Sage, grandfatherly, often-amusing advice on watching one’s pennies.
Financial coach Petrick offers dozens of strategies to save money while maintaining a sense of humor.
This book is about making money on a very human scale–as such, readers can, and more than likely should, start following its commonsensical advice today. The author also wants readers to have fun in the process, so he keeps his tone light and mirthful and he provides ways to achieve the satisfaction of another dollar in the bank. Petrick’s advice is homespun: get AAA and rewards credit cards (and always pay off those credit cards); get free stuff by browsing the Internet; and pursue hobbies with minimal ongoing costs or, even better, those that may add a small second-income stream like fly-tying, pottery or photography. He recommends that readers drink a glass of wine at home before going to a restaurant, do their own laundry, clean their own houses and ditch labor-saving, and money-gobbling, items like juice boxes and electric shoe polishers. Into the mix he blends some more serious tidbits, recommending that readers never stop learning. Though he doesn’t tender specific investment tools, the author counsels readers to stay on top of these methods by devoting 15 minutes to them each day. Petrick’s primary objective is encouraging readers to live on 70 percent of their salaries and invest 10 percent in each of three areas: paying off debt, savings and charity. In the vein of power-of-positive-thinking titles, he writes, “Your personal financial life will improve in direct proportion to the amount of money you release toward improving our world.” The exact percentage of charity doesn’t matter, he writes, since it’s the attitude that counts. The author reiterates the old chestnuts–avoid debt, build an emergency fund, invest with your eyes open and learn from mistakes–but what powers the book is the doctrine of steady, disciplined accumulation. Petrick counsels that readers should make the savings game fun by treating it just so–as a game.
Sage, grandfatherly, often-amusing advice on watching one’s pennies.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-595-71907-5
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Jan. 4, 2011
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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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