MONEY SMART: How to Spend, Save, Eliminate Debt, and Achieve Financial Freedom

Named the winner of the 2011 Eric Hoffer Award for Excellence in Independent Publishing, Money Smart delivers a better approach to personal money management with a simple and accessible style. Author Ted Hunter shows readers that they are capable of managing their money better than anyone else, including financial professionals. He first exposes the destructive myths and system-wide incompetence that have dominated money management advice for decades. Hunter then empowers readers by providing the information they need to make their own decisions.

Money Smart offers an education in financial topics that will help readers achieve financial freedom, including planning spending and saving, buying and selling a home or car, paying for an education, recognizing the importance of market cycles, and understanding the various investment and insurance options. Presenting easy-to-use tools and a clear list of rules to follow, Money Smart teaches readers to make solid, educated decisions so they can effectively manage their money.

Using a direct approach and personal anecdotes to demonstrate time-tested advice, Hunter reveals a comprehensive approach to personal money management. Readers will receive tools for getting out of debt now; learn to spend smart, save more, and take charge of their money; and they will discover how to balance enjoying life now with planning for the future, so they can achieve the ultimate goal of financial freedom.

Offering a brief but thorough education in financial topics, supported by a rich and dynamic website resource (MoneySmartOnline.com), Money Smart is America's manual for personal money management.

Ted Hunter understands both financial success and failure. He started to pay his own way at the age of nine and never looked back. From washing dishes while in college to becoming a pioneer in the design and implementation of computer-based business systems, he kept learning about how to handle money effectively. Thirty years ago he cofounded a real estate brokerage company that grew to a staff of more than one hundred agents. He became a multi-millionaire and then went bankrupt in the real estate crash of the late 1980s. From this experience came his ability to understand the cycles of both the real estate market, and financial markets in general. Hunter then entered the stockbrokerage industry as the advisor to thirty affluent clients and applied his hard-won insight to the stock market. He made his clients lots of money and rebuilt his own finances. Then in early 2000, before the market began to dive, he advised his clients to get out of the stock market and he sold his investment business and most of his stocks. Since his pivotal insight into the nature of the markets, Hunter has successfully read the real estate and stock markets to his benefit, even through the most recent financial crisis. His real-world experiences and successes over sixty years have given him insight into the myths, and in some cases the outright lies told to Americans who seek financial advice, and are the foundation for his conviction that people can and must manage their money themselves. He wrote the bookMoney Smart to share his knowledge and to help people take control of their money so they, too, can create financial freedom. A native of the New York City area, Hunter now lives in Davis, California, with his wife, Suchit, and their daughter, Kat. He is also the proud father of three adult sons: John, Dave, and Dan.