What's Your Net Worth?: Click Your Way to Wealth

Online investing may get the lion's share of attention, but Jennifer Openshaw says the Internet really is the perfect vehicle for managing all personal finance information--especially for women, whose fiscal requirements often are ignored by traditional guides to money management. In What's Your Net Worth?, Openshaw, founder of the Women's Financial Network and a frequent financial TV commentator, describes a complete 12-step wealth-building program that combines sound advice concerning women's precise needs with Web sites that should be helpful in addressing them. It boils down to mixing time-honored (albeit gender-specific) techniques with today's technology to develop a three-part game plan Openshaw calls "Earn It, Save It, and Grow It!" Toward the second goal, for example, she describes various ways that expenses might be trimmed to increase savings, "not only by using online budgeting tools to get a handle on your spending but also by devising an online strategy to spend less on the things you still need to buy." Other individual actions focus on eliminating debt and building credit, protecting assets, minimizing taxes, increasing earnings, and giving back through charitable contributions. --Howard Rothman