cover image The Wall Street Journal Lifetime Guide to Money: Strategies for Managing Your Finances

The Wall Street Journal Lifetime Guide to Money: Strategies for Managing Your Finances

Wall Street Journal Personal-Finance Tea, Frederic Wiegold, Of The Wall St Journal Staff. Hyperion Books, $29.95 (624pp) ISBN 978-0-7868-6132-3

This massive guide from the Journal's ""Money & Investing"" section offers, in distinct units for age groups 20-40, 40-50 and 60-plus, comprehensive advice on a full spectrum of investment choices and family money matters: home and auto buying, taxes, insurance, college costs, debt handling, unemployment survival, employee benefits and retirement funding (including today's often puzzling health-care environment), estate planning--all pretty much in present-day terms, which are of course bound to change. Unlike that of the Beardstown Ladies, who might research their company holdings down to the CEO's sensibly warm socks, the investment advice detailed here--""stick with stocks""--is largely technical, based on what the markets for stocks, bonds and other instruments may do and the pros and cons of transaction procedures, timing and broker relations. Readers zeroing in on their own age group will find--in a friendly if somewhat repetitive text--a diversified personal money program. Money Book Club main selection; BOMC and QPB selections. (Jan.)