The Complete Idiot's Guide to Managing Your Money (Serial)

If financial planning and other money issues just aren't your cup of tea, here's the book for you. Its friendly, lighthearted approach simplifies the steps to taking control of finances--including the easiest way to prepare a budget, get ahead of bills, cut down on debt, and actually save money. Line drawings.

Robert K. Heady is a nationally syndicated columnist who writes about personal finance and banking. His trusted Tribune Media Services column, "The People's Money," runs in scores of newspapers.

As founding publisher of Bank Rate Monitor (now bankrate) from which he retired in 1998, Mr. Heady pioneered the surveying of U.S. bank rates and averages in news media, beginning with a rate table in The New York Times in 1983. Eventually his consumer rate tables began reaching more than 50 million US households every week via The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Money Magazine, CNN, and dozens of other major dailies. He is a frequent guest speaker and has appeared many times on CNN's Your Money and Moneyline, Good Morning America, ABC's 20/20 and World News, CBS's Morning News, The Today Show, NBC's Dateline, and PBS's Nightly Business Report, as well as AP, ABC, CBS, NBC and National Public Radio networks.

Christy Heady is an award-winning financial journalist and the author of the best-selling book The Complete Idiot's Guide to Making Money on Wall Street, and co-author of The Complete Idiot's Guide to Managing Your Money and The Complete Idiot's Guide to Making Money in the New Millennium. She has been interviewed as a financial expert on dozens of national television and radio programs including CNBC, NPR, and WGN.

Heady's work has been featured worldwide on CNN's Moneyline program and in publications such as the Christian Science Monitor, Consumers Digest, Your Money Magazine, the Los Angeles Times Syndicate, and the Chicago Tribune. She is a frequent contributor of international business and investing articles to print and online publications. Heady is also the founder of the personal finance Web site, theWhiz, geared to help mainstream America learn basic money management skills.