MONEY TALKS: Bob Rosefsky's Complete Program for Financial Success

An encyclopedic personal-finance manual, worthy in itself, with two special attractions: it will serve as the basis for a 26-segment PBS series starting in September; it's currently more up-to-date than either Sylvia Porter's New Money Book (1979) or Jane Bryant Quinn's Everyone's Money Book (1979). Rosefsky, a West Coast broadcast personality apparently at home in any marketplace, opens with a brief but lucid examination of the global economy and its affect on individuals and families; then, in an essay on work and income, he offers some thoughts on self-sufficiency, along with basic data on W-2 and W-4 forms, and worker's compensation. Thereafter the focus is on smart money management in matters of prime import: taxation, banking, budgeting, credit, estate planning, insurance, investment, etc. (The extensive coverage of taxation, or the appraisal of insurance, could stand on their own.) Rosefsky, happily for the reader or viewer, has an eye for illuminating details. Surveying buy-now-pay-later opportunities, he recalls credit's Moms Plan roots; in the tax review, we hear how the IRS selects returns for audit; the insurance canvass compares medical policies with HMOs (health maintenance organizations). A longish section on frauds and swindles zeroes in on time-shared resort accommodations, among other targets; a complaint directory serves aggrieved customers seeking redress. On investment options, Rosefsky takes a conservative stance--summarily dismissing collectibles, commodities, precious metals, and such. He does furnish competent pro-and-con analyses of conventional commitments ranging from equities and exchange-listed options through CDs, fixed-income vehicles, mutual funds (of all kinds), real estate, and tax shelters. In each case, he makes it a point to anticipate questions: how to read bond quotes in the daily paper, or what actually happens when a stock goes ex-dividend. Intelligently organized, readily accessible one-stop service.