The Beardstown Ladies' Stitch-In-Time Guide to Growing Your Nest Egg: Step-by-Step Planning for a Comfortable Financial Future

The sequel to The Beardstown Ladies' Common-Sense Investment Guide turns its attention to retirement planning, covering the basics of financial planning and savings and investment strategies to create a financially secure future.

The Beardstown Ladies have gone big-time. From an Illinois river-town investment club featuring prayer, exchanged recipes and remarkably successful stock market investments, the group has parlayed its bestselling Common-Sense Investment Guide into national TV interviews on Donahue and elsewhere, scores of public appearances, receipt of star-quality fan mail and this professionally packaged sequel, with a last-page mail-in coupon for its own Beardstown Lady video feature. For building a comfy retirement nest egg, the Ladies urge all the standard stuff-"Pay yourself first," "the magic of compound interest," "dollar cost averaging" and so on-but with their own special charm and hometown persuasiveness. Individual club members attest in sometimes touching personal terms to the value of good living, sensible saving for investment and contented retirement. Included here is a wealth of source materials, checklists, financial and legal forms.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Having received due recognition for their investment success described in The Beardstown Ladies Common Sense Investment Guide (LJ 1/95), these 15 members of an investment club located in Beardstown, Illinois, turn to giving financial planning advice. After marveling at the awesome power of compound interest, the ladies recommend taking stock of one's assets, identifying goals, diversifying investments, and purchasing a home wisely. Life, disability, and long-term care insurance are treated as afterthoughts in the estate planning chapter. Fifty pages of various resource lists and a sample will round out the advice. While this superficial treatment may be better than having no financial plan, it is more suitable for Ozzie and Harriet than for most people living with the economic consequences of changing demographics, corporate downsizing, and declining medical benefits that characterize the 1990s.
Joseph Barth, U.S. Military Acad. Lib., West Point, N.Y.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

This is a treasure trove of information on financial planning, following in the footsteps of its very popular predecessor, The Beardstown Ladies' Common-Sense Investment Guide. Told in a folksy style with very simple language and examples, it clearly maps out how to anticipate your financial needs and then plan for them. It presents basic financial principles and offers a simple but adequate review of introductory financial planning techniques. This is a good handbook for the increasing number of people who are being forced to make their own investment decisions in corporations, as well as entrepreneurs and others who must assume responsibility for their financial future. Save-and-invest is the theme of the book, and the authors sketch a no-nonsense approach to both elements. Although this low-key book includes recipes and contains such statements as, "A stock is a share in the ownership of a corporation," do not be deceived, for a casual review could suggest that the content is too elementary or superficial. Nothing could be further from the truth. Clearly written for laypersons, the book is a good primer, offering definitions and thoughtful techniques for planning, saving, and assessing risk in various investment instruments. A valuable resource certain to be as popular as the previous book. Mary Whaley