Deal with Your Debt: The Right Way to Manage Your Bills and Pay Off What You Owe, Adobe Reader

Product Author Bios

Liz Pulliam Weston is one of MSN Money's most-read columnists and author of the Q&A column Money Talk, which appears in newspapers nationwide, including the Los Angeles Times, the Cleveland Plain Dealer, and the NewarkStar-Ledger. She appears weekly on CNBC's Power Lunch and regularly on other radio and television programs, including NPR's All Things Considered.

An award-winning journalist, Weston is also a graduate of the certified financial planner training program at the University of California, Irvine. She is author of Your Credit Score: How to Fix, Improve, and Protect the 3-Digit Number That Shapes Your Financial Future (Prentice Hall 2004).

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Most people carry debt for most of their adult lives. Yet, most books on debt focus mainly on how to pay it all off, and live forever without it. Too often, following that advice leads only to failure. People either give up, or pay off the wrong kinds of debt. They strand themselves with too little flexibility to survive a financial crisis -- and land in bankruptcy court. They neglect saving for retirement, homes, or college, and end up poorer than they might have been. For most people, it’s more realistic -- and smarter -- to control and manage debt effectively, rather than eliminating it completely. Debt Smart shows how. Award-winning personal finance columnist Liz Weston explains the rules and explodes the myths surrounding debt. Discover the crucial role debt can play in a portfolio, identifying debts that actually contribute to  wealth and flexibility, while avoiding or eliminating “toxic” debts. Weston presents effective strategies for evaluating, monitoring, and paying every form of debt, from credit cards and mortgages to student and auto loans. She offers practical guidelines for how much debt one should take on.  Find realistic (and often surprising) guidance on everything from home equity loans and 401K borrowing to small business loans.

Table of Contents

 1. Isn’t Debt-Free the Way to Be?

 2. Your Debt Management Plan.

 3. Credit Cards.

 4. Mortgages.

 5. Home Equity Borrowing.

 6. Student Loans.

 7. Auto Loans.

 8. 401(k) and Other Retirement Plan Loans.

 9. Loans You Don’t Want to Get–or Give.

10. Dealing with a Debt Crisis.

11. Putting Your Debt Management Plan into Action.