Personal Finance, 6th edition

About the Book

The Latest Financial Data

• REVISED! Information throughout has been revised to reflect current financial norms, such as salaries and credit card rules.
• UPDATED! Chapter 1 contains more information on how to select a college or graduate school, major, and occupation based on financial goals. It also discusses salary information for potential careers and how to create a financial plan.
• UPDATED! Chapter 5 on banking and interest rates contains more discussion on checking service, debit cards, mobile banking, checking account fees, and savings accounts.
• UPDATED! Chapter 6 on managing money uses lower interest rates to reflect declining interest rates since the previous edition.
• UPDATED! Chapter 7 on assessing and selecting your credit discusses student credit cards, credit bureaus, improving your credit score, and preventing identity theft in greater detail.
• UPDATED! Chapter 8 on managing credit contains more information on secured and prepaid credit cards and rules for credit card issuers that protect users.
• UPDATED! Chapter 9 on personal loans dives into the topics of peer-to-peer lending, warranty rules for car dealers, and student and home equity loans.
• UPDATED! Chapter 10 on purchasing and financing a home now uses lower interest rates to reflect more realistic conditions, as well as a greater discussion of the impact of credit ratings on the ability to obtain a mortgage, new rules to ensure understandable mortgage contracts, and private mortgage insurance.
• UPDATED! Chapter 16 on investing in bonds now uses lower interest rates to reflect realistic conditions.
• UPDATED! Chapter 19 on retirement planning contains updated information on all of the different retirement plans available with recent changes.
• REVISED! The Instructor’s Manual and Test Bank both reflect all chapter revisions.

Build Your Own Financial Plan

• Personal Finance’s structure mirrors a comprehensive financial plan, teaching students the skills they need to build their own financial plan.
• Building Your Own Financial Plan chapter-ending case studies are presented as an integrated series of exercises and worksheets that represent a portion of a financial plan. At the end of the course, students will have completed a financial plan that they can continue implementing beyond the school term.
• A Certified Financial Planner exercise is contained in the last chapter (Chapter 21) and challenges students to offer advice on how financial planning should be adjusted in response to a change in economic conditions.

An Interactive Approach

• Personal Finance’s interactive approach incorporates Internet-based resources along with many examples, problems, and ongoing case studies, all of which focus on providing students with hands-on practice applying financial concepts.
• UPDATED! An Apps for Personal Finance feature highlights a wider array of useful apps students can download to their smartphones for free that apply to some of the key concepts covered in the chapter.
• Financial Planning Online in every chapter highlights Internet resources for more information on a chapter topic. Each includes an Internet address and a description of what the website provides.
• Financial Planning Problems require students to demonstrate knowledge of mathematically-based concepts to perform computations in order to make well-informed personal finance decisions. All Financial Planning Problems are available in MyFinanceLab.
• Financial Planning Online Exercises show students how to obtain, cri

About the Book

The Latest Financial Data

• REVISED! Information throughout has been revised to reflect current financial norms, such as salaries and credit card rules.
• UPDATED! Chapter 1 contains more information on how to select a college or graduate school, major, and occupation based on financial goals. It also discusses salary information for potential careers and how to create a financial plan.
• UPDATED! Chapter 5 on banking and interest rates contains more discussion on checking service, debit cards, mobile banking, checking account fees, and savings accounts.
• UPDATED! Chapter 6 on managing money uses lower interest rates to reflect declining interest rates since the previous edition.
• UPDATED! Chapter 7 on assessing and selecting your credit discusses student credit cards, credit bureaus, improving your credit score, and preventing identity theft in greater detail.
• UPDATED! Chapter 8 on managing credit contains more information on secured and prepaid credit cards and rules for credit card issuers that protect users.
• UPDATED! Chapter 9 on personal loans dives into the topics of peer-to-peer lending, warranty rules for car dealers, and student and home equity loans.
• UPDATED! Chapter 10 on purchasing and financing a home now uses lower interest rates to reflect more realistic conditions, as well as a greater discussion of the impact of credit ratings on the ability to obtain a mortgage, new rules to ensure understandable mortgage contracts, and private mortgage insurance.
• UPDATED! Chapter 16 on investing in bonds now uses lower interest rates to reflect realistic conditions.
• UPDATED! Chapter 19 on retirement planning contains updated information on all of the different retirement plans available with recent changes.
• REVISED! The Instructor’s Manual and Test Bank both reflect all chapter revisions.

An Interactive Approach

• UPDATED! An Apps for Personal Finance feature highlights a wider array of useful apps students can download to their smartphones for free that apply to some of the key concepts covered in the chapter.

Real-life Scenarios

• The text uses ongoing scenarios woven throughout all the chapters to illustrate the interdependence of personal finance decisions, including the following:
  • REVISED! The Sampsons case at the end of each chapter has been revised for consistency throughout the text, and how uses lower interest rates in examples to reflect realistic conditions of today. It allow students to plan for a family with two young children struggling to organize their finances.
  • REVISED! Part-ending Brad Brooks cases illustrate the adverse effects of poor financial decision-making, and have been revised for consistency throughout the text--using lower interest rates in examples to reflect the realistic conditions of today.

Learning Tools

• UPDATED! Psychology of Personal Finance Boxed Features and Questions have been applied to additional situations, such as how spending attitudes can either ruin a budget or create wealth, or to explain how financial planning decisions are affected by psychology. An exercise at the end of each chapter asks students to evaluate if their personal finance decisions regarding a specific behavior discussed in the chapter is influenced by psychology.  
• Web Search Exercises allow students to conduct an online search for real-world events related to the key content in each chapter.

Also available with MyFinanceLab^™