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FINANCIALLY CAPABLE

A FRIENDLY GUIDE TO BUILDING WHOLE-HEALTH WEALTH

A knowledgeable and upbeat overview of everyday money matters.

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Financial educator and public speaker Paradise offers a primer on offbeat ways to understand personal finance and employ methods to improve one’s monetary habits.

Throughout his nonfiction debut, the author stresses that his financial advice has been hard-earned. As a 19-year-old high school dropout with a criminal record for drug-dealing, he says he lived on very little; he rode his bike to his job selling furniture and came home to sleep on the floor (“I couldn’t reduce my expenses much further,” he understates). It’s for this reason that he’s come to consider that money is about much more than math and how it can sometimes be subjective: “We can all agree that 1 plus 1 equals 2. That’s easy,” he writes. “However, if we ask five people, ‘What’s the best thing to do with two dollars?’ we'll get at least six different opinions.” In these pages, Paradise discusses a wide range of the best things to do with one’s dollars, touching on everything from the possible perils of retiring early—basically, that you could outlive your money—to the workings of credit cards compared to debit cards: “Some well-known personalities recommend avoiding debt and credit altogether,” he warns. “That advice is foolish and even reckless.” Paradise’s highly relatable, conversational style results in a winningly approachable guide to personal finance, and it’s one that will be especially useful to people who are starting with very little money, as he himself did. He’s particularly bullish on investing—broad stock market index mutual funds, electronically traded funds, index-tracking funds, plain old real estate, and so on—but he consistently warns his readers that although the best investments are always personal, they should be undertaken with rational intellect, not impulsive emotion. His common-sense approach is such that when he writes, “Dream big, persist, and you will shine brighter than you ever thought possible,” readers will believe him.

A knowledgeable and upbeat overview of everyday money matters.

Pub Date: May 16, 2023

ISBN: 9798987943724

Page Count: 287

Publisher: Vernon Street Publishing

Review Posted Online: June 26, 2023

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THINKING, FAST AND SLOW

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

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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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