Your Money Is Your Business!

Your Money Is Your Business!

by Stephen Freeman
Your Money Is Your Business!

Your Money Is Your Business!

by Stephen Freeman

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Overview

The book is intended to:

Be a financial literacy primer that motivates you to embark on a lifetime journey of continuous continuing education with the objective of becoming the best financial manager you have the capability to become. Be a reference book that you can use over and over again as you would use a dictionary. It’s organized to be a user-friendly learning tool that you can use like a textbook. You might skim it and zero in on specific topics that grab your interest, or read it from cover to cover. Chapters are organized by functional utility. Help you start conversations with your family, friends, elected government representatives, and local school leaders about how to establish a mandatory financial literacy class in your local high school and how improving the overall level of financial literacy in your community will help create the strongest possible local economy. Contribute to development of a field of study in behavioral personal finance – a field of study that seeks to help people develop good personal financial management behavioral habits.

Please visit (www.ymiyb.com). This website was set up to provide you with information that we think you might find useful but couldn’t be provided in the limited confines of just this one book.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781524669157
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Publication date: 04/10/2017
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Pages: 382
File size: 544 KB

About the Author


A 40 year career in the surety bond industry gave Steve the opportunity to work with, and learn from, a wide variety of successful business people – company presidents, financial officers, CPA’s, bankers, financial advisors, business consultants, attorneys, and surety industry colleagues. This experience provided continuous continuing education in business and financial management gained through activities such as analyzing and evaluating the business plans, financial statements, budget projections, management practices, and performance track records of all sorts of successful businesses.

Experience in varied work and volunteer positions enabled him to learn about business and financial management from different perspectives:

• Military: officer in the United States Army.

• Non-profit organization paid employee: District Executive of the Boy Scouts of America.

• Non-profit organization volunteer: officer and director positions in a number of trade associations; church board of trustees; officer of homeowners’ associations; coach of recreation league and youth sports teams.

• Business: surety bond underwriter; surety company branch manager; partner in an insurance agency; officer of M&T Insurance Agency, a subsidiary of M&T Bank.

Experience as a parent helped him learn and re-learn valuable money management lessons, and how to talk about business and financial matters in terms young people understand.

Experience as a teacher of Junior Achievement classes and career related classes on business management and business finance gave him the opportunity to learn from preparing lesson plans and class presentations, students’ comments, information shared by students in class, and trying to answer students’ insightful questions.

Formal education

• Bachelor of Science, Business Administration, University of New Hampshire

• Master of Science, University of Baltimore

• United States Army: Infantry Officers Basic Class and Psychological Operations School

• Boy Scouts of America: District Executive Training School

• Aetna Casualty and Surety Company: Bond Trainee Program

• Numerous continuing education classes and seminars

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

Why you should read this book

5 Good reasons to read this book

1. Many ideas to think about and suggestions to consider that might help you:

• Increase your income.

• Reduce your spending.

• Increase your savings.

• Improve your investment management.

• Focus your thinking on living a satisfying life in pursuit of your dreams.

2. It is an introduction to the universe of financial literacy resources that are available to you – advisors, classes, books, the internet, etc. If you were to read no other book, I would urge you to read The Way to Wealth written by Benjamin Franklin in 1757 – for my money, the granddaddy of all personal financial management self-help books. It is staggering how much wise advice Franklin crammed into so few pages in such an entertaining and understandable way. Financial advisors today still preach most of what Franklin wrote all those years go.

3. It's honest.

• The book doesn't dodge the fact that improving the way you manage the money in your life is likely to require you to change some of your behavior - and changing behavioral habits can be tough. Think about all the New Years' resolutions that are made in December and broken in January.

• It doesn't try to sell a quick and easy "miracle" way to wealth. There is no miracle way.

4. It can be used as a tool that might help make it easier to talk with your family members about money.

• Many people find it tough to talk with family members about money, especially when they think family members are having a negative impact on their money.

• Having a non-family member like me raise money management issues that lots of other families are also confronting can take some of the sting out of you raising these potentially touchy issues.

• Consider asking family members to read the book and then have a family meeting to discuss those parts that you think are relevant to your family.

• If you are finding it particularly tough to talk with a family member about a specific issue, consider reading relevant pages together as a means to help stimulate a healthy conversation and keep the conversation from seeming threatening or annoying.

5. It's likely to be one of the easiest to understand books about money management that you will be able to find. I tried to write as if I were talking to family and friends.

DISCLAIMER: the only professional license I hold is that of a property and casualty insurance agent. I am NOT certified or licensed as a personal financial planning professional or life coach. I am NOT certified or licensed to offer you advice as to how to manage your money, your career, or your life. Discuss the ideas and suggestions in this book with appropriately licensed professionals in the fields of study we touch upon, such as financial planning, career management, accounting, law, and family counseling. Question everything said in this book. Think for yourself. Make well-informed and well-reasoned decisions about what is best for you to do in your life based upon all the unique circumstances of your life. Pay close attention to Chapters 7 and 8 regarding decision making and gathering decision making information.

Reasons I wrote the book

Encourage readers to help themselves improve the way they manage their money by:

• Managing their money as if it was a business.

• Preparing written business plans and projected financial statement budgets.

• Developing and using a formal decision making process.

• Learning and adopting the best practices of successful business managers.

• Heeding the consensus financial management advice of the financial service industries.

• Understanding that the amount of money in their lives is mostly a function of lifestyle choices they make.

• Realizing that if they feel they are drowning in financial despair there are professional financial lifeguards who would jump in to help save them if they just called out for help.

My hope is that you will be able to use the book to help improve the way you manage your money.

My dream is that enough people use the book to help improve the way they manage their money that their actions combine to make a noticeable contribution to managing the serious financial challenges we all face together as a nation. Our financial challenges include:

1. Too many people are suffering through financial crises such as:

• Buried under a mountain of debt and distraught about their ability to dig out from under.

• Out of work and having a real hard time finding a new job.

• Trying to figure out how to pay big medical bills.

• Getting closer and closer to retirement age and thinking that they haven't saved enough money to afford a comfortable retirement.

2. Even more people are worried enough about money that their worry is affecting their health.

3. Many more voters need a more functional knowledge of the fundamentals of prudent financial management if we are to avert a national financial catastrophe that hurts us all. A number of pressing issues will require financially savvy government leadership and mind-boggling amounts of money in order to deal with them effectively. The greater the contribution that each of us as a financially savvy voter makes toward dealing with these massively expensive issues, the better the quality of life each of us will have in the future. These issues include:

• Developing an economically sustainable plan to finance programs such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid far out into the future.

• National security in this new era of physical and cyber terrorism.

• Infrastructure maintenance and improvements: aging roads and bridges (how quickly we forget after a bridge collapses or a section of elevated highway drops); mass transit systems; water and sewer treatment plants; electricity grid; etc. Research the trillions of dollars that the American Society of Civil Engineers says we should be budgeting to spend on infrastructure, and the far too little money we are actually budgeting to spend.

• Escalating rate of global economic competition that requires us to develop a viable plan for retaining our current jobs and creating new jobs (e.g. globally competitive tax code).

• Education and training of the American workforce for the type of well-paying jobs (along with the childcare and transportation services that many people who want to work will need in order to get to work) that enable the financially secure population we need in order to (a) maintain a healthy economy in which we each can maximize our prosperity, and (b) avert social unrest caused by too many people feeling there is too much income inequality and too little opportunity for them to get well-paying jobs.

Availability of fresh water: increasing demand from an increasing population for predictably available fresh water. Learn about depletion of major underground aquifers, impact of droughts, disputes among states over use of water from rivers and lakes, and costs of desalinization plants (e.g. acquiring sites for plants, construction costs).

• Paying the costs of environmental degradation: pollution of air, water and land resources; destruction of life sustaining forests; loss of biodiversity; impact on the ocean biosphere of global fishery depletion, acidification, and accumulating masses of plastic trash.

• Managing economic risks of climate change, e.g. drought, severe storms, rising sea level.

• Developing environmentally sustainable and affordable alternative energy sources as fossil fuel supplies are being depleted and global demand for fossil fuel is accelerating.

Write a book that readers will actually USE to help themselves improve the way they manage the money in their lives. Books being available and books being used effectively are two entirely different things. Many, many books on the market offer prudent advice about how to manage our personal financial affairs. But not nearly enough people are reading those books and using that advice. As the saying goes, "you can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink". This is my shot at motivating people to seek out and use the good advice offered to us by financial service professionals in those books (and websites, podcasts, blogs, etc.).

Please don't be intimidated by the length of the book. I tried to lay out my thoughts and suggestions in 18 chapters that flow together as smoothly as I could link them, while also enabling you to read one chapter, one section within a chapter, or one individual page and get something useful out of it. Think of the book as a soup to nuts buffet of suggestions regarding money management. You can try little tastes of a few buffet items, and if you like those tastes, come back again as often as your heart desires to find more suggestions you would like to try.

Promote universal financial literacy classes in our schools.

• The business of governing ourselves requires tax dollars to pay for the government services we collectively decide we want. The greater the financial literacy of voters and elected representative alike, the better the decisions we can make about the government services we want and about how we will pay for the services we want.

• As the industrial revolution has evolved into the technology revolution, the United States has come to realize the economic value of universal education for training our country's human resources (learn about the history of public education).

• The time has come for every publicly funded high school to require a class in the fundamentals of personal financial management to supplement the other life skill classes we think are important to teach - reading, writing, and arithmetic, etc.

• The time has also come for every publicly funded college to require that all students - not just business majors – take a follow-up class on the prudent financial management of government (local, state and federal) that enables students to become financially savvy voters who elect financially savvy government officials who make financially savvy decisions that provide a vibrant economy in which we can all prosper far into the future.

• If you agree that school age people should have the benefit of a good education in the fundamentals of personal financial management, please use this book as a conversation starter with your local school leaders and your elected government representatives about requiring mandatory financial literacy classes in the schools you fund with your tax dollars.

What's in it for you?

The book offers you:

The idea that treating your money as a business is likely to help you improve your financial management performance.

A framework upon which you can build a personal business plan and a projected financial statement budget that help guide you toward making your dreams come true.

An introduction to a broad range of subjects about which you should learn at least a little if you want to become the best money manager you have the capability to become.

The book is meant to be:

A financial literacy primer that motivates you to embark on a lifelong journey of continuous continuing education- a "McGuffey's Reader" of business and finance that leads you into a progressively deeper study of business and financial management.

A reference book that you can use over and over again as you would use a dictionary. It is not meant to be read once and then put back on a shelf to gather dust.

* It's organized to be a useful learning tool. You can use it like a textbook.

* You might skim it and zero in on specific topics that grab your interest.

* Or, you might read it from cover to cover to get an overview of the breadth and depth of the subject of financial management, and then come back to re-read a specific paragraph, section, or chapter when you think it would be useful.

* The expanded outline format is intended to emphasize key ideas the first time you read the book, and make it easy for you to find those ideas when you come back to re-read it. The outline format also fits in with my concept of pitching you a business proposal.

* Chapters are organized by functional utility.

* Bold and italic letters and underlines are used to help you spot key points.

• A conversation starter you can share with your family, friends, elected government representatives, and local school leaders in order to help stimulate a national discussion about how we can improve the level of financial literacy in our country.

The book is NOT:

• A comprehensive guide for managing your money successfully. No book could, or should even try to, provide such a comprehensive guide.

A "one size fits all" set of specific instructions to follow step by step. It simply offers ideas to consider and discuss with appropriate professional service providers.

Condensed compilation of:

Best practices of successful business people I have known. Most successful business people say and do most of the things compiled here.

Generally accepted advice offered by the financial service industries and business consultants. Most of the ideas are so commonly held by so many people that I can't remember when, where, or from whom I heard them first.

Common threads that run though most prudent business and personal financial management books: there isn't much new that prudent authors can say – the same things tend to be said, just in different ways.

Folk wisdom in the form of adages, axioms, and proverbs that have been passed down from generation to generation by parents, community elders, religious leaders, and old books of wisdom. I tried to put "quotation marks" around this folk wisdom.

• Ideas that stuck in my brain after years of taking classes, attending seminars, and reading.

The book:

• Condenses as much information as I thought most readers could digest in one book.

• Compiles that information in chapters that flow together as smoothly as I could make them flow.

Personal interpretations of business terms, principles, and theories that I have studied in school or otherwise learned about. My interpretations have worked for me in my business; however, the further I stray from textbook text, the greater the risk of my misinterpretation or error. I encourage constructive critique to help me revise future editions of this book.

Some ideas are my own - I think- at least I don't recall seeing or hearing them anywhere else. However, most "new", original ideas aren't really all that new. They are built upon a foundation of the ideas of other people. Our brains absorb the ideas of others that we read and hear, and then rework or synthesize those ideas into our own "new" ideas. This book gave me the opportunity to write down how my brain has reworked and synthesized other people's ideas that I have come to know.

Language that is as plain and simple as I could make it.

• I tried to use plain and simple "layman's" language to explain business and financial management terms, principles, and theories.

• My mother used to say "eschew obfuscation" - avoid confusing people by obscuring what you are saying with fancy jargon and extra words. I hope Mom would say I did.

• Most of the fundamentals of business management and financial management are pretty easy to understand. They are rooted in common sense and the ways people have learned to live with each other and do business with each other through the ages. I tried to reflect this idea in my writing.

Lots of sports analogies because:

• There are so many commonalities in the fundamentals of sports and business - well thought game plans, dedication to practice, rules of good conduct, teamwork, etc.

• Sports analogies tie in with my belief that sports and business are just two of the many smaller games we play during the grand game of life.

The book is as gender neutral as I could make it. The women in my life have given me an appreciation for how male oriented so much of the business and financial worlds remain today. With that in mind, and the fact that money doesn't know male from female, the chapters alternate between using the masculine words he and his and the feminine words she and her (Chapter 1 uses "she and her", Chapter 2 uses "he and his", and so forth).

Repetition: many ideas are repeated in different places for two reasons:

• Repetition helps us humans learn new things and remember what we have learned.

• Many ideas are inextricably linked to many subjects – they couldn't be restricted to just one place in the book, e.g. using common sense and controlling emotions apply to just about every aspect of business and financial management. Therefore we talk about common sense and controlling emotions in many places throughout the book.

(Continues…)



Excerpted from "Your Money Is Your Business!"
by .
Copyright © 2017 Stephen Freeman.
Excerpted by permission of AuthorHouse.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

Table of Contents

1. Why you should read this book F, 1,
2. Your Money Is Your Business! M, 8,
3. Create Your Own Business School F, 15,
4. Business Plans & Financial Budgets M, 48,
5. First, Manage Yourself F, 76,
6. Plan Ahead to Manage Greater Wealth and Success M, 105,
7. Decision Making F, 111,
8. Gathering & Storing Decision Making Information M, 125,
9. Surround Yourself with Good People F, 157,
10. Managing Your Business M, 172,
11. Budget Management F, 193,
12. Playing Expense Management Defense M, 205,
13. Playing Expense Management Offense F, 239,
14. Active Revenue Management M, 255,
15. Investment Management F, 300,
16. Money, Love & Family M, 327,
17. Plan for Financial Freedom, Not Retirement F, 354,
18. Risk Management M, 366,

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