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The Joy of Financial Security

THE ART AND SCIENCE OF BECOMING HAPPIER, MANAGING YOUR MONEY WISELY, AND CREATING A SECURE FINANCIAL FUTURE.

A useful, hands-on book to help readers prioritize their happiness through practical financial planning.

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A thorough guide to keeping your finances—and emotions—in order.

This well-researched book is interested equally in offering emotional and financial advice. In a friendly, accessible tone, Cygan, a certified financial planner, acknowledges that money doesn’t equal happiness but that it surely helps. That said, hers is hardly a get-rich-quick message; rather, the strategies are pragmatic and balanced, since, she says, good financial health promotes good mental health. “If money were only the coins or bills in our wallets, life would be much easier and less stressful. Money is much more,” she says. “For people who have experienced periods with lots of money and other periods with very little money, it can trigger feelings of insecurity….Money can also incite feelings of fear and anger.” According to her guide, the key is not to make as much money as you possibly can but to find what makes you happy and then find a way to financially support that lifestyle. In most cases, the end goal doesn’t involve having a four-car garage. Cygan is essentially a proponent of the simple life, one that values experiences over things. If working fewer hours brings you sanity, figure out a way to make it happen. Don’t fall prey to jealousy or to keeping up with the Joneses. “Decide you don’t need a super-sized television or a trendy wardrobe. Even better,” she says, “strive to keep your car for 12 years. It’s a good first step.” While this may just sound like wishful thinking, Cygan gives her readers solid financial advice on how to achieve these dreams. Some of her suggestions may seem obvious, such as avoiding credit card debt and saving a little every month, but overall, her ideas are wide-reaching and sensible. She’s particularly good at helping readers think long-term and navigate tricky terrain like the differences between, say, a traditional IRA and a Roth IRA. With the well-laid-out table of contents, readers can easily use the book as a manual for specific issues they may be having.

A useful, hands-on book to help readers prioritize their happiness through practical financial planning.

Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2013

ISBN: 978-0989778442

Page Count: 394

Publisher: Sage Future Press

Review Posted Online: Oct. 22, 2013

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2013

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THE CULTURE MAP

BREAKING THROUGH THE INVISIBLE BOUNDARIES OF GLOBAL BUSINESS

These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.

A helpful guide to working effectively with people from other cultures.

“The sad truth is that the vast majority of managers who conduct business internationally have little understanding about how culture is impacting their work,” writes Meyer, a professor at INSEAD, an international business school. Yet they face a wider array of work styles than ever before in dealing with clients, suppliers and colleagues from around the world. When is it best to speak or stay quiet? What is the role of the leader in the room? When working with foreign business people, failing to take cultural differences into account can lead to frustration, misunderstanding or worse. Based on research and her experiences teaching cross-cultural behaviors to executive students, the author examines a handful of key areas. Among others, they include communicating (Anglo-Saxons are explicit; Asians communicate implicitly, requiring listeners to read between the lines), developing a sense of trust (Brazilians do it over long lunches), and decision-making (Germans rely on consensus, Americans on one decider). In each area, the author provides a “culture map scale” that positions behaviors in more than 20 countries along a continuum, allowing readers to anticipate the preferences of individuals from a particular country: Do they like direct or indirect negative feedback? Are they rigid or flexible regarding deadlines? Do they favor verbal or written commitments? And so on. Meyer discusses managers who have faced perplexing situations, such as knowledgeable team members who fail to speak up in meetings or Indians who offer a puzzling half-shake, half-nod of the head. Cultural differences—not personality quirks—are the motivating factors behind many behavioral styles. Depending on our cultures, we understand the world in a particular way, find certain arguments persuasive or lacking merit, and consider some ways of making decisions or measuring time natural and others quite strange.

These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.

Pub Date: May 27, 2014

ISBN: 978-1-61039-250-1

Page Count: 288

Publisher: PublicAffairs

Review Posted Online: April 15, 2014

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2014

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GOOD ECONOMICS FOR HARD TIMES

Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.

“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.

It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.

Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.

Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019

ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0

Page Count: 432

Publisher: PublicAffairs

Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019

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