recommended


How to Make Your Money Last: The Indispensable Retirement Guide by Jane Bryant Quinn

This is a book you can write after a lifetime of forming connections, reading deeply, and gaining the wisdom to integrate it all. I cannot think of a single thing I’d change in this book if I were writing it. It combines clear writing with up-to-date accurate information. I’ve read entire books on subjects she covered in a chapter and feel like she nailed it concisely. Annuities? Life Insurance? Becoming a landlord? When to start […]

JBQuinn

Book Review: “Debt-Proof Your Marriage” by Mary Hunt

The subtitle of “Debt-Proof Your Marriage” is “How to achieve financial harmony: become effective money partners; create a get-out-of-debt plan that works, be prepared for unexpected expenses; slash mortgage payback time in half; deal effectively with roller coaster income.” Quite a mouthful, but I’d say it pretty much delivers. Apparently she wrote a book called “Debt Proof Living” and this is the revamped and remarketed version that throws in marital advice. I think it’s great. […]


Book Review: “The Age of Deleveraging”, a tome by A. Gary Shilling

I heard Gary Shilling speak at a conference last month and his discussion of demographics was interesting and insightful so I sought out his most recent book: “The Age of Deleveraging: Investment Strategies for a Decade of Slow Growth and Deflation”. This book was 500 pages long. Five hundred. I told B. I felt like I was taking a graduate level course in economic forecasting. I’m not even sure how to integrate this book into […]


Book Review: Julie Jason’s AARP Retirement Survival Guide

ulie Jason’s book is entitled: “The AARP Retirement Survival Guide: How to Make Smart Financial Decisions in Good Times and Bad”. It’s a title done by committee. Really it’s a guide to avoiding the sharks swirling around you in retirement. It’s filled with hints of things to watch out for, with sections called “Julie’s Don’t-Be-Fooled Rules”. I liked her clear explanations and approved of her hints and warnings. I think it did good coverage of […]


Book Review: “Your Money & Your Brain”

This book explains just how stupid you really are. I’ve heard this mentioned a couple of times and so, when I saw it on the shelves at the local library (what, you don’t cruise the 332 section of the library just on spec?) I picked up Jason Zweig’s “Your Money & Your Brain: How the New Science of Neuroeconomics Can Help Make You Rich.”   I liked it. I dislike the subtitle, though.  I bet there […]


Three book reviews on investing

I’m reading up on retirement planning both because I’m trying to rationalize why I bought a vacation property (it’s part of my retirement portfolio! Really!) and because I’m supposed to be making a living counseling people on financial matters. (Perhaps I should be quiet about the cottage.) I’ve recently read three books that say the same thing in vastly different ways. The first is “The New Coffee House Investor: How to Build Wealth, Ignore Wall […]


Book Review: Pay It Down

Jean Chatzky’s take on debt.   This was a quick read from the library: Pay It Down: From Debt to Wealth on $10/day by Jean Chatzky.   The  book is abbreviated and condensed into this series of articles on Money.cnn. First off, this book is nearly entirely about budgeting.  Figure out what you’re already spending, and then take a look.  The topic was just as dreary as it could be in this relentless little book.  It would not let you […]


Book Review: “Oil on the Brain”.

This is everything you never knew about oil but really ought to find out. I’ve just finished an amazing book.  It’s taken me three months to read this, partly because the information was so astonishing and new that I kept having to put it down and go assimilate what I’ve learned. The title of this book is “Oil On The Brain: Adventures from the Pump to the Pipeline.”  It’s an investigative journalist’s take on what’s involved […]