Discover the Wealth Within You: A Financial Plan For Creating a Rich and Fulfilling Life

Ric Edelman believes you can't create a truly effective personal finance plan until you really know what you want out of life. In Discover the Wealth Within You he shows how to develop a realistic series of individualized goals for your future, and then how to construct an investment program to help you realize them. Edelman, author of New York Times bestsellers Ordinary People, Extraordinary Wealth and The Truth About Money, draws on these books to explain why we're ultimately more successful with our financial agenda when we focus on it as a means to an array of unambiguous objectives (such as "see an event in person during the next Winter Olympics" or "have plastic surgery in three years") rather than vague long-range aspirations (like saving "for retirement" or to "buy a house"). In the first section he unveils a step-by-step process for determining the precise objectives that motivate us; in the second he points us toward a mutual-fund-based savings plan that should be easier to capitalize consistently because we know where it's taking us and when we'll get there. Incorporating a profusion of appropriate cartoon strips, inspirational testimonials, persuasive statistics, and an unusual assembly of footnotes that are as amusing as they are informative, Edelman offers a clear and innovative course of action that could turn even procrastinating wannabes into enthusiastic money managers. --Howard Rothman