Personal Finance, Pearson New International Edition, 6th edition

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For introductory Personal Finance course

Through the presentation of the Ten Fundamental Principles of Personal Finance, this text empowers students with the knowledge they need to successfully make and carry out a plan for their own financial future.

For introductory Personal Finance course

Through the presentation of the Ten Fundamental Principles of Personal Finance, this text empowers students with the knowledge they need to successfully make and carry out a plan for their own financial future.

The Ten Principles of Personal Finance: Throughout the text, each chapter touches back on the fundamental Ten Principles of Personal Finance introduced in Chapter 1 and demonstrates to students how these principles apply to specific situations.

The Personal Finance Workbook: Each new copy of the text is accompanied by a Personal Finance Workbook that contains tear-out worksheets to encourage step-by-step analysis of the decisions examined in the text. Used to assign homework assignments or as a student study guide, every worksheet is also available electronically on the book website. Along with a section on how to use a financial calculator, the workbook also includes:

· Your Financial Plan: Guides the student, through a series of exercises that utilize the worksheets, to generate a very basic financial plan to explore where they are today, where they will want to be, and what they need to do to get there.

Easy-to-follow Advice: The proactive checklists, which appear throughout the text, serve as a useful learning tool for students. These boxes identify areas of concern and emphasize key questions to ask when buying a car, getting insurance, investing in mutual funds, and performing other personal finance.

Other Points of Distinction

Learning Objectives: Each chapter opens with a set of action-oriented learning objectives. As these objectives are covered in the text, students will find an identifying icon in the margins.

Stop and Think: These short boxes provide the student with further insight on the financial implications following key topics.

Money Matters: Money Matters Boxes, written by Marcy Furney, contain complementary advice from a certified financial planner.

Real-life Cases:

Be a Financial Planner–Discussion Cases

Each chapter closes with a set of mini cases which present real-life problems that not only tie chapter topics together but also provide students with the opportunity to form a financial decision.

Be a Financial Planner– Continuing Case: Cory and Tisha Dumont

The continuing case of Cory and Tisha Dumont gives students the opportunity to synthesize and integrate the many different financial concepts that are presented in the five parts of this text. By observing the progression of this case, students are encouraged to:

• Analyze a changing financial situation
• Construct financial statements
• Calculate taxes
• Measure risk exposure
• Develop a financial plan

Coverage of lessons from the recent economic downturn. The opening chapter in this edition includes a new section on the lessons learned from the recent economic downturn. This theme is also covered in Chapters 5, 7, 8, 11, 13, 14, and 18.

Expanded coverage of the use of financial calculators to calculate the rate of return and number of periods. In addition, Chapter 3 introduces and Chapters 7 and 8 expand on nonannual compounding, which allows for the calculation of the number and size of payments and the interest rate—for example, calculation of the number of months to pay off a loan, the size of a monthly mortgage payment, and the annual interest rate on a monthly loan. Further, the size of the problem set in Chapter 3 was doubled to provide students with a better learning experience.

Coverage of the Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility, and Disclosure (CARD) Act of 2009. Signed into law by President Obama on May 22, 2009, this act attempts, among other things, to protect consumers against arbitrary interest rate hikes, to prevent the use of misleading terms, to eliminate excessive fees, and to outlaw the use of gifts and promotional items (such as coupons for free pizza) to entice college students to take on debt by applying for their credit cards. Much of the coverage of this new law can be found in Chapter 6.

Coverage of the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). As part of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, the CFPB was signed into law in July 2010 and serves to regulate consumer financial products and services. Coverage of the CFPB is offered primarily in Chapter 6.

A reexamination of debt. Chapter 8 includes a new section on debt that ties together the discussion of credit card debt, consumer loans, home mortgages, home equity loans, auto loans, and student loans and examines why the problem has become more acute.

• This text also presents six rules for successful debt management.

Examination of the implications of the 2010 Affordable Care Act. Presented in Chapter 9, the goals of the Affordable Care Act are to provide new consumer protections, improve quality and lower costs, increase access to affordable care, and hold insurance companies accountable. This is an extensive piece of legislation that goes into effect gradually through 2018 and, among other provisions, includes:

• Guaranteed coverage to those with preexisting health conditions
• The creation of insurance exchanges to increase the number of people with access to insurance
• Tax credits to small businesses and the poor and middle class for insurance purchases
• Requirements for employers with more than 50 workers to offer insurance

Chapters on investing have been completely revised. The chapters on investing, Chapters 11 through 15, were thoroughly updated to reflect the drama in the investments markets since the previous edition of the book, with the DJIA hitting a low of 6,547 in March 2009 then almost doubling by May 2011.

Changes in estate tax laws. A major revision of Chapter 17 reflects legislation changes including estate taxes disappearing in 2010, only to reappear at levels below the pre-2010 level in 2011 and 2012, and a feature that allows for portability of the estate tax exemption. Then in 2013 estate tax laws are scheduled to jump dramatically.

Chapter 18 has been dramatically streamlined and completely rewritten. Chapter 18 now solely focuses on ten financial life events and how to deal with them, pulling together all the different topics in the book. This is followed by a discussion of 12 key decisions to financial success.