Jeff D. Opdyke - The Wall Street Journal. Complete Personal Finance Guidebook

For so many people, personal finance is a fairly constrained universe.

They receive a paycheck, which they dutifully deposit into a bank, at which they own a savings and checking account, upon which they draw money from an ATM to pay for their purchases, or upon which they write checks to pay the bills racked up whipping out a credit card to buy dinners, gasoline, and movie tickets. They unleash their debit card at the supermarket, and occasionally they stumble into the netherworld of mortgages when buying a house or maybe to refinance their home when interest rates fall. Some opt for a home-equity line of credit or a home-equity loan when seeking cash to build a pool, after which they rush to increase their insurance coverage to protect their assets from the liability of the neighbor kid taking a header off the diving board and then suing and wiping out their net worth. And once every three months they are reminded of their ties to Wall Street and the stocks, bonds, or mutual funds they own when they receive in the mail their account statements detailing the quarters activity in their individual retirement account or the 401(k) plan they signed up for at work.

After that, personal finance is little more than a mathematical mystery tour. Who has a clue what the prime rate is or why it impacts the cost of the new roadster you want to lease? Who cares if the ten-year U.S. Treasury note is headed up or down; what does that have to do with the price of your mortgagepayment? I cant even get my bank statement to reconcile with my checkbook. How am I ever supposed to figure out how to calculate my net worth? Zero percent financing or $2,000 cash backdoes it really matter?

In so many ways, money courses through just about every conceivable corner of our lives. Yet many of us are intimidated by personal finance because, well, it seems intimidating. It has all those numbers. You have to add and subtract and divide. Who has time for that? And a P/E? Wasnt that a class back in elementary school?

Honestly, personal finance isnt rocket science. If you can make change, you can master your money and the skills necessary to manage it effectively. Sure, there are some aspects of personal finance that can be challenging, such as figuring out the inner workings of a variable annuity. Not to worry, though: Even the pros who sell those things often dont know how they work, and, more important, success with your money generally doesnt require that you always know how the sausage is made.

Thats where The Wall Street Journal. Complete Personal Finance Guidebook comes in. Consider this guidebook your, well, guide to the mystery of personal financethe money that impacts the way you live, where you live, what sort of car you drive, the number of times you can dine at your favorite eatery each month, and what you can afford to save today for the many tomorrows you must finance. In truth, a vast number of writers have felled a vast number of trees publishing a vast number of personal finance books that offer brilliant advice. But brilliant doesnt necessarily mean practical. This guidebook starts with the realization that financial practicality is more relevant to families than the best laid financial plan. Sure, it might not be the smartest strategy to use your credit card to pay for consumable items that are better paid for with cash. Yet we recognize that in a modern world, personal finances, like water, flow along paths of least resistance. Electronic commerce is a staple of our lives, and, thus, credit cards have become a necessary evil, if only for their convenience and the financial perks that many offer. If you learn how they work, though, and how they can fit productively into your life, you become a better steward of that limited resource known as money.

As such, inside these pages are the facts you need to know to become a savvier consumer of the rapidly increasing lot of financial services that banks, brokerage firms, insurance companies and, yes, credit-card businesses continually peddle to you and your family. The companion workbook, The Wall Street Journal. Personal Finance Workbook, is designed to help you start with the basicsbalancing your checkbook and calculating your net worthand then grow with you as your financial needs and sophistication expand. Look for this icon throughout this book to find the corresponding section in the Personal Finance Workbook.

While you wont close this book ready to manage money professionally, youll certainly learn the tools necessary to master your own finances or at least understand a bit more about all those financial things people jabber about at cocktail parties.

You might be young, just starting out, and wondering how to effectively budget your meager income while still enjoying your life. Maybe youre in your middle years, beginning to save for a childs coming college costs and wondering about the pros and cons of a Coverdell Education Savings Account, a 529 college savings plan, and two strange beasts called UGMA (Uniform Gifts to Minors Act) and UTMA (Uniform Transfer to Minors Act). Possibly youre approaching the end of your career and colleagues or friends insist you need an annuity, but you havent a clue about the differences between a variable annuity or a fixed annuity or a deferred annuity or an immediate annuityor even an equity-indexed annuityand certainly no idea which, if any, is right for your stage of life. And, then again, just maybe youre retired and now realize that Social Security doesnt afford the lifestyle you want. You think you might need a long-term-care policy that you cant afford, and youve read about these so-called reverse mortgages as a way to finance the purchase; but youre not entirely clear on what either animal really means to you or your heirs.

Whatever the case and whatever your age, the basics of what you need to know about personal finance are waiting inside these pages. In easy-to-digest nuggets, The Wall Street Journal. Complete Personal Finance Guidebook steers you through the ever expanding realm of everyday money. It helps you know what you should be doing, what you should be avoiding, and what you can do to make your money do its best to meet your familys financial needs. It will guide you through the essentialssuch as developing a