Clean Up Your Finances (Collection)

Liz Weston is a personal finance columnist whose twice-weekly columns for MSN Money reach more than 10 million people each month. She writes a money column, “My Two Cents,” for AARP the Magazine, the largest circulation magazine in the world with 22 million subscribers, and authors the question-and-answer column “Money Talk,” which appears in the Los Angeles Times and other newspapers throughout the country. Liz is a regular commentator on American Public Media’s Marketplace Money and has contributed to NPR’s “Talk of the Nation” and “All Things Considered.” She has appeared on Dr. Phil, Today Show, and NBC Nightly News, and was for several years a weekly commentator on CNBC’s Power Lunch. Her advice on credit and finance has been featured in Consumer Reports, Marie Claire, Parents, Real Simple, Woman’s World, Woman’s Day, Good Housekeeping, Family Circle, and many other publications. Formerly a personal finance writer for the Los Angeles Times, Weston has won numerous reporting awards, including the 2010 Betty Furness Consumer Media Award by the Consumer Federation of America, designed to honor individuals who have made “exceptional progress in American consumerism.” Her other books include The 10 Commandments of Money, which the New York Times praised as “a wonderful basic personal finance book…[with] enough counterintuitive ideas to keep even people who know a bit about personal finance reading further.” She is also the author of Deal with Your Debt and Easy Money, both published by Pearson. Weston is a graduate of the certified financial planner training program at University of California, Irvine. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and daughter. She can be reached via the “Contact Liz” form on her Web site, AskLizWeston.com.

Deal With Your Debt

Introduction     xvi

Chapter 1 Isn’t Debt-Free the Way to Be?      1

Chapter 2 Your Debt Management Plan     15

Chapter 3 Credit Cards     39

Chapter 4 Mortgages     63

Chapter 5 Home Equity Borrowing     85

Chapter 6 Student Loans     99

Chapter 7 Auto Loans     119

Chapter 8 401(k) and Other Retirement Plan Loans     133

Chapter 9 Loans You Don’t Want to Get--or Give     147

Chapter 10 Dealing with a Debt Crisis     159

Chapter 11 Putting Your Debt Management Plan into Action     177

Index     195

 

 

Your Credit Score

Introduction     xxii
Chapter 1  Why Your Credit Score Matters     1
Chapter 2  How Credit Scoring Works     15
Chapter 3  FICO Versus “FAKO”--Competitors to the Leading Score     39
Chapter 4  Improving Your Score--The Right Way     51
Chapter 5  Credit-Scoring Myths     71
Chapter 6  Coping with a Credit Crisis     83
Chapter 7  Rebuilding Your Score After a Credit Disaster     109
Chapter 8  Identity Theft and Your Credit     133
Chapter 9  Emergency! Fixing Your Credit Score Fast     157
Chapter 10  Insurance and Your Credit Score     167
Chapter 11  Can Bad Credit Cost You a Job?     183
Chapter 12  Keeping Your Score Healthy     189
Index    205