No comments about Selling Real Estate Services: Third-Level Secrets of Top Producers.

No comments about Standard & Poor's Dictionary of Financial Terms (Standard & Poor's).

5 comments about Private Mortgage Investing: How to Earn 12% or More on Your Savings, Investments, IRA Accounts and Personal Equity--A Complete Resource Guide with 100s ....Secrets From the Experts Who Do It Every Day.

1. Clark and Tabacchi have created a masterpiece of an educational and supportive tool that should become a desk reference for any investor from amateur through industry mogul. By providing the reader with an organized and easy to understand manual on the otherwise opaque investing industry, Clark & Tabacchi display their expertise in this subject matter by guiding the beginning investor through the processes of choice from traditional savings through stocks and bonds on to the lucrative market of Mortgage Investing.
   The explanation of the reasoning behind the private mortgage industry that tells you why you would want to find yourself in this industry gets the juices flowing and interests peaked. Your journey includes a thorough exposure to strategies of Mortgage Investing, this resource is a must have companion.



2. This book is straightforward and gives you a tremendous amount of information about investing in private mortgages. Unlike a lot of books of the investment genre, it does not try to sell you on services provided by the authors. In fact, I wish the book had a bit more reference material for making contacts to get started with this type of investing.



3. Clark's book covers the basics that any investor will need to know, including why to choose private mortgage investing (and what your other options are) and how to go about doing it. It covers all of the different aspects of mortgages such as fees, interest rates, and even has handy tables to help you out. The appendices are the best feature as they have all the forms you will need as well as a comprehensive glossary (very useful!). This book covers everything you need to know to succeed, but were too scared to ask about. It even has case studies and examples explained with real numbers that help tie the whole thing together. I would recommend this book to anyone wanting to start earning money with private mortgage investments.



4. This is a very helpful book on the topic of hard money loans. It also touches on investing in discount notes. Even an experienced investor will find some helpful nuggets of information in this book. This book not only showed me the way to safely invest & build personal wealth, but it gave me insight as a mortgage broker looking to place my clients with hard money loans. I called and spoke with co-author Matt Tabacchi recently, and he is still in business with 4 branch offices...I may even place some of my money with him to lend in Florida.
   
   



5. This is an excellent first book on the subject of private mortgage lending.
   
   If you have no idea if what private mortgage lending is about, it has enough detail for you to understand what the business is about and how to get started.
   
   In my opinion, it does not spend enough time explaining the "Gotchas". It has plenty of information to get you started but not enough to keep you out of trouble.
   
   If you are interested in engaging in this business as a lender, by all means buy this book first, but when you have read it two or three times, be aware that you need to know a lot more about troubled borrowers, real estate inspections and appraisals, real estate title problems, bankruptcy, and local forclosure laws and procedures before you start lending your own money.

5 comments about Why Smart People Do Stupid Things with Money: Overcoming Financial Dysfunction.

1. This is a great book for anyone to read. Very practical and easy to understand for any age group or financial income. Everyone should read this book!



2. Is it me or are all these "reviews" obviously endorsements from the author's large network of friends and contacts? I can't find a single "review" in the 25+ here that gives even a single sentence of detail about the book -- not one! These are all generic "terrific finance book for everyone - 5 stars!" Plus, nearly all these reviews were posted within the first 6 days of the release and each gave 5 stars. Not plausible.
   
   I don't blame the author for asking friends to put reviews up, but then have them actually read the book and put together a real REVIEW, not a vacuous endorsement. This is especially important since there is no "See Inside" capability with this book. I depend on Amazon reviews when making decisions on products I'm buying here. I don't appreciate an obvious attempt to subvert the process.



3. This is one book that I'll keep on my shelf and re-read, and refer to as reference. The author's 35 years of experience really shows in his analysis on financial personality types and risk tolerance. He had me pegged! Based on a short self-test, he predicted the kind of spender and investor I am with accuracy. The book does go into pretty good detail for the beginning investor; it can make your brain hurt. But, that's what's great about it- the amount of information packed into this short book makes it well worth buying and keeping on hand.
   The reason I only gave 4 stars: I disagree with him about not paying your mortgage off as quickly as possible. He uses calculations to show that by getting tax breaks for mortgage interest, you'll come out ahead if you invest the extra money instead. There's one thing he, and other authors who advocate this, have never addressed- the Standard Deduction. If you have unusually high deductions such as medical bills that puts your itemized deductions above the standard, then his system make sense. But, if all of your deductions, including the mortgage interest, comes beneath the standard deduction the government gives to everyone, then you would take the standard. So, you wouldn't be getting any additional deduction for the interest than you would without it. This makes it highly impractical to pay three times the value of your mortagage, if you have the extra money to pay it off more quickly.
   No, I'm not a financial expert; I'm actually a complete novice when it comes to investing. But I have worked as a tax preparer, and in my own returns, I've always taken the standard deduction, since I didn't have enough itemized to top it. So, for me his recommendation makes no sense at all. You would have to evaluate your own deductions, and if you itemize, your tax savings, to make an informed choice as to whether you'd be better off investing the money, instead of making additional payments on your house. But, I think it's irresponsible for him to make a blanket statement that no one should try to pay off their house early.
   That's the only thing I found wrong with the book. Other than that it taught me alot, and is well worth the read.



4. I have to agree with Lapis' assertion that most of the reviews appear to be fraudulent. Click on "see my other reviews" and most of them have only one review...for this book. I'm sure most amazon.com users don't post only one review. It's difficult enough to not carried away reviewing books and other consumer goods. It is extremely suspicious and I agree with Lapis that I often make purchasing decisions based on user reviews.



5. To be clear, I am not a friend or relative of the author, nor am I associated with his publishing house or anything. I am giving this a five-star review because it deserves it.
   
   The author is great at disseminating the identities that people take on regarding finance- such as the Scrooge, the Traveler, etc. He makes it abundantly clear why we think and feel the way we do about money. He encourages us to go into our earliest memories regarding money(if they're anything like mine, that's not so pleasent). I was really impressed with this book. I just finished reading "Conscious Finance", and this was far better. It ezplores the belief systems behind our actions, and then tells us how to actually change those beliefs.
   
   Finally, a financial advisor with the courage to tell us that financial magazines are nuts for telling us to switch around our portfolios every time there's a full moon! I always intuitively knew this, but I was grateful to have back-up from an expert.
   
   This is not a get-rich-quick book. Hardly. I'd say it was refreshingly conservative and reaffirming- the author doesn't demand that you never take on student debt, assume that everybody reading his book must already make $100,000+ a year, or tell you that paying your kid's college tuition payment is your no. 1 priority in life. No. He speaks to those that don't make a fortune, don't have a degree in finance, and don't always have their s*** together. Finally! I can read a book on finance and not feel guilty!
   
   That said, he makes great points about saving and consumer debt- nothing really new, but without a bunch of complicated, left-brained, holier-than-thou nonsense. I felt encouraged after reading his book. That is a new one for me. For anyone who reads Money magazine or the like and feels like a failure because they don't have $10,000 to invest in some new stock or mutual fund every month, may I respectfully suggest reading this book. It will be an eye-opener.

2 comments about How To Make One Hell Of A Profit and Still Get In To Heaven.

1. This is one of the very best books I have read regarding prosperity and the way we view money. Dr. Demartini approaches the concept in a way I have never seen before and I have had too many "lightbulb moments" to count. I have purchased 4 of these books and shared them with friends, I was so excited about it. I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to stretch their thinking a bit outside the box and gain some new insights about how they think and feel about money.



2. Ok, this book isn't a book about a literal heaven nor does it define spirituality according to any specific religious doctrine. This book is for those folks who have uncomfortable attitudes towards making money because they feel it violates their moral or ethical codes, whatever the name of the code.
   
   A surprising number of people are very uncomfortable with the idea of buying and selling and especially of making money on their work. They don't mind receiving a paycheck as long as it isn't "too big" (whatever that means), but to actually make something and sell it for as much as the market will bear causes them sincere and very painful anxiety. Years ago, when I taught piano full time and had a full slate of students that I charged what was a good rate for the time, one of my friends asked me how I did it.
   
   So, I told her what I did, how I built the number of students, and what I charged. She said she could never charge that much for teaching music because it was unfair to the kids. Well, guess what, she didn't end up teaching many students even at her lower rate. And she had to go work at another job because she couldn't make enough money at what she was willing to charge. Is there a lesson here?
   
   This book takes a person with the kind of fears and anxieties of my friend and walks them through why it is a good thing to charge and make money. What you should do to save and build with that money and how to use money to enrich rather than become the focus of your life.
   
   If you are a person with these kinds of stultifying attitudes towards money, this is a good book to read and think about. However, if you are already a businessperson with a good understanding and attitudes towards making money, well, this book is probably too basic.

5 comments about The Complete Guide to Day Trading: A Practical Manual From a Professional Day Trading Coach.

1. I have had high hopes for this book based on good reviews. I admit, I slacked off and didn't check the reviewers as I normally do. For me this book was a disappointment - regurgitated and repackaged information for the beginners that you can find free on the internet.
   
   Markus Heitkoetter of Rockwell Trading sells day trading seminars that are priced in middle four-digits. You always have to do your due diligence, whether it is a $15 book or a four-digit seminar. Otherwise you risk to buy an inferior product. In case of trading, always do research online in depth or ask the vendor to provide the track record. If any teacher cannot provide a successful track record in their field - run. Buyers beware!!!



2. The book can be useful for an absolute beginner but it lacks the depth and substance in a lot of areas. Another warning sign is that that the book is published by writer himself, maybe that explains the underlying reason for it.



3. I found this book completely useless, author repeated same topics again and again. Topics are scattered, not organized. It seemed to me that author copy and paste from many different books. Even beginner's will find it difficult to understand. Don't waste your money.



4. This book really is a complete guide to day trading.If you are searching here on Amazon for a book to get you started in day trading this is the one. It covers all the basics you need to know in the areas of risk management, stop losses, setting goals to take profits, staying disciplined, only taking high probability trades, and keeping it simple. It will show you how to organize your thoughts on your profit goals, what the best market is for you to trade, how much of a loss you can stand to take, and if your personality is suited for day trading. I really wish this book was the first of the 80 stock trading books I had read, it would have been a short cut and saved me an incredible amount of time in learning through real money trades and experimentation. The book shows the value of setting up a simple trading strategy and back-testing it, then paper trading, before putting real money at risk. It shows the importance of making your profit goal 50% greater than your stop loss so a 50-60% winning ratio will make you profitable. It also shows the importance of logging your statistics for wins vs. losses and dollar amounts to establish if your strategy works in real world trading. I have day traded a large amount of capital and learned in the markets the hard way what this book teaches. I have also found how to win in day trading and the principles that have enabled me to win thousands in the market are the same as the ones contained in this book. My review is just the a small sampling of this books material. If you are a beginning day trader this is the book for you. If you are just breaking even or losing right now, this book can make you a consistent winner. Experienced and seasoned traders may not find much value in this book, but it is not written for you. It is a 5 star book for beginners and new students of day trading for profits.



5. It's very basic information. Wasn't all that helpful. Although at the end are several links that are decent reads.

1 comments about Faith-Based Family Finances: Let Go of Worry and Grow in Confidence.

1. Prices are reaching an all time high. People are stressed out due to the failing economy. Banks are failing and there is no security with the stock market tanking.
   
   In Faith-Based Family Finances, the authors share over thirty-five years of wisdom and experience as a top financial advisor in this comprehensive guide to financial planning through all stages of life, rooted in biblical principles.
   
   In this book, these issues are addressed:
   
   --Should I rent or own?
   --How much of my income should go towards giving?
   --How can I avoid going into debt at Christmas?
   --Should both spouses work?
   --How can I teach my children to manage their money?
   --Plus much more.
   
   There are three chapters in this book about debt alone, targeting this as a main problem. People who are in debt, or those who are just starting out, as well as those who just want to make sure they are making good decisions, should pick up this book. It is definitely a book to read over several times.
   
   Great for pastors to keep in their libraries in case someone comes in needing financial advise.
   
   Armchair Interviews says: This 600-page book gives a lot of vital information.

5 comments about Think BIG and Kick Ass in Business and Life CD.

1. The book is motivational. I'm not sure if Trump is a geneous or a psychopath but at the very least the book makes you think, pumps you up and is interesting to hear Trumps' view on things.



2. Great audio book. It gives you insight on how to think differently about your business dealings. It also gives guidance on how to get from where you are to where you want to be, all by thinking big. I listen to parts of it before important meetings or interviews to get into the "think big" mindset. I definitely recommend this book.



3. I love this CD! It tells you things just like it is. No candy coating. It's clear and easy to understand with examples. Worth every penny!



4. This book is inspirational. The only thing that would improve it would be if he read it himself. I highly recommend for anyone remotely intersted in doing anything that they are currently not doing, but want to. It is a powerful motivational tool.
   
   Also, it has many interesting stories about the Don's personal life which are always fun.



5. I bought this book because my boss told me it was good. The thing is that my boss really don't like Trump. He got the book from a friend of his as a prank for his birthday. I thought if someone who doesn't like Trump really liked the book, it had to be good.
   My boss was right. The book is great. It has some good stories and really makes you think about re-evaluating your goals in life and aiming a little higher.

5 comments about Estate Planning for Dummies.

1. I thought the tone of this book was really patronizing (okay yeah I know it's for 'dummies' but does it need to keep reminding you of that fact constantly?). It's repetitive and ultimately tells you to consult an estate planner anyway--so forget using it to save money to plan your own estate. For a much more directly useful guide to estate planning (with forms you can fill out on a cd-rom), I highly recommend Quicken's Willmaker Plus. You get all the same information as in this book, plus more, and in a much less annoying style. And since it includes the forms for the key documents you need to prepare (e.g., simple will, durable power of attorney, etc.), you may be able to plan your own estate yourself (dummy or not).



2. I didn't find this book helpful at all. It just barely skims the surface, and usually concludes with "make sure you talk to your accountant/attorney/estate planner." If I intended to talk to all those folks, I wouldn't waste my time reading this book in the first place. Most of what this book covers could be learned by snooping around the web - and in many cases you can learn more that way. It defines the terminology, but even that is often inadequate. I suggest you check this book out from the local library, and then if you find it to be a useful resource go ahead and buy it. I wish I had done that - I don't feel this book has enough information to really qualify as a reference book.



3. This book gives you general information about Estate Planning but It left me wanting more. I was surprise that it didnt mention anything about AB trust. I wish it would have given the upside and donwnside to each options of wills or trust.
   
   I would have settled for a checklist what to ask your lawyer or accountant considering that he kept harping of always ask your lawyer. Although I see the lawyer point, if I was meeting with a lawyer I would have not wasted 20 dollars and change to read the book.
   Many who read books like Dummies want to avoid paying thousands of dollars to a lawyer or as I mention , and if you want me to ask my lawyer at least give me very specific checklist of questions.
   
   If you could, buy it at a discount or borrow it from the library. I probably sell mine on Ebay.



4. Open this book and you will see that it is formatted and reads like every other textbook you have read since college. The writing makes no attempt to reduce the complexities of the subject. It simply reiterates all the language you never understood in the first place. As the author of "Everything A Baby Boomer Should Know -- An Insider's Guide to Estate Planning," I suggest you compare my book which honestly and easily explains the tools of the probate system, to this book which is impossible to understand if you have no background on the subject.



5. I purchased the Willmaker Plus CD. The accompanying manual looked a bit thin so I ordered Estate Planning for Dummies to read before getting down to the Willmaker manual and program. Frankly, it was a waste of time and money, as the Willmaker manual and the on-screen help was more concise and better written. I've been happy with several Dummies books, but this isn't one of them.

4 comments about Managing Debt For Dummies (For Dummies (Business & Personal Finance)).

1. I've been a fan of John Ventura and Mary Reed's books for some time, mainly because they are accurate, straightforward and actionable. Managing Debt for Dummies is no exception. It covers everything from basic budgeting to how to avoid eviction. I've been in the consumer education field for a long time now and I can attest that the strategies and resources listed are reliable and useful.
   
   The chapter on Managing Your Past-Due Mortgage is going to be especially relevant as billions of dollars in adjustable rate mortgages begin to reset. Likewise, I know a lot of people are having trouble paying back student loans, and the information there is also clear and straightforward.
   
   Overall, this book is coming out at the right time, and I have no doubt many, many people are going to find it indispensible.



2. Not knowing where to start untangling the mess I'd made for myself and way too embarrassed, even ashamed, to ask for help kept me living in vagueness, not ever adding up the numbers. Managing Debt for Dummies made it safe to come out from under the covers and look at my financial situation. Ventura and Reed not only have a friendly, non-judgmental tone to their advice, they break the road to solvency down into manageable pieces and guide us forward step by step. It most reminds me of the feeling I had as my dad ran alongside my bike the first rides after removing the training wheels. The fear is still there, but knowing he's there to guide me, I'm able to take the risk, all the time feeling an eminent sense of independence.



3. This book gives you everything you need to know about getting your finances in order and gives you a plan of action. The information is very practical and helpful for a variety of issues and situations. If you are in debt, this is a must read.



4. This is a fast, simple read that allows your to jump around different sections with little confusion. It has some good tips on getting rid of debt and saving more for the future, and above all it give advice to appreciate what you already have and don't feel the need to constantly buy new things!