Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

This is Suze Orman's tenth book, and probably 10th best seller, which tells you right away that she has a built-in audience, for which she has earned their trust. In this book, she proves once again that she is spot on accurate in her understanding of what the average American investor needs to understand to financially protect themselves in a volatile economic environment. After the 2008 financial crisis, Suze wrote a book telling people how to immediately survive the crisis. In this book, she tells us what we do not want to hear. She has come to the realization that the American Dream as understood by our parents and grandparents is now over, and there is a brand new set of financial realities that we must COME TO GRIPS with if we are to achieve any kind of financial security in the future. She accomplishes this in 9 chapters and 281 pages of highly readable commentary that for the most part is accurate, original and very useful. Although each chapter has an appropriate title, what I found more helpful is that in the Table of Contents after the chapter headings, the author will list the lessons that she wants you to learn in each chapter. Most chapters have one or two lessons for the reader, and some have as many as five. I found the most important lessons in the book to be the following: VITAL LESSONS: * Finding Your Truth - page 13 * The Power of CASH - page 21 * How to build honest family relations - page 31 * How to help adult children facing financial challenges - page 64 * New rules of buying a home - page 87 * Time is your greatest asset - page 159 * Delay your social security benefit - page 207 * Must have documents - page 275 * The ULTIMATE LESSON - page 275 You could tell that Ms. Orman had a very rough time writing this book. It is evident throughout. She had to come to terms with the reality that the America we all wish to be, no longer is, and therefore new financial rules have to be mastered. This is a book that she was compelled to write, but did not want to. She also writes about this in her last piece in the book which is the ULTIMATE LESSON. This chapter deals with the death of the American Dream and what the politicians have allowed to happen to this country, and for which we are all responsible since we elected them. As she likes to put it: Do NOTHING, Change NOTHING, you will get NOTHING We must FOCUS on WHAT IS REAL TODAY, and step by step the author accomplishes her task, which is to give us concrete steps that each of us can take considering the new financial situation we are faced with. She even tells us to define ourselves by who we are, and not what we have. With 14 million people currently unemployed, and another 9 million working part-time who are seeking full-time work, we cannot take a lackadaisical attitude towards our financial interests. I urge you to take a look at this latest work from this interesting author in these troubling times. You can only benefit from the knowledge she gives us, and you just may be doing yourself a favor. Thank you for reading this review. Richard C. Stoyeck