Core Concepts of Personal Finance

∗ Focus on practical approach to financial planning. Text discusses the real personal finance decisions students face and innovatively relies on web resources to provide students with the tools, information and skills to make these decisions.

∗ Emphasis on Decision Making. Instead of the use of traditional subtitles in each chapter (e.g., alternative forms of housing,, performing home affordability analysis ), the text uses questions as the lead–in for each topic (e.g., should I rent or buy?, how do I bid on the property?)

∗ An entire chapter is devoted to the critical topic of time value of money (TVM) and it is integrated into later chapters where appropriate. The solutions to many problems (i.e. How much Life Insurance Should You Have?) are presented through calculators that incorporate time value of money into the computations. Thus, students who have a general concept of what time value of money means but have difficulty doing TVM problems are still able to get through the material deal effectively with the impact of TVM.

∗ Text is brief and applied. Instead of long narratives discussing terms and definitions, the text focuses on decisions that the student will be making during his or her lifetime, beginning with graduation and the selection of the first job. Each chapter has a theme of a person or couple needing to make decisions in that topic area. Key material is emphasized by its inclusion in the sample problems and the solutions to the sample problems.