Whether you're living paycheck to paycheck or just trying to make smarter financial choices, let award-winning writer and Washington Post columnist Michelle Singletary show you the practical steps you need to take for the financial peace you long for. In The 21-Day Financial Fast, Michelle proposes a field-tested financial challenge: for twenty-one days, put away your credit cards and buy only the barest essentials. What happens next will forever change the way you think about wealth. With Michelle's guidance, you'll discover how to: Break bad spending habits Plot a course to become debt-free with the Debt Dash Plan Avoid the temptation of overspending for college Learn how to prepare elderly relatives and yourself for future long-term care expenses Be prepared for any contingency with a Life Happens Fund Stop worrying about money and find the priceless power of financial peace Join the thousands of others who have already discovered practical ways to achieve financial freedom and experience what it truly means to live a life of financial peace and prosperity.
Market liquidity is an essential feature of the stock market, so investors and corporates can transact as and when it suits them. A key priority for stock market operators is to ensure there are market participants with a wide range of different perspectives, which offer plentiful trading volumes. Stock exchanges need to encourage investors with shorter-term horizons to lubricate the transaction process; the vitality of shorter-term operators is a key part of the success of the whole. However, in recent times the proliferation of credit has favoured speculative strategies, and along with new technologies, trading volumes have been driven up by the speed at which data is accessed and put to use. Consequently, market participants optimise their strategies for quick returns and become largely disconnected from, or potentially in conflict with, the wider interests of longer-term investors. This is the 'fast finance' problem. In this new chapter of Slow Finance, Gervais Williams builds on his previous work to further consider the problems and solutions for today's financial markets. He suggests that the debate, which has focused on the computerised algorithms that instigate rapid automated buy or sell orders at remote exchanges, needs to be extended further and a more forward-looking policy that brings the parallel markets together into one physical location to concentrate market volumes, be implemented. Based on his extensive industry experience Gervais Williams outlines: § Market liquidity & stock markets § Liquidity changes over recent decades, and the scope to game the system § Addressing the problems of high frequency traders § The overlooked problem – how markets fragmented geographically during the boom § Fostering true market liquidity beyond the credit boom to aid productivity growth
A Fast and Frugal Finance: Bridging Contemporary Behavioural Finance and Ecological Rationality adds psychological reality to classical financial reasoning. It shows how financial professionals can reach better and quicker decisions using the 'fast and frugal' framework for decision-making, adding dramatically to time and outcome efficiency, while also retaining accuracy. The book provides the reader with an adaptive toolbox of heuristic tools and classification systems to aid real-world decisions. Throughout, financial applications are presented alongside real-world examples to help readers solve established problems in finance, including stock buying and selling decisions, when faced with not only risk but fundamental uncertainty. The book concludes by describing potential solutions to financial problems in the forefront of contemporary debates, and calls for taking psychological insights seriously.
If you want to accelerate your career development and transform your skillset, but without the price tag and two-year commitment of the MBA, this is the book for you. The 30 Day MBA covers the 12 core disciplines of business: accounting, finance, marketing, organizational behaviour, business history, business law, economics, entrepreneurship, ethics and social responsibility, operations management, research and analysis and strategy. It provides the tools and techniques you need to seize business opportunities and implement strategies successfully. Complex concepts are explained in simple and practical terms, helping you to apply high level concepts to the real-life world of business. The 30 Day MBA also contains insightful case studies from leading organizations including IKEA, Cisco, Cobra Beer, Heinz, Shell, Hotel Chocolat and Chilango, to help keep you right up-to-the-minute with current trends and inspire you to explore new concepts. This book equips you with essential hard knowledge, but also helps you understand how business and current thinking is shifting in today's turbulent global markets, and broadens your mind with the knowledge and confidence to excel in a competitive career.
This book is designed to start with simple examples that progressively develop the reader's confidence to take on more complex tasks. There is very little theoretical discussion about computer science, operations research algorithms, mathematics, or finance. The thrust of the book is to teach the reader to break complex tasks down into simple tasks. It then looks to implement those simple tasks into VBA code using a critical subset of the features of the language. The tentative contents is: (1) Why? What? Who? Where? and How? (2) Common Sense (3) Securitizing A Loan Portfolio (4) Understanding the Excel Waterfall (5) Designing the VBA Model (6) Laying the Model Groundwork (7) Recorded Macros: A First Look at the VBA Language (8) Writing Menus: An Introduction to Data, Ranges, Arrays, and Objects (9) Controlling the Flow of the Model (10) Building Messaging Capabilities (11) Designing the Model’s Reports (12) Main Program and Menus (13) Writing the Collateral Selection Code (14) Calculating the Cash Flows (15) Running the Waterfall: Producing Initial Results (16) Debugging the Model (17) Validating the Model (18) Running the Model (19) Building Additional Capabilities (20) Documentation of the Model (21) Managing the Growth of the Model (22) Building Portfolio Monitoring Model (23) Valuation Techniques: How do we Determine Price? (24) Challenging Times For the Deal (25) Parting Admonitions
The financial industry has recently adopted Python at a tremendous rate, with some of the largest investment banks and hedge funds using it to build core trading and risk management systems. Updated for Python 3, the second edition of this hands-on book helps you get started with the language, guiding developers and quantitative analysts through Python libraries and tools for building financial applications and interactive financial analytics. Using practical examples throughout the book, author Yves Hilpisch also shows you how to develop a full-fledged framework for Monte Carlo simulation-based derivatives and risk analytics, based on a large, realistic case study. Much of the book uses interactive IPython Notebooks.
Shed a spiritual light on some of the biggest problems facing people today: the need to put the role of money in a proper perspective and to solve financial problems. Elmer Towns states at the outset that this is not the primary purpose of fasting and prayer. Instead, it is all about knowing God. It is not about withdrawing prayer on an as-needed basis from some spiritual ATM kiosk. It is about meditation, studying the Scriptures, and communing with God. When we fast and pray in faith, asking for God's help and provision, He begins to teach us how to become good stewards of what He has provided. Chapter topics include "Fasting to Learn Stewardship," "Why We Have Money Problems," and "A Faith Approach to Fasting for Money." Once we understand why we struggle with money problems, we can do something about it with this practical step-by-step guide.
10TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION Is the financial plan of mediocrity -- a dream-stealing, soul-sucking dogma known as "The Slowlane" your plan for creating wealth? You know how it goes; it sounds a lil something like this: "Go to school, get a good job, save 10% of your paycheck, buy a used car, cancel the movie channels, quit drinking expensive Starbucks mocha lattes, save and penny-pinch your life away, trust your life-savings to the stock market, and one day, when you are oh, say, 65 years old, you can retire rich." The mainstream financial gurus have sold you blindly down the river to a great financial gamble: You've been hoodwinked to believe that wealth can be created by recklessly trusting in the uncontrollable and unpredictable markets: the housing market, the stock market, and the job market. This impotent financial gamble dubiously promises wealth in a wheelchair -- sacrifice your adult life for a financial plan that reaps dividends in the twilight of life. Accept the Slowlane as your blueprint for wealth and your financial future will blow carelessly asunder on a sailboat of HOPE: HOPE you can find a job and keep it, HOPE the stock market doesn't tank, HOPE the economy rebounds, HOPE, HOPE, and HOPE. Do you really want HOPE to be the centerpiece for your family's financial plan? Drive the Slowlane road and you will find your life deteriorate into a miserable exhibition about what you cannot do, versus what you can. For those who don't want a lifetime subscription to "settle-for-less" and a slight chance of elderly riches, there is an alternative; an expressway to extraordinary wealth that can burn a trail to financial independence faster than any road out there. Why jobs, 401(k)s, mutual funds, and 40-years of mindless frugality will never make you rich young. Why most entrepreneurs fail and how to immediately put the odds in your favor. The real law of wealth: Leverage this and wealth has no choice but to be magnetized to you. The leading cause of poorness: Change this and you change everything. How the rich really get rich - and no, it has nothing to do with a paycheck or a 401K match. Why the guru's grand deity - compound interest - is an impotent wealth accelerator. Why the guru myth of "do what you love" will most likely keep you poor, not rich. And 250+ more poverty busting distinctions... Demand the Fastlane, an alternative road-to-wealth; one that actually ignites dreams and creates millionaires young, not old. Change lanes and find your explosive wealth accelerator. Hit the Fastlane, crack the code to wealth, and find out how to live rich for a lifetime.
Thought-provoking and provocative, Slow Finance anticipates a profound change in public attitudes. It outlines how credit growth and globalisation have contributed to the excessive scale of the financial sector. Just as the Slow Food movement represents a reaction to the food industry losing sight of its ultimate purpose, Slow Finance explores how parallel trends will soon be reflected in the investment world. At once think-piece, potted history and call-to-action, the ideas in Slow Finance is an essential read for professionals, academics, business leaders and private investors alike, as well as policy-makers seeking a more sustainable approach to investing.
