family-economics

This book is wonderful. From cover to cover it is full of information that anyone can use. Useful tips for budgets, organizations, quick meals, travel, auto care, appliance repair, relaxation, etc. There are web site references charts that can be copied. An encyclopedia for living! I could not put it down. Get your highlighter and start reading.

I was very impressed by the layman terminology of this book. It was easy for me to understand, and I learned about insurance information that was important for my family, and for my parents.

I own at least six books about medisoft. I teach medisoft, among other things in a university and other colleges. This is the only book that prevented me from writing my own text book for my students. Well rounded, unpretentious and makes sense in its approach. Good balance about other information needed: Insurance, etc. and will not bog you down with coding which belongs to other books. If you want to learn about medical billing and medisoft, this book is it.

Family Money is an excellent and "user friendly" introduction for the non-specialist general reader into the intricacies of preparing and utilizing wills, trusts, life insurance, and other financial instruments for the purpose of endowing the people you love with the funds, properties, and possessions you wish to leave them as your legacy. Family Money covers the building and keeping of family money as a deliberate act while avoiding the hazards and uncertainties of contestable bequests. The reader will learn how to keep a will simple enough to do what is wanted, but detailed enough to satisfy a probate court; why probate is inimical to family wealth and how to avoid it; how to use living trusts to move as much as you can to family members; and when charitable trusts, special needs trusts, and other trusts can work in favor of your family. Of special value is the information on what to do if you find yourself named executor or trustee and how to instill notions of duty and humility in your heirs. If you want to pass on your wealth and possessions to those of your own choosing, then begin the process by carefully reading Family Money!

This is a very readable book. The essence of this book is proposed changes to the Social Security System and marriage/divorce laws to restore some of the incentives to get the neccesary work of caretaking of the children and the aged done.

With some very simple back-of-the-envelope calculations (She goes through the numbers in a bit more detail in an appendix), Burggraf makes clear the extent to which the Social Security system functions to socialize the benefits of a well-reared child while many of the costs of raising a productive citizen remain privatized. At the same time she also makes the point that the once-hidden opportunity costs of having a full-time parent at home are now quite apparent since women have the option of becoming lawyers, doctors and managers. The combination of these two features of our economic system provides a compelling incentive for both spouses to work and not to invest themselves in themselves in having or rearing children. The result is an entirely predictable decline in the parental resources devoted to children.

A second interesting and important point that Burggraf makes is that Social Security is not and has not for decades been a savings plan but a transfer payment system which (ideally) functions to provide for the persons who have lived beyond their working years. Other people have of course made the same observation, but Burggraf's treatment is atypical in that she argues that the transfer payment aspect is neither surprising or bad. Instead, she argues it is right and proper that it is right and proper for adult children to provide for their aged parents, but that the current system muddles this relationship. She notes that the way for a couple to maximize their Social Security benefits is not by investing themselves in their children (who will be paying the FICA and medicare taxes to support them) but to maximize their own earnings in the paid workforce and put little or no energy into child rearing.

One final point of her book which deserves mention is consideration of the point that "family wealth" for all but the richest Americans consists not of tangible assets but in the earnings power developed through years of education and experience in the paid workforce. In essence, she advocates bringing back some form of alimony payments which would continue for approximately the same duration as the marriage in order to give a caretaking parent some security in exchange for the loss of earnings power for forgoing the opportunity to develop one's own earnings power.

Burggraf proposes some interesting changes to the Social Security system and marriage/divorce laws in an effort to restore some of the traditional incentives to get the necessary work of care-taking of the young and old done.

While there are similar Christian books available, this is the only one I've seen that deals with the basics of budgeting by combining scripture and tradition from a Catholic Christian perspective. Lenahan explains the Catholic theology of keeping God first in a consumer society and the peace that results from living as simply and debt-free as possible. Especially great for newly married couples, but appropriate for all. Practical with questions for reflection and worksheets for application.

I am job hunting at the moment. I belong to a voluntary group (...). I found this book so useful to help with the stages of unemployment, that I am mentioning this book on our email distribution list. The family members and friends of the person who is laid off will also benefit from this book. It is great to refer to @ the worst points in the search.
(...) Make sure you read the book and look for a group like (...).

This is a textbook for one of those "boring" junior college courses on planning your life and marriage. Funny thing is, it's also a fantastic wealth of advice and homey insights most of us desperately need. Centers on finances in marriage, always a problem area, but plenty of other good stuff. I think with the right literary agent and a lean rewrite, this would be a bestseller. Most Americans should take Prof. Poduska's course.

As you read through this masterful yet succinct examination of the state of the family in Britain today, you are struck, in part at least that despite the social upheaval in Britain in the post war years, much of our social structure remains intact.

Despite the many freedoms won by women and by men particularly in the last forty years or so, what is more surprising than anything else is how conservative Britain has turned out to be. True, the work excludes factors such as race and ethnicity as well as immigration and the impact these may have had on the overall figures, but despite everything, to a degree, the traditional behaviours of marriage hold good to a great extent.

Before anyone should think that I am a supporter of this conservative picture, let me assure readers that I am not. While I think that the study here is a good one, I also am of the belief that the notion of a traditional family is an artificial construct which does not have real meaning.

For instance, it is only about 150 years agao roughly speaking that women were considered to be mere chattels once they became married or put it another way, what is mine is mine and what is hers (including her) is mine too.Female sexuality was under male control as was reproduction. Divorce laws were changed such that women could divorce their husbands. The point here is that this artifact of the family, far from it being something to aspire to has been endowed with a mythological significance which cannot be supported. The breadwinning husband is a construct to, denying women the right to work and the right to financial independence. The conclusion I draw from this is that diversity is good and that all men and women should be free to make their own choices.

I find that the conservatives of all parties who purport to produce evidence to establish the suffering of children and the handicaps in life that they must endure as a result of the lack of married parents are also setting up a straw man. To be sure suffering children are found in many families but often that suffering is a result of insufficient income. The benefits of proper family life are bound to win through if the comparator is a time when most people were in marriages whether they liked it or not. It would not be surprising if mothers in bad marriages devoted their time and energies to their children.

My biggest objection to this book lies in the dogmatic approach set out by Patricia Morgan who seems to be on a crusade against what she terms the atomistic society. This surely must be a topic all on it's own but it does seem to me that the opponents of freedom and liberty are casting their eyes back to a golden age of marriage where none existed. Education is rightly seen as a liberator for women who are as good, if not better than men in many respects. Why should they not have the same freedoms and responsibilities as men for all aspects of their lives. The question really is one of choice. Everyone should have the ability to decide for themselves what they do given the facts available.

In this case, social structure will be determined by those choices and we should be prepared for change whether people like Morgan want to deride it as post-modern or not. The conservatives case is too simplistic and seeks to use emotion and blackmail to return us to an age where men are subjugated to men. For myself, I want to see a time when all people are free to make the most of any opportunities which may be presented to them regardless of sex or colour.

Every student or interested observer of society should read this book and make up their own minds.

When I first started to look through this book, I decided that it's all trivial. Then I looked again, hm-m-m... I actually never thought about most of this "trivial" stuff before. The language was simple, true, but it's amazing how many good hints are there. I regularly read books on personal finance, and this book does not repeat them. Say, did you ever wonder how banks make money on those "0% APR introductory offers"? And did you even thought why it is important to know? Yes, good question contains most of the answer. Because that's what you pay, if you use this "free" credit. And this book is good with both questions and answers. Another example: if your income is $100 short from your expenses, how much expenses you should cut? $100, right? Now, if you cannot cut expenses, how much you have to earn? $100? Not keeping in mind income tax! Assume your effective federal income tax rate last year was 15% and your tax bracket was 33%, then how much? $115? $133? $150? Wrong, quite a bit more!

The cover says, it's good for teenagers, and that's true. I'll try to make my teenager kids read it. In a few years they are going to a college, and I want them to be smart about their money. The cover says that it's also good for everybody who has come to this country and tries to make sense of our financial life. I suppose that's true too. But it's also definitely good for a lot of other folk. It was good for me, and I am not a teenager.