eloan

That's some free advice that you won't find in this book. Solomon offers such obvious advice that anyone could have written it. Here's the summary of 163 pages: Get a fifteen year instead of 30 year mortgage and save money to prepay it! Wow what a revelation! He then offers dozens of boring, simplistic suggestions on how to do that including clip coupons, shop for bargains, set a budget, don't overspend, avoid expensive habits. Did I really spend money to read this when Mom & Dad told me this when I was ten? For free! I stopped reading when Mr. Solomon advised me to bring a pen to a closing! Trees died for this? Also, Mr. Solomon freely admits to having no children, so this book is not really designed for parents who have a little more difficulty saving than what he refers to as TINKS (Two Incomes, No Kids). His argument on the value of prepaying a mortgage (rather than sustaining one for the tax credit) is the only thing worthwhile in this overpadded book. How to win the mortgage war and get out of debt? Talk a publisher into printing a book of advice everyone has already heard then collect those royalty checks!

I admit it. This book does not contain any new or incredible advice. It's all pretty much just common sense stuff. The benefit of the book is that it is very motivating. All of the knowledge in the world will not do you any good unless you actually apply it. The author does a good job of relating his personal stories. You leave the book feeling like you CAN do it.

The book repeats each scholarship at least 20 times on different pages, sometimes even on the same page. It just put under the different number. So, when it promises 4000 scholarships - divide it by 20 and that is all it has. The CD included is very poor. The book does not have instructions on how to make an advanced search on CD, and the few instructions it has - not working.

As the previous reviewer stated, the book does repeat scholarships--however, it does so because the same scholarship must be listed under different categories, i.e. field of study, residence, etc.; otherwise, students might miss out on ones they qualify for. I find this book to be very helpful and informative. There are a lot of scholarship foundations listed; the number of scholarships advertized does not re-count each foundation; it counts on the fact that each foundation offers more than just one award. This is a great book, as long as you are willing to follow the directions and do the research on your own. But admittedly, in these times, much info can be found online. I worked for the authoer, Dan Cassidy, for five years--he was committed throughout his life to helping students find a way to pay for college. Sadly, he passed away last year at the age of 45. But he did his best to make his book an invaluable resource for students.

The author has taken information which is available in your student loan packet and from your lender, complied it with inaccuate state information, compiled it into a book and given it a title. A total waste of money. I returned the book for a refund.

I an an ex-lawyer with considerable exposure to some student loan issues. This book still told me things I did not know. I recommend it for people with minor, moderate, or severe student loan difficulties who are not thoroughly familiar with the rules governing their loans, or who are looking for new ideas on how to deal with their loans.

This is not to say that anyone should rely on this book by itself. Things often get complicated when you proceed past the general-purpose advice to the specifics of your own case. The primary value of this book is to alert the reader to the overall shape of the problem or solution.

My copy describes itself, on the back cover, as a "substantially updated 2nd edition." Its title page indicates it was last revised in February 2000. This may well be true. If so, I would distinguish "substantially" updated from "fully" updated. The book repeatedly refers to court decisions that are now a number of years old -- describing a 1993 case, for example, as "recent."

In addition, I have some concerns about the book's accuracy. For instance, in discussing the legal defense known as "laches," the author says, "[I]n only one case has a former student defended against a lawsuit claiming laches." (Pg. 7/37.) This is incorrect, and I believe it was mistaken even at the time of the first edition.

I would say that the author also misphrases the state of affairs when s/he says, "In general, you cannot assert the defense of laches against the government." A more accurate phrasing would be that "the defense of laches is unlikely to succeed against the government." There appears to have been some softening on the issue in other contexts in recent years, and other courts reviewing the one case to which the author refers have not generally said that the case -- granting a discharge to the student on grounds of laches -- was decided wrongly under its particular circumstances.

To provide one other example of error, on page 10/13 the author lays down the blanket rule that a student loan cannot be discharged in bankruptcy if it was made by a government unit. This is not what the law says. In context, I suspect the author meant to say that it CAN be discharged in bankruptcy if it is NOT made by a government unit. The book does explain the relevant laws more carefully elsewhere; the net effect of this error will probably be (a) to mislead a few people who do not read those other sections and (b) to confuse everyone else.

The important thing is to use a book like this to gain a general orientation to the issues, and take seriously its final chapter, which offers a bit of advice on how to do your own legal research. If you proceed that way, you will tend not to be confused by the occasional imperfection in general-purpose books like this one (and at this point, I don't believe anyone can help making at least an occasional mistake), and with a fair amount of effort you will probably be able to save yourself the expense and hassle of making obvious, costly, time-consuming errors in deciding how to proceed with your own case.

I have not found another book with anywhere near as much useful information on the subject of handling student loan debt. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is willing to use this book as one should use any legal authority: read it, understand it, and double-check its conclusions.

I bought this used (thankfully I did not spend a lot on it) thinking it would provide a decent overview of graduate and undergrad scholarships...not so!! The undergrad and grad sections where the scholarships are listed are just about identical! Nothing is listed easily - for instance English scholarships are under Literature/Communications, for which there are only 3 listings. Don't buy it!!

I bought this book to help me aid my entry back into school at the ripe old age of 30. I figured, "Great! Peterson's is know for good guides, and I can use all the help I need". Unfortunately, The information contained in the book is readily available on a wide variety of websites for free, and if you are reading this, you obviously have access to the web! I would save your money on this one. Instead, use the money you would have spent on application fees, and surf the web.

I was looking for books that would help me find money for law school. This book was great! It gave some avenues that hadn't yet crossed my mind. I would say that if you want to go to school and still have money to eat, get this book (I wish I had it before I started undergrad).

I can't image how a well know publisher like South-Western could mess up this badly. I have perfect 20/20 vision and have read countless textbooks in my life - that said, I can tell you that this is an exceptionally difficult book to keep focused on - literally! My eyes begin to strain and ache after 5 min. of reading, primarily because of the poorly chosen typestyle and typesize.

There may be valuable information in here - but I'm going to find it elsewhere.

Pretty basic stuff. Not much meat. Couple good ideas. Mostly geared toward someone who has never been a manager of anything. Overall: Shallow.

The CDROM is essentially a dump of the information found on government websites such as SBA, SEC, etc.

The information is voluminous so if you have a slow modem, there may be some value in purchasing the info on the CDROM for the sake of having it consolidated in one place. You will learn little new if you have already been to the websites.

Also, some of the links on the CDROM do not work properly. You open the page in Adobe Acrobat and receive and error message saying the page has to be opened in a browser. You open the page in a browser and you get a message saying the page has to be opened in Adobe Acrobat.

That kind of foolishness more or less sums up the value of the CDROM from my perspective.

Not only is all of this info available online, but the CD gives you a collection of non-indexed, gigantically HUGE Acrobat PDF files, some about 100MB in size. Navigating a 5MB text PDF is painfully slow - try 100 MB. Finding what you're seeking is practically impossible, and navigating PDFs of that size takes an eternity. Even a fast machine takes a couple minutes just to load the files into Acrobat, never mind doing searches, etc.

If they had broken up the files and named them logically (instead of titles like A1, B1, etc.), and provided some kind of indexing application or document that would point you to specifically what you wanted, then, yes, it might be handy to have. Otherwise, go online, and find answers 100 times more quickly. This is a ridiculously poorly done CD-ROM in this day and age. Big waste of $, in my opinion. If you have a slower/older computer without much memory, you'd REALLY want to avoid this thing like the plague.

This disc contains pdf files downloaded from government web pages. Save yourself the money and go to the SBA, GSA, SEC web pages yourself and look up the information that is relevant to you.

This book was simply a waste of money-awful. The requirements to qualify for the scholarships is too incredibly specific. It is also the worst organized book i have ever read. It took so long to comb through the whole book only to find nothing. Please, I beg of you to buy a diffrent book. Don't waste your money.

I'm a junior and didn't really find this book of much use. There aren't a lot of general scholarships. There's a lot of scholarships relating to specific schools or organizations. There weren't a lot of scholarships for essays, for juniors, or just an average person.

This is probably the worst book in Scientific computation. This book doesnot explain any topic in depth. It's a waste of money to buy this book.

Pavlov's dogs could have been trained to write a better textbook on Matlab computing then the author has done. In fact, I believe this book was written and produced by 1,000 monkeys instead of an esteemed Cornell professor. The examples in the book rarely work and I believe that any careful reader will realize that anyone who gives this book a positive review is a complete tool that probably has nothing better to do than to make excuses for his domestic partner's poor job at crafting such an overpriced waste of tree pulp. It seems to me that professors @ Cornell should stay out of the publishing industry because they just can't seem to get anything right. As for the positive reviewers of this text, I believe they should get some of that South African homegrown Viagra "on tap" and have "a thought-provoking and exciting" time for once in their sad sad lives.

I am in the professors class and the lectures are just as incomprehensible as the book. This book uses mathematics to obscure mathematical concepts beyond recognizability. Its unfortunate that this book has wiped out any interest I might have had in numerical analysis. It is not a good reference for anything except for how to write a terrible book. Specifically, the code doesn't make sense and is often inconsistent, the explanations are scanty, typos are abundant, and any knowledge to be had is lost in the muddle. Don't bother with thisbook.

I wish I had seen these reviews for this book. It is worthless in terms of information on obtaining funds for small business. If your handicapped or a minority it might be of some use for loans. Nothing relevent for myself as an individual with no startup capital.

I rarely rate a book as one star. This book is the exception.

My favorite gripe about books is that some of them have misleading titles designed to make them more appealing to book buyers. That certainly describes this book. The bulk of the programs listed in the book are LOAN programs. I don't think loans are a source of free money. Do you? The author never explains why these are sources of free money.

Usually, when I find a misleading title, I still find a mostly worthwhile book underneath. This book is the exception. Almost all of the programs listed come from either the Small Business Administration, the Agriculture Department, or Housing and Urban Development. Each of these organizations will help you over the telephone or send you material on the programs they make available. Web sites are also available.

Why, then, is the book so thick? That's because it lists the same agencies at the same address over . . . and over . . . and over . . . and over. You get the idea. Properly organized, this book could have been condensed to about 20 percent of its size, and would have been easier to use. That would have reduced the costs to the readers and the profits to the publisher and author. Can't have that, can we?

Let's look at the next problem. This book was published in this edition in 1996. There's been a lot of change in government programs since then. So undoubtedly, a lot of this information is out of date. A book like this should be updated at least every two years.

Finally, once you find out who to talk to or write to, what do you do? The book claims to help you design your application and use your grant properly. I found the material on that subject to be very brief and general. Few would find it adequate to succeed in even getting an SBA loan. Lengthy books are written on that subject alone!

If you want to get help from these agencies, find someone who has experience with them to help you (like your banker, attorney, accountant or neighbor). Even if you need to call information in your state to get the telephone number of the relevant governmental agency, that will still cost a lot less than this book.

Do not buy, and do not read this book.

If ever I have seen an example of a miscommunication about how to improve a business, it is in the form of this book. I encourage you to consider ways to redesign your business's basic operating model (perhaps through more outsourcing) as a way to reduce your need for capital, as a substitute to taking on loans from the Federal Government.

I was very disappointed in this book because I felt like the title itself is very misleading. The title of the book is called "FREE MONEY From the Federal Governement for SMALL BUSINESSES AND ENTREPRENEURS" By Laurie Blum. The book description clearly states that there are hundreds of millions of dollars available FREE! to small business and entrepreneurs, when in fact the only thing that I found in this book pertaining to small businesses were LOANS and ASSISTANCE PROGRAMS, and the last time I checked LOANS are not free. This book description needs to be more clear as to what kinds of grants are available and the title "FREE MONEY" should not be used when this book is filled with mostly loan options. From reading the book description I was under the impression that this was a book filled with nothing but grant information! I was very disappointed and unsatisfied with this book. If I'm wrong or misunderstood this book please fill free to correct me and direct me to the pages where the business grants are supposed to be located.