Smart Money Decisions: Why You Do What You Do with Money (and How to Change for the Better) - Softcover

Bazerman, Max H.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0471411264 ISBN 13: 9780471411260

Publisher: Wiley, 2001

Synopsis

Praise for Smart Money Decisions

"If you need to negotiate anything . . . from a pay increase to buying or selling a house-this book covers all the bases. [Bazerman] has taught, tested, and proven his theories with thousands of executives and MBA students."-Donald P. Jacobs, Dean, J. L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management, Northwestern University

"Max Bazerman provides a fascinating, easy-to-understand look at how we make money decisions and offers sound advice that will help you increase your net worth."-Roger E. Stricker, PhD, Vice President, Intellectual Property, Lucent Technologies

"By holding a mirror up to our faces, Max Bazerman allows us to see all those dumb money mistakes each of us had no idea we were making."-Bill Bresnan, Financial Talk Show Host/Author

When it comes to money matters, even the smartest of us make some pretty dumb decisions. This groundbreaking book gives you the necessary tools to think through financial issues practically and avoid costly blunders.

A renowned expert in the field of decision-making and negotiation, Max Bazerman illustrates both how and why we make the decisions we do. He provides the essential understanding you need to identify your own approach to finances, recognize any inherent problems in your reasoning, and determine ways to overcome them. Packed with sound advice and expert recommendations, Smart Money Decisions is essential reading for anyone who has made the same mistake twice.

About this title

Review:

Before you read the first chapter of Smart Money Decisions, kick yourself. Hard. Then do it again, just for good measure. Because no matter how hard you're able to pummel yourself, it won't match the impact you'll feel when you realize how much you overpaid for your house and your car, how badly you bungled your last job change, how you were suckered into buying an extended warranty because of a fearful scenario that a veteran salesperson planted in your head.

Max H. Bazerman is a professor of negotiation at Northwestern University. Unlike many of today's investment gurus, he's applied statistical models to numerous situations in which the price of a purchase was in flux. And he has concluded, beyond any doubt, that certain tactics will almost certainly save you money, while others put the power in someone else's corner, dooming you to pay a higher price than you might have otherwise. Now, you may already know that there's a mere 10 percent chance you'll use an extended warranty, and thus pass it up; about 60 percent of purchasers are able to resist. But you may not know that you should never let a real estate agent know the highest price you are willing to pay for a property. In fact, you're best off if the agent knows only how low the seller is willing to go. With a knowledge only of the floor and no idea what the ceiling is, guess where the price winds up? Right: hovering just over the carpet. There's more to this book than negotiation, though. One chapter persuades you to keep the value of your time in mind when making a purchase. For example, if you research and shop for 20 hours in order to save $120 on a purchase, you've set the value of your time at $6 an hour. (Would you like fries with that big-screen TV?)

Like the best investment books, Smart Money Decisions should have a permanent place on your shelves. You may need it only a few times a year, but you're virtually guaranteed to have more money at the end of the year. --Lou Schuler

From the Inside Flap:

When it comes to money matters, even the smartest of us can make some pretty dumb decisions. From falling in love at first sight with a house and hastily negotiating a price to blindly following the pack in investment dealings, life is fraught with financial choices that are settled on with gut instinct rather than a level head—moves that can, and often do, lead to costly mistakes. In order to sidestep major money blunders, resisting first impulses, though not easy to do, is absolutely crucial. This groundbreaking book gives you the tools necessary to think through fiscal issues practically so you don’t continue making decisions rashly. Written by Max Bazerman, a renowned expert in the field of decision making and negotiation, Smart Money Decisions illustrates both how and why we make the decisions we do. Offering an intriguing mental audit of people’s psychological relationship with money, it provides the essential understanding you need to identify your own approach to finances, recognize any inherent problems, and determine ways to overcome them. Bazerman guides you through these basic steps with the goal of permanently improving your financial decisions in a wide range of real-life scenarios, such as buying and selling a home or a car, making investments, and choosing careers. Highlighting the errors too often made in these and other situations, Smart Money Decisions presents the 10 most important money mistakes, including:

• Overconfidence—the engine that fuels other monetary missteps
• Being unprepared—"winging it" leads to mishaps that could easily be avoided
• Focusing on beating the other side—coming out on top shouldn’t overshadow making a decision that will help you in the long run
• Ignoring alternatives—having your heart set on only one option isn’t always the wisest strategy

Packed with sound advice and expert recommendations on how to make more reasoned monetary decisions, Smart Money Decisions is essential reading for anyone who wants to stop making costly financial errors.

About this edition

• Publisher: Wiley
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0471411264
• ISBN 13: 9780471411260
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 256