A practical personal-finance book that stands out in a crowded field.
A debut guide that offers sound advice on how to achieve financial independence.
Mendez, the president of Eclipse Investments and the director of contracts for Fortune 500 company Automatic Data Processing, explains how to take maximum advantage of good corporate pay and benefits. In this account of how he, a corporate “everyman,” achieved financial independence, he covers how to maximize one’s contributions to a 401(k), invest in index funds, contribute to a health savings account, and more. You don’t need to be a corporate executive or entrepreneur to become a millionaire in America, Mendez writes. However, if you want financial security, which eludes even those with good jobs, you must learn to do a number of things, including how to take a “Personal Inventory,” manage your career, create a financial plan, choose the right investments and shield them from taxes, purchase essential insurance, and set up an estate plan to protect your assets. The book covers each of those topics in separate chapters, which often include written exercises and examples from the author’s own experience, as well as tips on how to make better financial decisions and lists of websites with additional information. However, the book doesn’t acknowledge the fact that many American corporations have embraced a winner-take-all culture, resulting in reduced benefits, stagnant wages, and job insecurity. Instead, it focuses in a practical way on the “fantastic benefits and wealth generation opportunities” that are still available to rank-and-file employees, who may share the author’s goal of financial independence by the age of 50. There are many good suggestions in this volume, such as the idea that young workers should put their career and financial goals in writing, including specific dates for reaching them. Think every day about your financial plan, Mendez writes, and once you achieve one milestone, replace it with another. If the author updates the book in the future, he might consider adding a section about keeping one’s financial information secure; in today’s world of mobile banking and online financial transactions, no book on financial literacy is complete without it.
A practical personal-finance book that stands out in a crowded field.Pub Date: May 8, 2014
ISBN: 978-1494296766
Page Count: 248
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Jan. 26, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
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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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