The Neatest Little Guide to Personal Finance

If you are decently knowlegeable about how to manage your money, then you probably won't need this book. If you are also totally dumb about your money, this book might be too advanced for you. This is a good book for someone who's been surviving on their money management system, but doesn't know if they know enough, like me. There are also just some very good tips in here about what types of policies are scams. The tips on how to reduce your interest rates and the statistics he presents on what ends up costing so much more is very good. This book helped me learn a lot; it might or might not do the same for you. The used book price is really cheap, so you might as well give it a try.

I was able to lower my car insurance by a few hundred dollars by calling Amica, the company recommended in this book. The other information about credit cards and bank loans made sense to me too, but will take longer to achieve a benefit. The car insurance savings were immediate, though.

I know Jason Kelly's stock book gets all the attention, but this little book about personal money and saving and stuff is really good too. I liked the stock book, but I'm so darned far in debt that I can't use it yet. So I've found this money book better for me. Maybe when I'm done paying off my debt I will be able to use his other books about investing. He's a good writer and funny too.

Much to my surprise, this book had me rolling on the floor at times. Who would expect that from a book about personal finance? Kelly talks about his mother saving by not taking the whole family to dinner, talks about investing by telling about his curmudgeonly grandfather, and talks about insurance by talking about his cheap sports car. The best part of all: the advice is sound. If you need to know about money, this is the book for you. If you know about money, buy it as a gift!

I love this author! I read his Neatest Little Guide to Mutual Fund Investing and Neatest Little Guide to Stock Market Investing and found both to be the best in their category. Now, Mr. Kelly has topped the personal finance category as well. His advice on reducing debt is straight forward and funny. He uses a lot of examples from his own life, even telling the story of buying his RX-7 on the cheap and getting insurance on it for less than 25% of the going rate in California. As with his other books, this one includes great worksheets. His basic advice is to spend less than you earn, invest the difference, and protect what you have. He explains those three steps in such a captivating way that you forget you're reading about money. I only wish he came out with more than one Neatest Little Guide per year.