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Tired of worrying about your financial situation but aren't sure what to do or where to start? Stop stressing! No matter how much you earn (or how much you owe) you can take control of your moneyand it won't be nearly as hard as you think. Millions of people already benefit from the expert advice Laura D. Adams dispenses in her weekly Money Girl podcast and know firsthand that little changes can lead to big rewards. Laura doesn't tell you what you can and can not buy with your own hard-earned money; instead, she gives you guidance, tips, and tricks you need to make the most of it by finding out how to: - Assess your current financial situation and set achievable, realistic goals - Get out of debt fasterand stay out for good - Manage your 401(k) or Roth IRA like a pro - Take advantage of every available tax deduction to owe less and save more - Choose smarter investments so you can watch your money grow - Use the most up-to-date technology to make managing your money much easier Whether you're learning the quickest way to improve your credit score or the seven essential tips for preventing identity theft, you'll be surprisedand relievedat just how doable it all is. Chock-full of quick and dirty tips that explain what you need to know without bogging you down with what you don't, Money Girl's Smart Moves to Grow Rich will ensure you have the kind of life you want and the future you've always dreamed of.

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Laura Adams is the host of Money Girl on Macmillan’s Quick and Dirty Tips digital media network. She shares weekly tips and advice on a variety of personal finance topics. Her experience as an entrepreneur, real estate investor, corporate sales and marketing trainer, human resources professional, and instructional designer enriches her writing and brings vast experience to her audience.

Laura was born in Charleston, South Carolina. She received a B.S. in Natural Resources from The University of the South in Sewanee, TN and an M.B.A. from the University of Florida. She lives in central Florida with her husband and their yellow Lab.

Introduction	p. xi
What's Your Money Mind-Set?	p. 1
What's Your Relationship with Money?	p. 2
Big, Bad Financial Habits (and Little Ones, Too)	p. 4
One Last Money Secret to Growing Rich	p. 8
Creating a Financial Plan	p. 9
Know Your Net Worth	p. 10
Create a Financial Plan	p. 15
Goal #1: An Emergency Fund	p. 17
Make Having Insurance a Goal	p. 19
Planning for Retirement	p. 23
Create a Retirement Plan	p. 25
Create a Spending Plan That Will Work	p. 32
15 Ways to Save More Money	p. 38
Choosing the best Banking Accounts	p. 44
Different Types of Bank Accounts	p. 45
Checking or Payment Accounts	p. 46
Savings Accounts	p. 51
Money Market Deposit Accounts (MMDAs)	p. 51
Certificates of Deposit (CDs)	p. 52
Trust Accounts	p. 54
Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) Insurance	p. 54
Setting up a Money Management System	p. 57
Regular Money Management Tasks	p. 58
Computer Money Management	p. 59
Online Financial Tools	p. 61
Money Girl's System (That's Me)	p. 64
Sample Banking Setups	p. 72
Setting Your Routine	p. 77
Staying Safe from Identity Theft	p. 78
Dealing with Debt	p. 81
Do You Need to Eliminate All Debt?	p. 82
Make a Debt Reduction Plan	p. 83
Balance Transfer Credit Cards	p. 86
Use Credit Cards Wisely	p. 88
What Kind of Credit Card Should You Use?	p. 91
Manage Your Credit Score	p. 94
Debt Settlement	p. 97
Loan Refinancing	p. 101
Loan Modification	p. 107
Loan or Debt Consolidation	p. 108
Secret Debt Weapon: Accelerated Payments	p. 110
A Last Resort: Declaring Bankruptcy	p. 112
Set Your Debt Priorities	p. 113
Investing Wisely	p. 116
Discretionary Income: Your Investment Fuel	p. 117
How Do Simple and Compound Interest Work?	p. 118
Investing and Risk	p. 120
The Difference Between Saving and Investing	p. 122
What Investments Should You Buy?	p. 124
Diversification	p. 131
Dollar-Cost Averaging	p. 133
Invest or Pay Down Debt?	p. 135
Protect Yourself	p. 137
Planning for Retirement	p. 140
Retirement Accounts for Individuals	p. 141
Retirement Accounts for Employees	p. 150
What Is Employer Matching?	p. 153
Retirement Accounts for the Self-Employed	p. 156
Can You Ever Take Early Withdrawals Without Penalty?	p. 159
What if No Retirement Account Options Are Available to You?	p. 161
Doing Rollovers	p. 162
What Retirement Account Investments Are Right for You?	p. 163
Buying Real Estate	p. 169
Buying Versus Renting	p. 169
What Can You Afford?	p. 174
Mortgage Options	p. 176
Mortgage Types	p. 178
Mortgage Categories	p. 181
Choosing a Mortgage	p. 182
Taking the Home Mortgage Interest Deduction	p. 186
Paying for Education	p. 189
Create an Education Savings Plan	p. 190
Use 529 Education Savings Plans	p. 191
Use Coverdell Education Savings Accounts	p. 194
Make Tuition More Affordable	p. 197
Federal Student Loans	p. 200
Tax Benefits for Education	p. 204
Summary of Education Tax Breaks	p. 206
Understanding Taxes	p. 208
Taxable Versus Nontaxable Income	p. 208
Choosing the Best Filling Status	p. 210
Who Must File a Tax Return?	p. 212
Payroll Tax Withholding	p. 213
The Self-Employment (SE) Tax	p. 215
Tax Brackets	p. 216
How Your Investments Are Taxed	p. 218
Taking Tax Deductions	p. 220
Taking Tax Credits	p. 223
The Alternative Minimum Tax	p. 226
How to Choose a Tax Pro	p. 227
Conclusion: 20 Tips for Putting it all Together	p. 230
Let's Stay in Touch	p. 236
Acknowledgments	p. 239
Index	p. 241
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.

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MONEY GIRL’S SMART MOVES TO GROW RICH (Chapter 1)

What’s Your Money Mind-set?

If you want to create wealth, it is imperative that you believe that you are at the steering wheel of life, especially your financial life.

â€”T. HARV EKER, author of Secrets of the Millionaire Mind

As Money Girl, I love answering people’s questions and sharing helpful financial information and timely tips. In addition to enjoying the nuts and bolts of things like retirement accounts, mortgages, and taxes, I’m also fascinated by the way people think about money. I call it our money mind-set. Your money mind-setâ€”or thoughts about moneyâ€”are important because they’re the precursor to your behavior. In other words, your thoughts turn into actions. If your money mind-set is unhealthy, it only makes sense that you’ll probably make some (or a lot of) financial mistakes.

Many people make the same slip-ups with money over and over again because they’re stuck in bad patterns of behavior. They may know an awful lot about making good investments, for example, but can’t ever manage to spend less than they make each month and so waste all of their investment knowledge when they have nothing to invest with. The problem isn’t a lack of knowledge or the economyâ€”it’s them! It’s not all gloom and doom, however, because bad financial habits can be fixed. Raising your awareness about them is half the battle. Then you can put the information, tips, and tools in this book into action to take control of your money and make the smart moves needed to get your personal finances back on track and start growing your wealth. In this chapter, I’ll help you think about some of the issues that may be getting in the way of your ability to make the most of your money. Let’s start by looking at how you’ve grown to relate to money over the years and bring to light any bad habits you’ve picked up along the way.

What’s Your Relationship with Money?

We usually inherit our money mind-set from our parents or close role models. How we relate to money on a psychological level begins to take shape early in life. That’s because young minds can’t help but absorb a great deal of their parents’ viewpoints. This became obvious to me when I backpacked through Europe with a good friend during the summer after my junior year in college. Neither one of us had a lot of money for the trip, but we decided that we’d travel until our money ran out. Back then, it was realistic for budget travelers to tour Europe on $30 a day. According to my plan, after purchasing flights and train passes, spending no more than $30 a day would keep us afloat in Europe for about a month. My goal was to spend as little as possible so we could stay as long as possible. I was willing to sleep in bunk rooms at youth hostels and to live on bread and water to stretch our funds. But my friend wanted to have more fun, eat fancier meals, and stay at better hotelsâ€”even if it meant coming home a little earlier. She simply wasn’t as frugal as I was and we both had to compromise. We had the time of our livesâ€”though a shorter time than I would have liked!

I realized that being a little frugal comes naturally to me because that’s how I was raised. Even though my parents never actually said, “Laura, you should be frugal with your money,” I learned from them by observing their actions. We really didn’t talk about money much, but they always focused their resources on what was important to them and never seemed to spend money on whims or fads. That gave me an idea of how to be responsible with money.

Think back to your childhood. If you grew up in a home where there wasn’t enough money for the necessities, you might have heard, “We don’t have money for that!” or “Do you think money grows on trees?” when begging for that new Barbie or Transformer. If money was tight in your household you might have grown up thinking that it was hard to earn or that it was impossible to have enough. If your parents constantly fought about how to pay the bills, you might have grown up subconsciously feeling that money was a source of tension or a destructive force in relationships. Or, if you were raised in an affluent family where it was important to keep up the image of wealth, you might still think that you should buy expensive brands, fancy cars, and lead a materialistic lifestyle. Regardless of what kind of household you grew up in, it’s likely that your biases and beliefs about money from childhood have stuck with you. Some beliefsâ€”like the importance of delayed gratificationâ€”serve us well, but unfortunately, many don’t, like the importance of buying expensive brands.

In addition to subconsciously forming some of our strongly held ideas about money when we were only children, the majority of us were taught little or nothing about personal finances during our secondary education. I graduated from a school known for giving a great education. Even though it was, and still is, a fantastic institution, there wasn’t a class about money back then. I had a lot of fun making scarves in knitting class (yes, knitting!), but I can’t help feeling like my time would have been better spent learning how to balance a checkbook! So don’t feel bad if there’s a gap in your education when it comes to money matters. Many fellow MBAs I know graduated without being required to take a personal finance class, and they probably have no idea about a lot of everyday money matters. If you lack an educational foundation (formal or informal) for managing your finances, it’s very possible that you can lose a great deal of money, no matter how much you have. Conversely, if you make a modest income, but become skilled at money management, you can make the right moves necessary to become quite wealthy over time.

This book will help you form a better relationship with your money, no matter how much of it you have and no matter what your money mind-set right now. After you read it, I urge you to share your financial knowledge with family members or friends who might benefit from your good sense. Without basic financial education, anyone can create money troubles that are difficult to resolve. When that happens, we run the risk of living in perpetual fear about the state of our finances. That burden can hold us back from living the kind of life we truly want for ourselves and for our families.