement?
Asset Allocation: Rocket Science for Beginners
Asset Allocation Models
Where Do I Invest?
What Might a Diversified Portfolio Look Like?
Company Stock: Buy, Sell, or Hold?
The ABCs of IRAs
Annuities: Great for Some; Lousy for Many
Which Annuity Is Right for Me?
A Taxing Matter
CONCLUSION
The simple fact about personal finance is that managing your money requires a bit of
math. Sorry.
In truth, most of the math is easy and obvious, though some of it can seem complex
when you must make comparisons between, say, buying a car and taking the rebate or
the 0% financing, or leasing the vehicle instead. With some of it, like gauging your
potential financial needs for retirement or gauging the costs of college eighteen years
from now—well, it's sometimes hard to even know where to begin.
Thus, this workbook. These pages are designed to complement a companion book, The
Wall Street Journal Complete Personal Finance Guidebook, a thorough primer for
understanding and taking control of every aspect of your personal financial life. That
said, this workbook is written to stand on its own for those who already have a working
knowledge of personal finance and just want a resource to help calculate, for instance,
when it makes sense to refinance your home or how to comparison-shop for the best
mortgage. Along with various worksheets and formulas designed to make the math part
of personal finance easier, a variety of tips are interspersed throughout to help you
make better decisions when spending, saving, and investing your limited resources.
Also, given that we live in the Internet age, interactive versions of the worksheets can
be found online at www.WSJ.com/BookTools.
This workbook is divided into two broad sections: “Building Your Financial Base” and
“Building Your Assets.” The first section tackles what we'll call domestic finance—all
that money stuff that happens in the home: creating a budget, balancing a checkbook,
managing your debt, and protecting your family's assets with life insurance. In that
section you'll also find help planning for college and planning for the worst—the
possibility that bad things happen that require you to tap into emergency savings or
which demand you produce a full and immediate accounting of the possessions in your
home. You'll also learn how to determine in your situation the smartest method for
acquiring a car.
The second section pulls apart what you need to know about investing, everything
from buying stocks through a brokerage firm to determining the right type of annuity
for you and your family. In between you'll find worksheets that will help you gauge
your own tolerance for risk, and a rundown of the terms and formulas that Wall Street
employs. The “Building Your Assets” section is largely structured around putting
together a well-diversified portfolio in your retirement savings accounts, since preparing
for retirement is the most significant investment purpose most readers will have.
To paraphrase Woody Allen's famous claim that 90% of success is just showing up:
90% of financial success is just trying. You don't need to be a certified financial planner;
you don't need to be a chartered financial analyst. You don't need to be a mutual-fund
portfolio manager or a Wall Street investment banker. You don't even need a degree in
finance to manage your own money.
All you need you already have: a desire to know and a workbook to lead the way.
Oh, and of course, a little math, which we're going to help you with.
Description:A hands-on, interactive guide to managing your monday and building your financial futureMany of the worksheets in this book are available online and can be saved, printed, and recalculated at any time. Go to: WSJ.com/BookToolsUnderstanding your money, and getting it to work for you, is more importan
