Walk down a row of books on money in any bookstore and you will find that most of them say the same thing that this book says: nothing. It is an amazing industry where they can continue to sell books that do nothing but define what a financial product is without making applicable judgments. It reminds me of the financial service industry's repeated mantra "depends on your personal situation" so as to reserve the right to sell you anything later down the road. This is a long book of nothing but cursory descriptions of financial tools and terms. It is a long book only because it uses too much wordage to say what it does. A lot of the information was just plain wrong as well. On page 54, he displays a classic investment pyramid with high risk/return products on the top and low risk/return product on the bottom. "Collectables" are second from the top, corporate bonds are higher than blue chip stocks, and T-bonds are higher than utility stocks. Is this guy for real?

Everyone's Money Book is the most comprehensive,useful book on the market if you want to improve your personal finances. The book not only tells you how to invest, cut your taxes, get the best deal on insurance, etc, but gives specific resources like websites, associations, publications, government agencies that can help you put the advice into action. If you want even more detail on all these topics, check out Goodman's Everyone's Money Book Series by the same publisher on Credit, College, Retirement Planning, Financial Planning, Investing and Real Estate.

If you have this book on your shelf, you have no excuses. You may not read it cover to cover -- but any question you may have about managing your finances is answered somewhere in the 970 pages! Jordan gets you started and then provides you comprehensive bibliographies and webographies to explore your topic in depth. Every household needs an up-to-date reference guide and this is the best one out there right now. Unfortunately, it missed the latest changes to the tax code, but I'm sure the soon to be released Everyone's Money Book: Retirement Planning will catch them.