Shoptimism
Shoptimism is a guided tour through the parallel worlds of selling and buying. Part I, “Them Versus You,” explores “the Sell Side,” where marketing, retailing, advertising, and consumer-research forces take aim on the American buyer. Part II, “You Versus You,” looks at buyers and examines what people are looking at when they buy things, why some people are loose with money and others pinch pennies, the differences between men and women as shoppers and what value there is in practicality, value, novelty and excess.
The book takes readers on a journey through the present and future of consumerism—the emerging importance of social networking, what neuroscience can and can’t tell us about buying behavior and our state of mind as we struggle through challenging economic times. It also provides a social and cultural history of how the American consumer came to be in the early 1900s, how the 1950s changed buying habits and ushered in ever more sophisticated (and sometimes invasive) market research methods and the leveraging of sex as a sales tool.
Lee Eisenberg is a former Esquire magazine writer. Researching the book included a stint as a clerk at Target, encounters with leading academic and marketing experts, a probe into the world of online chatter and forays into stores of every description. More About: Shoptimism
Many of us feel conflicted when buying cheap goods. You ask yourself, "How can this thing be produced so cheaply and still honor worker's rights and environmental safeguards necessary for all industry today? In "Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture," an Atlantic magazine correspondent looks at what may be the true cost—in economic, political, and psychic terms—of our penchant for making and buying things as cheaply as possible.
From the shuttered factories of the rust belt to the look-alike strip malls of the sun belt—and almost everywhere in between—America has been transformed by its relentless fixation on low price. This pervasive yet little examined obsession is arguably the most powerful and devastating market force of our time—the engine of globalization, outsourcing, planned obsolescence, and economic instability in an increasingly unsettled world.
Low price is so alluring that we may have forgotten how thoroughly we once distrusted it. Ellen Ruppel Shell traces the birth of the bargain as we know it from the Industrial Revolution to the assembly line and beyond, homing in on a number of colorful characters, such as Gene Verkauf (his name is Yiddish for “to sell”), founder of E. J. Korvette, the discount chain that helped wean customers off traditional notions of value. The rise of the chain store in post–Depression America led to the extolling of convenience over quality, and big-box retailers completed the reeducation of the American consumer by making them prize low price in the way they once prized durability and craftsmanship.
The effects of this shift are vast: a blighted landscape, escalating debt (both personal and national), stagnating incomes, fraying communities, and a host of other socioeconomic ills. That’s a long list of charges, and it runs counter to orthodox economics which argues that low price powers productivity by stimulating a brisk free market. But Shell brings forth compelling arguments from a wide range of fields—history, sociology, marketing, psychology, even economics—to argue against the conventional wisdom. Cheap also unveils the fascinating and unsettling illogic that underpins our bargain-hunting reflex and explains how our deep-rooted need for bargains colors every aspect of our psyches and social lives.
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Consumer Action is somewhat turned off by the "Dummies" series, not by the content of many of the books, which is excellent, but by the supposition that people who have not been educated on a certain aspect of life are inherently "dumb." Everyone can learn new things if they want to, and this book does not dumb down the topic of asset allocation.
This easy-to-understand how-to guide to the single most important thing you can do in investing — choosing and mixing your assets successfully, tackles complex issues. This book presents a compelling argument that you don’t need to be an expert analyst, a star stock-picker, or a rocket scientist to have better investment results than most other investors. You just need to allocate your assets in the right way, and have the conviction to stick with that allocation. The big secret behind asset allocation — the secret that most sophisticated investors know and use to their benefit — is that it’s really not all that hard to do.
Asset Allocation For Dummies serves as a comprehensive guide to maximizing returns and minimizing risk — while managing taxes, fees and other costs — in putting together a portfolio to reflect your unique financial goals.
Jerry A. Miccolis is a widely quoted commentator who has been interviewed in The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, and appeared on CBS Radio and ABC-TV. He is a senior financial advisor and co-owner of Brinton Eaton Wealth Advisors, a fee-only investment management, tax advisory and financial planning firm in Madison, N.J. Dorianne R. Perrucci is a freelance writer who has been published in The New York Times, Newsweek, and TheStreet.com, and has collaborated on several financial books, including I.O.U.S.A, One Nation, Under Stress, In Debt (Wiley, 2008). More About: 
"Busted: Life Inside the Great Mortgage Meltdown" is a personal and journalistic look at the free-wheeling lending that led to our nation's housing crisis. A veteran New York Times economics reporter, Edmund L. Andrews was intimately aware of the dangers posed by easy mortgages from fast-buck lenders. But, eager to buy a home and start a new life, he gave in to temptation and began a surreal adventure into the mortgage mayhem that nearly wrecked our economy.
"Busted" weaves together the author’s own ride to the edge of bankruptcy with the tragicomic stories of his lenders, the Wall Street pros behind them, and the policymakers in Washington who were oblivious until it was too late. The story takes Andrews to the offices of Alan Greenspan, the mansions of subprime-mortgage millionaires in southern California, a despondent deal makers’ convention in Las Vegas, and Wall Street. Rich with on-the-ground reporting, Busted is a darkly humorous exploration of the cynicism and self-destructive judgment that led to America’s biggest economic calamity in generations.
Edmund L. Andrews has been a reporter for the New York Times for 16 years. More About: 
Conversations on how to reform healthcare are long-standing and varied. But healthcare costs have soared, health insurance companies get richer and even those who pay dearly for health insurance frequently find that their policies don’t adequately cover them when they need their coverage most.
Howard Dean—the physician and former governor credited for reviving the Democratic Party after the 2004 elections—has ideas on what needs to be done to successfully reform healthcare. He suggests offering Americans the option to participate in a public healthcare program, much like Medicare. “America has had ‘socialized’ medicine since 1964,” says Dean. “It’s called Medicare; it covers every American over 65, and the majority of them are happy with the program. The rest of America deserves a similar option.”
In his new book, Dean explains:
With economic uncertainty reaching unprecedented levels, Aaron W. Smith's nine-step plan is designed to help African Americans take control of their financial futures, emphasizing the importance of saving, budgeting, investing in retirement plans and risk management. According to Publishers Weekly, "Smith shares uplifting case studies of clients and public figures, ranging from the wealthy and successful (e.g., Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, a multimillionaire couple, a single mother and successful entrepreneur) to those struggling to find their financial footing (e.g., one man fighting to rebuild his life post-incarceration and another who successfully overcame the addictions that had destroyed his family life and left him destitute)."
"In the Black," which is not shy to refer to spirituality and matriarch Aunt WaWa's advice, provides guidance that can be used across a broad spectrum of age groups—for those who are just starting out and those who find themselves in midlife with concerns about your retirement, for instance. The guide book offers concrete advice on what opportunities are available and using real-life examples to illustrate how anyone can achieve their financial dreams be they middle- aged and facing debt or actively saving since their early twenties.
Readers will learn how to:
Whether it was a Ginsu knife, George Foreman Grill, Tony Robbins' motivational book, kitchen device by Ron Popeil, or any of the countless other famous products that have been marketed on infomercials over the years, you or someone you know has bought one—and you're not alone. Last year, one out of every three Americans picked up the phone and ordered a product from a television infomercial or home shopping network, and in "But Wait . . . There's More!" journalist (and infomercial addict) Remy Stern offers a lively, behind-the-scenes exploration of this enormous business—one that markets the world's most outrageous products using the most outrageous tactics.
Don't let the kitschy exterior fool you: behind the laughable demonstrations, goofy grins, and cheesy dialogue lies an industry larger than the film and music industries combined. This may be the first book to expose the never-before-told story of the infomercial and home shopping phenomenon in all its meteoric rise to become one of the most profitable businesses in America.
Along the way, Stern details the history behind the classic products and introduces readers to some of the most famous (and infamous) pitchmen and personalities in the business, including Tony Robbins, Billy Mays, Ron Popeil, Tony Little, Suzanne Somers, Kevin Trudeau, and Joe Francis. He also presents an in-depth look at the business behind the camera—the sales strategies, psychological tools, and occasionally questionable tactics marketers have used to get us to open up our wallets and spend, spend, spend.
Stern's account also offers a look at how late-night television conquered the American consumer and provides insight into modern American culture: our rampant consumerism, our desire for instant riches, and our collective dream of perfect abs, unblemished skin, and gleaming white teeth. Both a compelling business story and a thoroughly entertaining piece of investigative journalism (with a touch of muckraking and social satire), this story will ensure that you never look at those too-good-to-be-true deals the same way again. More About: 
This new book—available March 6, 2009—outlines 10 steps you can take to protect yourself or your family from ID theft and medical identity theft, the fastest growing crime in America.
By reading this book, you will learn what to do now to safeguard your bank accounts, online presence, credit record and more from the potential financial damage of identity theft.
An identity theft is stolen every four seconds in the U.S. The Federal Trade Commission reports that more than eight million people (a growing number of which are children) are victims of identity theft every year - with losses of more than $15 billion annually.
The book offers action-oriented advice designed to prevent identity theft:
Since the Bernard Madoff "Ponzi scheme" scandal broke, shocking investors and the Wall Street community, this insider's guide to investment rip-offs, scams and con artists has been in demand. The book, published in the late '90s, is designed to educate consumers and make them aware of how scams work.
It takes an investigative look at the reasons why Ponzi schemes and pyramid frauds are thriving everywhere. It closely examines why over 100,000 Americans are suckered into the schemes every year. Tips are offered to detect schemes and respond when they occur. More About: 
Who was Ponzi, the man whose name is synonymous with the classic “rob-Peter-to-pay-Paul” scam where money from new investors goes to reward earlier ones? (It's the kind of scheme that Bernard Madoff recently used to rake in $50 billion from gullible folks all over the world.) In December 1919, Charles Ponzi was an unknown 38-year-old, self-educated Italian immigrant with just $200 in his pocket. Six months later, he was the ten-million-dollar man, Boston’s famed “wizard of finance,” lionized by the public and politicians alike.
Based on exclusive interviews with people who knew Charles Ponzi, lent him their money, and exposed him, Donald Dunn’s Ponzi: The Incredible True Story of the King of Financial Cons takes an in-depth look at one of America’s most notorious financial con artists and the mad money-hungry era in which he thrived. More About: 
How much do we know about why we buy? What truly influences our decisions in today’s message-cluttered world? An eye-grabbing advertisement, a catchy slogan, an infectious jingle? Or do our buying decisions take place below the surface, so deep within our subconscious minds, we’re barely aware of them? In Buyology, Lindstrom presents findings from his three-year, seven-million-dollar neuromarketing study. This experiment looked inside the brains of 2,000 volunteers from all around the world as they encountered various ads, logos, commercials, brands, and products. His results prompt questions about long held beliefs on what seduces our interest and drives us to buy. Among his findings:
2008 marks the 75th anniversary of the New Deal, the series of programs initiated by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to help Americans recover during the Great Depression (1933-43). Programs such as the Civilian Conservation Corps, the Civil Works Administration, and the Works Progress Administration gave hope, support, and encouragement to millions of Americans. Several New Deal programs, including Social Security and Federal Insurance Deposit Insurance bank account protection, continue to help Americans today.
The only thing we have to fear is fear itself, stated a confident Roosevelt, and the country took him at his word. In many ways, America's New Deal brought out the best in us, and it can serve as a model for recuperation from the economic slide of 2007-2008.
Kathryn A. Flynn is Executive Director of the National New Deal Preservation Association. She is the author of Treasures on New Mexico Trails: New Deal Art and Public Artists in New Mexico. She lives in Santa Fe.
Richard Polese is the author of Discovering Dixie: The Magnolia Trail Travel Guide to the Deep South and coauthor of Passions in Print: Private Press Artistry in New Mexico. He lives in Santa Fe.
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Thomas L. Friedman's The World Is Flat helped millions of readers to see globalization in a new way. Friedman now looks at the crises of destabilizing climate change and rising competition for energy. He proposes that an national strategy—which he calls "Geo-Greenism"—is not only what we need to save the planet from overheating; it is what we need to make America healthier, richer, more innovative, more productive, and more secure.
Friedman explains a new "Energy-Climate era" through his account of how 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, and the flattening of the world by the Internet (which brought 3 billion new consumers onto the world stage) have combined to bring climate and energy issues to Main Street. But the much-touted "green revolution" has hardly begun. With all that in mind, Friedman sets out the clean-technology breakthroughs we, and the world, will need; he posits that the ET (Energy Technology) revolution will be both transformative and disruptive; and he argues that America must lead this revolution—with the first Green President and a Green New Deal, spurred by the Greenest Generation. More About: 
Record numbers of people are falling behind on their financial obligations and their debts are being sent to collections. If you're one of them, you know that being contacted by debt collectors can be stressful, especially if they are harassing you, threatening you, and/or using abusive language.
The federal Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA) gives you legal rights when it comes to debt collectors. Stop Debt Collectors: How to protect your rights and resolve your debts tells you how to exercise your rights, resolve your debts and fight back against unfair debt collection tactics.
Stop Debt Collectors explains:
Gary Weiss, a business reporter, looks of what really happens in every corner of the financial system: from Internet tip sites and boiler rooms, to fee-happy mutual funds and hedge funds, to the bluest of blue-chip securities firms. With anecdotes and character studies, Wall Street Versus America tells how investors are being victimized—while sleepy regulators, biased arbitrators, and the media all look the other way.
You'll learn, for instance, how respectable institutions such as Bear Stearns and Morgan Stanley push the ethical envelope, and how Washington, under both Democrats and Republicans, simply has not kept up with innovations in Wall Street greed.
Gary Weiss's book is about the dark side of Wall Street—not just a few bad apples, but a whole rotten barrel.
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People wanting basic advice about stocks, bonds, mutual funds, retirement planning, and tax strategies may find that picking a good book seems as daunting as deciding what to do with their savings and investments. Investing 101: Updated and Expanded can help you get on a path that you can understand and stick with.
Author Kathy Kristof, a Los Angeles Times consumer reporter, takes the mystery and anxiety out of investing by keeping choices manageable. She walks readers through the investment cycle and the ways they can think about their financial lives, rather than presenting stand-alone concepts like stocks and real estate. This expanded edition has new information about 529 college savings plans, annuities, Roth IRAs, reverse mortgages, and why declining markets can be good for you. It includes a cautionary look at home mortgages as investments. There’s even a portfolio for the "lazy investor."
Kristof is known for her weekly syndicated personal finance column, which reaches 40 million readers online through more than fifty major newspapers. Cited as “maybe the best reporter of all the personal finance columnists" in the TJFR 1999 Blue Chip Newsroom ranking of the top 100 American business journalists, she has received numerous writing awards and honors, including the title of 1998 Consumer Advocate of the Year by the California Alliance for Consumer Education. She is a sought-after speaker for investment conferences and appears regularly on radio and television news programs. Kathy lives in Los Angeles with her two children.
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Bottlemania: How Water Went on Sale and Why We Bought It is an investigation into the commercialization of our most basic human need: drinking water.
Having already surpassed milk and beer, and second now only to soda, bottled water is on the verge of becoming the most popular beverage in the country. The brands have become so ubiquitous that we're hardly conscious that Poland Spring and Evian were once real springs, bubbling in remote corners of Maine and France. Only now, with the water industry trading in the billions of dollars, have we begun to question what it is we're drinking and why.
Elizabeth Royte does for water what Eric Schlosser did for fast food: she finds the people, machines, economies, and cultural trends that bring it from nature to our supermarkets. Along the way, she investigates the questions we must inevitably answer. Who owns our water? What happens when a bottled-water company stakes a claim on your town's source? Should we have to pay for water? Is the stuff coming from the tap completely safe? And if so, how many chemicals are dumped in to make it potable? What's the environmental footprint of making, transporting, and disposing of all those plastic bottles?
A chronicle of one of the greatest marketing coups of the 20th century as well as a powerful environmental wake-up call, Bottlemania is essential reading for anyone who shells out $2 to quench their thirst.
Read reviews of Bottlemania: How Water Went on Sale and Why We Bought It. More About: 
Brands are dead. Advertising no longer works. Weaned on TiVo, the Internet, and other emerging technologies, the short-attention-span generation has become immune to marketing. Consumers are “in control.” Or so we’re told.
In Buying In, New York Times Magazine “Consumed” columnist Rob Walker argues that this accepted wisdom misses a much more important and lasting cultural shift. As technology has created avenues for advertising anywhere and everywhere, people are embracing brands more than ever before. They are creating brands of their own and participating in marketing campaigns for their favorite brands in unprecedented ways. Increasingly, motivated consumers are pitching in to spread the gospel of their favorites virally, whether by creating Internet video ads for Converse All Stars or becoming word-of-mouth “agents” touting products to friends and family on behalf of huge corporations. In the process, they (or we) have begun to funnel cultural, political, and community activities through connections with brands.
Walker explores this changing cultural landscape, including a practice he calls “murketing,” blending the terms murky and marketing–by introducing us to the creative marketers, entrepreneurs, artists, and community organizers who have found a way to thrive within it. Using profiles of brands old and new, including Timberland, American Apparel, Pabst Blue Ribbon, Red Bull, iPod, and Livestrong, Walker demonstrates the ways in which buyers adopt products, not just as consumer choices, but as conscious expressions of their identities.
Part marketing primer, part work of cultural anthropology, Buying In reveals why we are what we buy–and vice versa.
Read The Washington Post review of Buying In: The Secret Dialogue Between What We Buy and Who We Are. More About: 
Without proper insurance - health, auto, homeowners, life, disability, or long-term care - an unexpected event can quickly derail your financial plans and put your life savings at risk. Insurance is an essential part of financial planning, but many people are paying hundreds - sometimes thousands - of dollars more than they need to, and often, they buy the wrong kinds of coverage. With your family's financial future at stake, you can't afford to make the wrong decisions when shopping for insurance.
In The Insurance Maze: How You Can Save Money on Insurance and Still Get the Coverage You Need, industry expert and writer Kimberly Lankford breaks through the clutter and jargon of the industry and helps you make the most of your coverage and avoid expensive mistakes that can jeopardize your financial future.
Some of the topics addressed include:
Your home is the single most valuable thing you can own, yet making it pay can intimidate and confuse even the savviest investor. Finance expert Gerri Willis leads you step-by-step through the entire experience of buying, maintaining, and selling a home, and shows you how to come out ahead–maybe even way ahead.
Americans used to raise their families in one place, knowing that their homes would someday make them wealthy. These days, on average, people spend just nine years in a house; it’s become a medium-term investment in a volatile real estate market. Home Rich is the first book that offers simple rules specifically designed for this brave new world of home buying and selling.
Home Rich addresses the needs of homeowners in all regions and at all income levels, featuring helpful case histories, practical charts, and clear instructions. Gerri Willis has written a comprehensive, reader-friendly guide for creating a special personal space that you will love living in–and that others will also value and happily pay for when the time comes for you to sell.
Willis is the anchor of CNN’s weekend business program Open House, which provides how-to essentials on all things real estate. She is also the personal finance editor for CNN Business News and offers viewers worldwide financial advice in her daily “Five Tips” segment. Prior to joining CNN, she was the senior financial correspondent for SmartMoney magazine and a 1992 Columbia University Knight-Bagehot fellow. She is also the author of The SmartMoney Guide to Real Estate Investing. More About: 
Zero Day Threat: The Shocking Truth of How Banks and Credit Bureaus Help Cyber Crooks Steal Your Money and Identity is a white-collar true-crime story—an investigative expose on bank and lending policies that actually facilitate ID theft and fraud.
The authors, USA Today reporters, reveal the ways that established corporations and technology giants (including Bank of America, Microsoft, and Google) have fixated on the Internet to maximize their profits, heedless of increased risks to customers. While examining the exploding range of hidden Internet hazards, they reveal the ways in which cyber crooks nab identity data - such as Dumpster diving for bountiful paper trash that offers account user names, passwords and Social Security numbers - and then exploit that information through channels opened up by careless corporate policies.
Watch Byron Acohido talk about Zero Day Threat: The Shocking Truth of How Banks and Credit Bureaus Help Cyber Crooks Steal Your Money and Identity.
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The U.S. economy is wrapping up 25 years of some of the strongest, smoothest growth in its history—a performance so sweet economists have given it a name: "the Great Moderation."
So why have so many people, even those making hundreds of thousands of dollars, arrived at the new century with a gnawing sense that events are moving in a direction that is detrimental to our families and ourselves? Are we suffering a case of needless anxiety? Peter Gosselin's new book, High Wire: The Precarious Financial Lives of American Families, suggests that we have reasons to be concerned.
Drawing on interviews with hundreds of Americans and on new statistics he developed, Gosselin traces a quarter-century shift of economic risk from the broad shoulders of business and government to the backs of working people. It is a shift that has shaken the pillars of most families' lives—stable jobs, solid benefits, government protections. The change doesn't mean that individuals can't prosper. But it does mean the benefits of growth come at greater peril and your financial fall will be steeper if you stumble. This threat to working Americans' security—and what to do about it—is a pressing concern to economists, policy-makers, and everyone who works for a living.
Peter Gosselin is national economics correspondent for the Los Angeles Times in the Washington bureau. A visiting fellow at the Urban Institute in Washington, D.C., he lives there with his wife, reporter Robin Toner, and their two children. More About: 
The Superclass - politicians, military leaders, finance gurus, energy barons, media moguls and thought leaders - is the small group that currently plays the greatest role in shaping the progress of globalization and perhaps the group most changed by that phenomenon, so much so that they have more in common with one another than they do with their own countrymen. And because this group frequently operates outside all national and international regulation, they are often in conflict with the elite in their own countries.
Each of them is one in a million. They number six thousand on a planet of six billion. They run our governments, our largest corporations, the powerhouses of international finance, the media, world religions, and, from the shadows, the world’s most dangerous criminal and terrorist organizations. They are the global superclass, and they are shaping the history of our time.
Today’s superclass has achieved unprecedented levels of wealth and power. They have globalized more rapidly than any other group. But do they have more in common with one another than with their own countrymen, as nationalist critics have argued? They control globalization more than anyone else. But has their influence fed the growing economic and social inequity that divides the world? What happens behind closed-door meetings or aboard corporate jets? Conspiracy or collaboration? Deal-making or idle self-indulgence? What does the rise of Asia and Latin America mean for the conventional wisdom that shapes our destinies? Who sets the rules for a group that operates beyond national laws?
Drawn from exclusive interviews and original reporting, Superclass: The Global Power Elite and the World They Are Making answers these questions and more. It draws back the curtain on a privileged society that most of us know little about, even though it profoundly affects our everyday lives. It is the first in-depth examination of the connections between the global communities of leaders who are at the helm of every major enterprise on the planet and control its greatest wealth. And it is an unprecedented examination of the trends within the superclass, which are likely to alter our politics, our institutions, and the shape of the world in which we live.
Rothkopf offers a provocative and trenchant examination of the overlapping international power clusters. He reveals who is a member of this global Superclass and who is likely to be joining it and transforming it in the years ahead. And he explores how the aggressive pursuit of self-interest by some in this class helped to create a world in which inequity is greater than ever - something that may well threaten international stability in our lifetimes.
David Rothkopf is the author of Running the World: The Inside Story of the National Security Council and the Architects of American Power. He is the president and chief executive of Garten Rothkopf, an international advisory firm; a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace; and a teacher of international affairs at Columbia University’s Graduate School of International and Public Affairs.
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¿Se Habla Dinero? The Everyday Guide to Financial Success is a bilingual guide to the basics of financial success. (Scroll down for a Spanish version of this book description.)
Getting ahead financially in the United States is a difficult task, and it is even more daunting for someone who comes from a different culture. This book offers information for financial survival and success, written in both English and Spanish.
¿Se Habla Dinero? walks readers through the fundamentals of personal finance and money management and explains how to open and use bank accounts; establish and manage credit; save and borrow money for education; and master basic investing techniques. This bilingual guide makes intimidating topics easy and gives readers the confidence they need to move forward.
Lynn Jimenez of San Francisco, CA, is an award-winning business reporter for KGO Radio 810. She has delivered business reports from the options floor of the New York Stock Exchange for 17 years.
Una guía bilingüe que proporciona las bases del éxito económico.
Salir adelante económicamente en Estados Unidos es una labor ardua, y más difícil todavía para aquellos que provienen de culturas diferentes.
Esta es la razón por la que la autora Lynn Jiménez ha creado ¿Se Habla Dinero?: la guía diaria que le llevará al éxito financiero. Este libro ofrece en dos idiomas: inglés y español yde manera sencilla y clara, la información necesaria para la supervivencia y el éxito financiero.
¿Se Habla Dinero? Guía al lector a través de las nociones fundamentales de economía personal y administración del dinero. Explica cómo abrir y usar cuentas bancarias, cómo establecer y administrar crédito, cómo ahorrar y tomar prestado dinero para la educación y cómo manejar técnicas de inversión básicas. Esta guía bilingüe hace que algunos aspectos intimidatorios resulten fáciles y proporciona a sus lectores la confianza que necesitan para seguir adelante.
La población hispana hoy en día está alcanzando rápidamente la clase media de esta nación. ¿Se Habla Dinero? Es una herramienta importante que ayudará a sus lectores a subir la escala del éxito financiero.
Lynn Jimenez de San Francisco, California, es una reportera de negocios galardonada que trabaja para la estación de Radio 810 KGO. También ha transmitido reportajes breves de negocios desde el piso de opciones de la Bolsa de Nueva York en San Francisco por diez ye siete años. More About: 
The Big Squeeze: Tough Times for the American Worker looks at the stresses and strains faced by American workers as wages have stagnated, health and pension benefits have grown stingier, and job security has shriveled.
Steven Greenhouse tells the stories of software engineers in Seattle, hotel housekeepers in Chicago, call center workers in New York, and janitors in Houston, as he explores why, in the world’s most affluent nation, so many corporations are squeezing their workers dry. We meet all kinds of workers: white collar and blue collar, high tech and low tech, middle income and low income; employees who stock shelves during a hurricane while locked inside their store, get fired after suffering debilitating injuries on the job, face sexual harassment, and get laid off when their companies move high-tech operations abroad. We also meet young workers having a hard time starting out and 70-year-old workers with too little money saved up to retire.
The book offers an explanation of how economic, business, political, and social trends—among them globalization, the influx of immigrants, and the Wal-Mart effect—have fueled the squeeze. We see how the social contract between employers and employees, guaranteeing steady work and good pensions, has eroded over the last three decades, damaged by massive layoffs of factory and office workers and Wall Street’s demands for ever-higher profits. The post–World War II social contract that helped build the world’s largest and most prosperous middle class has been replaced by a startling contradiction: corporate profits, economic growth, and worker productivity have grown strongly while worker pay has languished and Americans face ever-greater pressures to work harder and longer.
Greenhouse also examines companies that are generous to their workers and can serve as models for all of corporate America: Costco, Patagonia, and the casino-hotels of Las Vegas among them. Finally, he presents a series of pragmatic suggestions on what government, business, and labor should do about the squeeze.
Steven Greenhouse has been the labor and workplace correspondent for The New York Times since 1995. He has covered business, economics, and foreign affairs for the Times and has been a correspondent based in Paris, Chicago, and Washington, D.C. He lives in Pelham, New York.
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When it comes to making decisions in our lives, we think we're in control. We think we're making smart, rational choices. But are we? In a series of illuminating, often surprising experiments outlined in his book, "Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions," MIT behavioral economist Dan Ariely refutes the common assumption that we behave in fundamentally rational ways. Blending everyday experience with original research, Ariely explains how expectations, emotions, social norms, and other invisible, seemingly illogical forces skew our reasoning abilities.
Curtis Arnold, founder of 
In an age of information overload, many simply don't have the time, knowledge or organizational skills to create a simple, functional system for managing personal finances.
Now in its fifth edition, "The Budget Kit: The Common Cents Money Management Workbook "is a best-seller that has helped hundreds of thousands of people across America develop effective budgets and gain financial freedom.
Even if you are using a financial software program, you will find the concepts in The Budget Kit to be essential to your understanding of budgeting.
In the completely revised and updated fourth edition, Lawrence tackles the challenges faced in the digital society. The increased use of debit cards, automatic withdrawals, direct paycheck deposits and online bill payment systems have distanced us from our money like never before. Judy guides you through the electronic shift to a cashless society, and keeps you connected to your money. More About: 
Scams have always been with us, and they always will be - except now, technology makes scammers' jobs even easier, enabling them to reach out from anywhere around the world, and take advantage of more people than ever before. No matter how smart you think you are, you can easily become a victim: in fact, scammers have discovered that educated, sophisticated individuals are among their best targets.
The Truth About Avoiding Scams provides information to protect yourself: up-to-the-minute knowledge, and the "internal sensors" you need to sniff out even the subtlest, most well-crafted scams. Consumer finance expert and nationally syndicated radio host Steve Weisman offers quick, bite-size, just-the-facts information about every type of fraud, from identity scams to computer-based fraud, travel and health scams to phony educational loans and scholarships. Weisman exposes the new epidemic of "affinity fraud," where "people just like you" target you based on your ethnicity, racial group, church, club, or fraternal organization. The book contains guidance on avoiding illegitimate online dating services; "cramming" and other phone frauds; tax and Social Security scams; employment, home repair, and investment scams; and more.
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"Taxes are what we pay for a civilized society."—Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
This short, snappy handbook countersthe anti-tax, anti-government rhetoric that permeates our culture and reminds us why taxes lie at the heart of a functioning democracy.
Paying taxes is something almost everyone loves to hate. 10 Excellent Reasons Not to Hate Taxes makes the case for thinking about taxes in a fresh and progressive way and offers plenty of material for anyone interested in countering the conservative anti-government, anti-tax agenda.
Written by activists, economists, teachers, political scientists, and businesspeople, 10 Excellent Reasons Not to Hate Taxes offers an array of powerful arguments that will reframe the tax debate. Chapters on the effect of taxes on the economy, education, the environment, and the distribution of opportunity will arm readers with a wealth of arguments to turn the tables when thinking—or arguing—about taxes and provide a menu of ideas for how to transform the tax code into a tool for social justice.
This book will spark a lively and much-needed debate about all manner of tax issues, from the inheritance tax and flat taxes to tax cuts and the role that taxes play in the growing economic divide in the United States.
Stephanie Greenwood is a master's candidate in public policy at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School. She was previously a research analyst for Good Jobs New York, a nonprofit watchdog and advocacy organization, and her writing has appeared in The Nation, Dollars and Sense, and Sojourners. David Cay Johnston is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist for the New York Times whose widely acclaimed writing focuses on taxes. He is the author of Perfectly Legal: The Covert Campaign to Rig Our Tax System to Benefit the Super Rich and Cheat Everybody Else. He lives in New York. More About: 
Blending social commentary with reporting, House Lust is a funny and disturbing portrait of the behaviors that drove the greatest real estate boom in history—and its eventual bust.
Owning a home has long been considered the fulfillment of the American Dream. But in the last decade, as the real estate market boomed, Americans’ fascination with homes turned into a frenzy. Shelter has been transformed from a basic necessity into an all-consuming passion.
Newsweek’s Daniel McGinn travels the country to explore the roots of this mania. Even as the real estate boom has turned to bust, Americans remain obsessed with houses—many of us are still trading up, adding on, or doubling down to buy vacation property. But for others, this zeal for housing has carried a painful price, one that’s evident in the soaring foreclosure rates and mounting despair as millions of homeowners (and their lenders) realize they’ve stretched too far to buy the home of their dreams.
McGinn explores the arms race for square footage and introduces readers to a menagerie of characters from the real estate world—from “renovation psychologists” who treat remodeling-addled clients to a guy who trades vacation time-shares the way kids trade baseball cards. McGinn also jumps into the fray himself by enrolling in real estate school and buying an investment property, sight unseen, over the Internet. More About: 
You didn’t fill up the rental car with gas? Gotcha! Gas costs $7 a gallon here. Your bank balance fell to $999.99 for one day? Gotcha! That’ll be $12.
You miss one payment on that 18-month same-as-cash loan? Gotcha! That’ll be $512 extra. You’re one day late on that electric bill? Gotcha! All your credit cards now have a 29.99% interest rate.
Here are just a few eye-popping examples of how big business can get you: Coughing up $4 fees for ATM transactions. Iron-clad cell phone contracts you can’t get out of with a crowbar. Paying big bucks for insurance you don’t need on a rental car or forking over $20 a day for supposedly “free” wireless internet. Every day we use banks, cell phones, and credit cards. Every day we book hotels and airline tickets. And every day we get ripped off.
In Gotcha Capitalism, MSNBC.com’s “Red Tape Chronicles” columnist Bob Sullivan exposes the ways we’re all cheated by big business. The book, subtitlede "How Hidden Fees Rip You Off Every Day-and What You Can Do About It" outlines how to get money back. Sullivan says that using his tips can save you up to $1,000 per year. Hey Big Business, "Gotcha!" More About: 
While there are many books that describe the mistakes investors make, but this one draws on the latest scientific research to explain why smart people can be so dumb about money—and how they can do better. In this book subtitled "How the New Science of Neuroeconomics Can Help Make You Rich," Money magazine writer Jason Zweig explains what goes on inside our brains when we make decisions about money. And he gives readers a roadmap for recovery from the ills that plague every investor, through simple, practical steps that beginning and advanced investors alike can easily and profitably follow.
Zweig writes: “I’ve been a financial journalist since 1987, and nothing I’ve ever learned about investing has excited me more than the spectacular findings emerging from the study of ‘neuroeconomics.’ Thanks to this newborn field – a hybrid of neuroscience, economics, and psychology – we can begin to understand what drives investing behavior not only on the theoretical or practical level, but as a basic biological function. These flashes of fundamental insight will enable you to see as never before what makes you tick as an investor.” More About: 
Roth Individual Retirement Accounts were created in 1997. They are named for the late Republican Senator William Roth Jr. Roth IRAs are different from traditional IRAs. Roth IRAs are funded with after-tax contributions, so there is no allowable tax deduction. However, retired individuals do not have to pay taxes when they take distributions from a Roth IRA, providing lifelong tax protection of the earnings in the account.
This book, subtitled Securing Tax-Free Wealth From a Child's First Paycheck or Money Answers for Employed Children, Their Parents, the Self-Employed and Entrepreneurs, is a starting point for children and parents. The focus is on the dependent child (with no dependents of their own) who has a yearly income that ranges from $1.00 to the amount of the single standard deduction allowed by the IRS for the current tax year ($5,350 in 2007). More About: 
This book addresses "Dealing with All of the Trickiest Money Problems Between Family and Friends—From Serial Borrowers to Serious Cheapskates." Your next-door neighbor's two-year-old broke your most expensive vase, and your neighbor hasn't offered to replace it. Your best friend expects you to shop at the boutique she just opened, though her very pricey clothes look terrible on you. And your sister says she needs $1,500 to send her child to creativity camp, but you think what your sister needs is a job. What do you do?
Such tricky and emotionally charged dilemmas involving money confront everyone. Yet few of us know how to handle them. The authors of the popular column, "Do the Right Thing," in Money magazine and the blog of the same name on CNNMoney.com dissect some thorny, occasionally comic, inevitably awkward and frequently infuriating money-and-ethics problems that arise among friends, relatives and neighbors.
Fleming and Schwarz also report on the results of two surveys designed to illuminate the money-and-ethics problems we confront every day. The surveys reveal, for example, just how many of us have a friend or relative who's a freeloader or a deadbeat; how common we believe it is for someone to lie, cheat, or pretend to be loving in order to be in someone else's will; and the percentage of men compared yo women who say you should never marry someone who is deeply in debt, no matter how much you love them.
In this book, you can find advice for dealing with all the maddening problems of money, friends and social interaction.
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Liz Pulliam Weston is a personal finance columnist whose twice-weekly columns for MSN Money reach more than six million people each month. In her new book she provides a complete action plan for improving your credit score. Credit scores—numbers that sum up your credit history based on information in your credit report—have bearing on many aspects of life, including credit, insurance, renting a home and employment. A poor credit score can cost you reall money on credit and insurance.
According to Library Journal, Weston "takes us through how and why they were developed, how to determine an individual's score, how to improve one's score, and how to deal with a "credit crisis" such as bankruptcy, divorce, job loss, and other events that can wreck one's credit score. She also covers two frequently overlooked areas, the effect of identity theft on credit scores and the correlation between credit scores and insurance rates."
Weston, who is also the author of the question-and-answer column Money Talk, which appears in the Los Angeles Times and other newspapers throughout the country, is is a weekly guest on CNBC's Power Lunch and has appeared on NBC, Fine Living, PAX TV, and other networks.
Formerly a personal finance writer for the Times, Weston has won numerous reporting awards. She was part of a three-member writing team that won a Gerald Loeb Award for coverage of the Comparator Systems penny stock scandal in 1997. More About: 
Until recently, there were only two main ways you could get cash from your home: sell it or borrow against it and make monthly loan repayments. Reverse mortgages offer a third way of getting money from your home. If you are a homeowner, age 62 and older, you are eligible to apply for a reverse mortgage loan that converts your home equity into tax-free income.
This guide explains everything you need to know about reverse mortgages and how to use them to your advantage. Practicing attorneys Tyler Kraemer and Tammy Kraemer lay out a step-by-step process to getting a reverse mortgage.
Tammy Kraemer has been an attorney practicing business, real estate, and intellectual property law for almost ten years. She is currently in private practice. She worked in general counsel for a mid-size software company with worldwide offices. She also worked at a large regional law firm in their corporate law and securities department. She has written and edited numerous articles for newsletters and law journals.
Tyler Kraemer has been an attorney in private practice focusing on estate planning, real estate, finance, and business law for almost ten years. His clients include lenders, borrowers, mortgage brokers, real estate brokers, real estate buyers and sellers, and business owners. Tyler has been a part of outside general counsel for the REALTOR® trade association and the for-profit multiple listing service, which included giving daily advice on homeowner issues. He has participated in National Association of REALTOR conferences and workshops dealing with all facets of homeowner issues. More About: 
Watch out, spammers! Michael Berry's revenges against the purveyors of e-mail pollution are funny, savage and inventive.
"With warm hearts I offer my friendship, and my greetings, and I hope this letter meets you in good time. It will be surprising to you to receive this proposal from me since you do not know me personally. However, I am sincerely seeking your confidence in this transaction, which I propose with my free mind and as a person of integrity. My name is Jacob Kamala the son of Mr. A.Y Kamala, a farmer from Zimbabwe, murdered in the land dispute in my country. As led by my instinct, I decided to contact you through email…"
The above, or something similar, is familiar: letters asking us for money for orphans, for victims of hurricanes, letters telling us we’ve won the Spanish lottery, letters telling us we have been contacted because we are known to be of good integrity and could be trusted to bank $30 million in our saving’s account, for a generous fee of 10% of the sum.
To most of us the letters are an irritant. To Berry they are a call to arms. For the last five years he has replied to the scammers emails, expressing an interest in their propositions and then spending days, weeks, even months leading them down the garden path with his hilarious requests and misunderstandings. He’s had them selling paintings to Del Trotter Antiques, tattooing themselves so as to become members of his bogus church, booking expensive hotels for his no-show personas, seeking criminal compensation from Inspector Morse, writing out a Harry Potter novel by hand, or being killed by a mugger just outside the Western Union office where he was about to make a payment to them and, cruelest of all, falling in love with him as he pretends to be Gillian Anderson.
Michael Berry runs a scambaiting website 419eater.com named after the numbered clause in Nigeria's penal code outlawing ‘advanced fee’ fraud.
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Like many great adventures, the 100-mile diet began with a memorable feast. Stranded in their off-the-grid summer cottage in the Canadian wilderness with unexpected guests, Alisa Smith and J.B. MacKinnon turned to the land around them. They caught a trout, picked mushrooms, and mulled apples from an abandoned orchard with rose hips in wine. The meal was truly satisfying; every ingredient had a story, a direct line they could trace from the soil to their forks. The experience raised a question: Was it possible to eat this way in their everyday lives?
Back in the city, they began to research the origins of the items that stocked the shelves of their local supermarket. They were shocked to discover that a typical ingredient in a North American meal travels roughly the distance between Boulder, Colorado, and New York City before it reaches the plate. Like so many people, Smith and MacKinnon were trying to live more lightly on the planet; meanwhile, their “SUV diet” was producing greenhouse gases and smog at an unparalleled rate. So they decided on an experiment: For one year they would eat only food produced within 100 miles of their Vancouver home.
It wouldn’t be easy. Stepping outside the industrial food system, Smith and MacKinnon found themselves relying on World War II–era cookbooks and maverick farmers who refused to play by the rules of a global economy. What began as a struggle slowly transformed into one of the deepest pleasures of their lives. For the first time they felt connected to the people and the places that sustain them.
For Smith and MacKinnon, the 100-mile diet became a journey whose destination was, simply, home. From the satisfaction of pulling their own crop of garlic out of the earth to pitched battles over canning tomatoes, Plenty is about eating locally and thinking globally.
The authors’ food-focused experiment questions globalization, monoculture, the oil economy, environmental collapse, and the tattering threads of community. More About: 
If you don't have a traditional employer health plan you might be looking for good, affordable health insurance. The New Health Insurance Solution includes ways to cut your health insurance costs in half if:
Everything you need to get out of debt and repair your credit, from the Nolo Press, the pre-eminient self-help legal publisher.
Feeling overwhelmed by your debts? If you're ready to regain your financial freedom, this book is exactly what you need! To make the process easier, Solve Your Money Troubles also includes sample letters to creditors, as well as worksheets and charts to calculate your debts and expenses and help you create a repayment plan.
The 11th edition now covers the latest bankruptcy laws, the Fair Debt Collection Act and the new credit-scoring system used by some credit bureaus.
Step by step, Solve Your Money Troubles shows you how to:
Sarah Bongiorni and her family resolve to forgo Chinese imports for one year. Her experiment, according to one reviewer, ,"requires surprising feats of will power and ingenuity." Chuck Jaffe, Senior Columnist, MarketWatch host, Your Money (www.yourmoneyradio.net), says, "You will never go shopping the same way again! It's impossible to read Sara Bongiorni's book and not be captivated by the complexity and challenge of her task, and to then try it yourself for a day and fail miserably at it by lunchtime. This is the rare book that makes you think about how big global issues actually hit home, and it will have you discussing those issues with your friends."
Pietra Rivoli, PhD, Professor, McDonough School of Business, Georgetown University and author, The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy, calls the book "a funny and engaging story about one family's experiment in our global economy. The Bongiorni family does without sneakers, sunglasses, and printer cartridges, but develops a dogged creativity and much needed sense of humor. The myriad moral complexities in the relationship between American consumers and Chinese factory are evident in each shopping trip."
Sara Bongiorni is a journalist who has worked at daily newspapers and regional business publications in California and Louisiana for the past decade. Her "beat" included international trade and its impact on local economies. Bongiorni has won local, state, and national awards for her articles, including a 2002 Best in Business award from the Society of American Business Editors and Writers for her part in a series on the impact of out-migration on the Louisiana economy. Bongiorni graduated from the University of California, San Diego, and holds a master's degree in journalism from the University of Indiana at Bloomington. More About: 
Many of us have tried to call a halt to our spending at one time or another. But what if we decided not to buy anything for a whole year? Obviously, we would need necessities like food and soap, but how would be manage without new clothes, treats, entertainment?
Not Buying It takes a close look at our society's obsession with shopping and the cold turkey confession of a woman who can't live without French roast coffee and expensive wool socks, but who has had enough of spending money just for the sake of it.
Author Judith Levine and her partner Paul pursue their careers, nurture family relationships and try to keep their sanity and humour intact during their self imposed shopping-free year. Tracking their progress and lapses, Levine studies need and desire, scarcity and security and consumerism and citizenship.
A thought-provoking account of the pleasures and perils of the purchase-driven life, Not Buying It may prompt some consumers to examine their reliance on the act of buying and to explore the possibility of getting off the shop-a-holic merry-go-round. More About: 
