By the end of 2010, Harlequin Enterprises will have sold a grand total of more than 6 billion books in the company's 60-year history. But on Dec. 28, Harlequin will try to sell its first personal finance book.
The Frugalista Files, written by former
Miami Herald personal finance blogger Natalie McNeal, is a diary of the year that one 34-year old spent trying to pay off her credit card debt -- "without giving up the fabulous life."
McNeal's book is written in a diary format, with all the personal details and emoticons entailed in that approach: "I admit it. My name is Natalie. I am a spending slut." It's certainly not a book that targets my college-age demographic, but many readers will find her story inspiring. If Natalie can do it, so can you.
"My book is for anyone who is a promiscuous spender and is looking for real-life tips on how to be financially chaste," McNeal tells DailyFinance. "It's highly personal personal finance."
Katherine Orr, Harlequin's vice president of public relations, sees the move into financial advice as a logical step for the world's largest publisher of romance novels.
"For 60 years, we've provided escape from
problems, and now we can help solve the
problems," she says. She calls McNeal's book "very prescriptive. It's clear and simple, and it's helping young singles navigate in a tough world."
Harlequin first began publishing nonfiction in October 2008 with a book from syndicated radio host Delilah. Subsequent titles have included fitness guru Tosca Reno's best seller
Your Best Body Now: Look and Feel Fabulous at Any Age the Eat-Clean Way, along with titles like
The Happy Baker: A Girl's Guide to Emotional Baking; Life Beyond Your Eating Disorder;
The Dog Who Healed a Family; and
Queen of Your Own Life.
The market for pink-covered personal finance books for women hasn't been especially strong. None of financial adviser Suze Orman's mega-bestselling money books have boasted a pink cover, and none of the slew of recently released girl-talk guides for women have sold well. Titles like
Shoo, Jimmy Choo!;
Bitches on a Budget: Sage Advice for Surviving Tough Times in Style; and
A Purse of Your Own: An Easy Guide to Financial Security have all failed to register much of an impact in terms of sales.
Kimberly Palmer, the personal finance editor with
US News & World Report and the author of
Generation Earn, says many financial guides for women are marketed as "simplified [and] dumbed-down."
"Women don't like to be talked to as if we're bad with money, because we're not," she says. "Too many books for women assume that we overspend on shoes and cosmos when we're really just looking for the same kind of smart, solid financial advice that men want."
But if there's one publisher in America that knows what women are looking for when they buy a book, it's Harlequin. Perhaps it'll be able to reach a segment of the population badly in need of financial advice -- one that other publishers have so far been largely unable to connect with.
Five Best Mobile Personal Finance Tools
It's easy to convince yourself to spend and save responsibly when the numbers are right in front of you, but it's a different story when you're on-the-go. These five great mobile personal finance tools keep your money goals nearby at all times.
Photo a composite of images by neernijus and mellowr.
Smartphones have brought nearly every aspect of desktop computers to your pocket; it only makes sense they'd bring money management, too. Earlier this week we asked you to share your favorite mobile personal finance tool. Now we're back to highlight the five most popular options.
Mint (Android/iOS, Free)
Popular web-based personal finance tool Mint has an equally as popular mobile application for Android and iOS devices. It sports the same simple design as Mint's main site and makes it easy to track your spending, receive alerts about bills and budget issues, and monitor your savings goals. It's polished, the graphs are easy to read, and the total-overview that Mint provides helps keep you on top of your personal finances in ways other tools don't.
Pageonce (Cross-Platform, Free)
Pageonce isn't only about personal finance, but it does personal finance well, and it's available for nearly every mobile platform around. On top of a web-based interface, they have highly polished apps for Android, iOS, BlackBerry, and Windows Mobile (including the newly released Windows Phone 7). It's easy to get real-time updates via email or push notifications on your phone, set alerts to warn you about impending bills or overspending, and view all of your financial stats in eye-catching charts and graphs.
EasyMoney (Android, $9.95)
EasyMoney is an Android-only personal finance manager that includes a home screen widget for speedy transaction inputs, bill notifications, graphs to help you analyze and chart your past and future spending, and a host of small but very useful features like the ability to split transactions between multiple categories. Easy Money also includes a tool for photographing receipts and importing data as well as a checkbook register and easy import/export to .CVS files. EasyMoney offers a 30 day-trial if you're on the fence about spending $10 on the app (consider also, many of the features in EasyMoney are paid upgrades on similar applications).
Pocket Money (iOS, $4.99)
Pocket Money puts a sweeping view of all your accounts and transactions right on your iPhone or iPad. You can manually enter transactions, create repeating transactions based on cycles or dates, create custom filters to view your money the way that is most useful to you, and more. On top of the plethora of features in the stock app you can expand the feature set with in-app purchases like the $0.99 Photo Receipts plugin that allows you to photograph your receipts and import the transaction data off them. Pocket Money has a companion desktop application available for Windows, Mac and Linux—a nice break from the common pattern of iOS apps having Mac-only desktop companions.
ProOnGo (Cross-Platform, Starting at $0.99/Month)
ProOnGo is the most distinctly business-oriented tool in this week's Hive Five. You could use it as a personal finance manager if you desired but the feature set is weighted heavily towards business users who need to track things like automotive mileage, business-related expenses, and generate reports for tax purposes and submission to their company. The basic package runs $0.99/month and is limited to manual entires and expense report generation, the premium package runs $4.99/month and includes web-based access, backups, custom spreadsheets, and synchronization to your American Express business card.
Now that you've had a chance to look over the five most popular mobile finance tools, it's time to vote for your favorite:
Have an idea for the next Hive Five? Shoot us an email at tips@lifehacker.com with "Hive Five" in the subject line and we'll do our best to give you idea the attention it deserves.
Send an email to Jason Fitzpatrick, the author of this post, at jason@lifehacker.com.
robert shumakeA partial solar eclipse darkened European skies just after dawn this morning, casting an eerie darkness over the continent just as morning light was supposed to be spreading. But cloud cover prevented sky-gazers across much of the ...
Executives at CNN confirmed Monday that John Roberts, who served as the morning anchor for the network since April 2007, would be joining Fox News as a national correspondent.
Days after 100000 fish and approximately 4000 red-winged blackbirds were found dead in Arkansas, 500 deceased blackbirds and starlings were discovered on a Louisiana highway.
robert shumake detroitA partial solar eclipse darkened European skies just after dawn this morning, casting an eerie darkness over the continent just as morning light was supposed to be spreading. But cloud cover prevented sky-gazers across much of the ...
Executives at CNN confirmed Monday that John Roberts, who served as the morning anchor for the network since April 2007, would be joining Fox News as a national correspondent.
Days after 100000 fish and approximately 4000 red-winged blackbirds were found dead in Arkansas, 500 deceased blackbirds and starlings were discovered on a Louisiana highway.
robert shumake detroit
By the end of 2010, Harlequin Enterprises will have sold a grand total of more than 6 billion books in the company's 60-year history. But on Dec. 28, Harlequin will try to sell its first personal finance book.
The Frugalista Files, written by former
Miami Herald personal finance blogger Natalie McNeal, is a diary of the year that one 34-year old spent trying to pay off her credit card debt -- "without giving up the fabulous life."
McNeal's book is written in a diary format, with all the personal details and emoticons entailed in that approach: "I admit it. My name is Natalie. I am a spending slut." It's certainly not a book that targets my college-age demographic, but many readers will find her story inspiring. If Natalie can do it, so can you.
"My book is for anyone who is a promiscuous spender and is looking for real-life tips on how to be financially chaste," McNeal tells DailyFinance. "It's highly personal personal finance."
Katherine Orr, Harlequin's vice president of public relations, sees the move into financial advice as a logical step for the world's largest publisher of romance novels.
"For 60 years, we've provided escape from
problems, and now we can help solve the
problems," she says. She calls McNeal's book "very prescriptive. It's clear and simple, and it's helping young singles navigate in a tough world."
Harlequin first began publishing nonfiction in October 2008 with a book from syndicated radio host Delilah. Subsequent titles have included fitness guru Tosca Reno's best seller
Your Best Body Now: Look and Feel Fabulous at Any Age the Eat-Clean Way, along with titles like
The Happy Baker: A Girl's Guide to Emotional Baking; Life Beyond Your Eating Disorder;
The Dog Who Healed a Family; and
Queen of Your Own Life.
The market for pink-covered personal finance books for women hasn't been especially strong. None of financial adviser Suze Orman's mega-bestselling money books have boasted a pink cover, and none of the slew of recently released girl-talk guides for women have sold well. Titles like
Shoo, Jimmy Choo!;
Bitches on a Budget: Sage Advice for Surviving Tough Times in Style; and
A Purse of Your Own: An Easy Guide to Financial Security have all failed to register much of an impact in terms of sales.
Kimberly Palmer, the personal finance editor with
US News & World Report and the author of
Generation Earn, says many financial guides for women are marketed as "simplified [and] dumbed-down."
"Women don't like to be talked to as if we're bad with money, because we're not," she says. "Too many books for women assume that we overspend on shoes and cosmos when we're really just looking for the same kind of smart, solid financial advice that men want."
But if there's one publisher in America that knows what women are looking for when they buy a book, it's Harlequin. Perhaps it'll be able to reach a segment of the population badly in need of financial advice -- one that other publishers have so far been largely unable to connect with.
Five Best Mobile Personal Finance Tools
It's easy to convince yourself to spend and save responsibly when the numbers are right in front of you, but it's a different story when you're on-the-go. These five great mobile personal finance tools keep your money goals nearby at all times.
Photo a composite of images by neernijus and mellowr.
Smartphones have brought nearly every aspect of desktop computers to your pocket; it only makes sense they'd bring money management, too. Earlier this week we asked you to share your favorite mobile personal finance tool. Now we're back to highlight the five most popular options.
Mint (Android/iOS, Free)
Popular web-based personal finance tool Mint has an equally as popular mobile application for Android and iOS devices. It sports the same simple design as Mint's main site and makes it easy to track your spending, receive alerts about bills and budget issues, and monitor your savings goals. It's polished, the graphs are easy to read, and the total-overview that Mint provides helps keep you on top of your personal finances in ways other tools don't.
Pageonce (Cross-Platform, Free)
Pageonce isn't only about personal finance, but it does personal finance well, and it's available for nearly every mobile platform around. On top of a web-based interface, they have highly polished apps for Android, iOS, BlackBerry, and Windows Mobile (including the newly released Windows Phone 7). It's easy to get real-time updates via email or push notifications on your phone, set alerts to warn you about impending bills or overspending, and view all of your financial stats in eye-catching charts and graphs.
EasyMoney (Android, $9.95)
EasyMoney is an Android-only personal finance manager that includes a home screen widget for speedy transaction inputs, bill notifications, graphs to help you analyze and chart your past and future spending, and a host of small but very useful features like the ability to split transactions between multiple categories. Easy Money also includes a tool for photographing receipts and importing data as well as a checkbook register and easy import/export to .CVS files. EasyMoney offers a 30 day-trial if you're on the fence about spending $10 on the app (consider also, many of the features in EasyMoney are paid upgrades on similar applications).
Pocket Money (iOS, $4.99)
Pocket Money puts a sweeping view of all your accounts and transactions right on your iPhone or iPad. You can manually enter transactions, create repeating transactions based on cycles or dates, create custom filters to view your money the way that is most useful to you, and more. On top of the plethora of features in the stock app you can expand the feature set with in-app purchases like the $0.99 Photo Receipts plugin that allows you to photograph your receipts and import the transaction data off them. Pocket Money has a companion desktop application available for Windows, Mac and Linux—a nice break from the common pattern of iOS apps having Mac-only desktop companions.
ProOnGo (Cross-Platform, Starting at $0.99/Month)
ProOnGo is the most distinctly business-oriented tool in this week's Hive Five. You could use it as a personal finance manager if you desired but the feature set is weighted heavily towards business users who need to track things like automotive mileage, business-related expenses, and generate reports for tax purposes and submission to their company. The basic package runs $0.99/month and is limited to manual entires and expense report generation, the premium package runs $4.99/month and includes web-based access, backups, custom spreadsheets, and synchronization to your American Express business card.
Now that you've had a chance to look over the five most popular mobile finance tools, it's time to vote for your favorite:
Have an idea for the next Hive Five? Shoot us an email at tips@lifehacker.com with "Hive Five" in the subject line and we'll do our best to give you idea the attention it deserves.
Send an email to Jason Fitzpatrick, the author of this post, at jason@lifehacker.com.
robert shumake detroit
robert shumakeA partial solar eclipse darkened European skies just after dawn this morning, casting an eerie darkness over the continent just as morning light was supposed to be spreading. But cloud cover prevented sky-gazers across much of the ...
Executives at CNN confirmed Monday that John Roberts, who served as the morning anchor for the network since April 2007, would be joining Fox News as a national correspondent.
Days after 100000 fish and approximately 4000 red-winged blackbirds were found dead in Arkansas, 500 deceased blackbirds and starlings were discovered on a Louisiana highway.
robert shumakeA partial solar eclipse darkened European skies just after dawn this morning, casting an eerie darkness over the continent just as morning light was supposed to be spreading. But cloud cover prevented sky-gazers across much of the ...
Executives at CNN confirmed Monday that John Roberts, who served as the morning anchor for the network since April 2007, would be joining Fox News as a national correspondent.
Days after 100000 fish and approximately 4000 red-winged blackbirds were found dead in Arkansas, 500 deceased blackbirds and starlings were discovered on a Louisiana highway.
robert shumake detroit Personal finance is MUCH too large a topic to be covered in one article, so I'm writing a personal finance series to help explain some of the basics for the true, absolute, complete beginner. There will be articles geared toward beginners on stocks, bonds, mutual funds, IRAs, 401ks, credit card interest, asset allocation, home loans and more. There is no specific order in which the articles should be read, but since many aspects of personal finance are interrelated, I will try to include links in each article to other pertinent articles. I will also update this article with links to the new ones as they're published, so please check back frequently! I will try to address common beginner questions and misconceptions that I read on personal finance forums, and if readers have questions I encourage you to contact me with them - I will do my best to address them in subsequent articles, or try to find the answers for you. Below you'll find links to all of the series articles, as well as links to other finance articles I've written and an introduction to let you know where I'm coming from.
Series Articles:What are Stocks and Bonds, and How do They Work?
What is a Market Index? The Dow Demystified
What are Mutual Funds? A Beginner's Guide
What is an IRA? A Beginner's Guide
IRAs vs. Mutual Funds: What's the Difference?
What is an Investment Account? A Beginner's Guide
Where Should I Open an IRA?
What are Asset Classes?
Other Finance Articles:Financial Planning for Home Improvements
Using a 401k Loan for a Home Downpayment
Tips for Asset Allocation
Mutual Fund Investments for Seniors
Estate Planning for the Self-Employed
Tips for Living Debt-Free
How to Manage Your Own Stock Portfolio
Budgeting Tips for Baby Boomers
Freelancing When The Economy Has Center Stage
(These articles were not written with the complete beginner in mind, so if you have questions, don't hesitate to ask them in the comments section or refer back to the beginner's series.)
With credit card debt soaring, home foreclosures rising and gas prices through the roof, it's no wonder that more and more Americans are having a hard time making ends meet. However, I believe a big part of the reason that so many people are struggling with money is because they simply don't know the basics of personal finance. In fact, they don't know enough about personal finance to even know what questions to ask with regard to things like investing in the stock market, saving for retirement or making a home down payment. Most of us don't learn anything about personal finance in school, and if our parents don't have any knowledge to pass along, we're left to figure it out on our own. Employers sometimes offer retirement accounts and other vehicles to help their employees save and plan, but people frequently don't have the basic knowledge necessary to understand how to use these perks to their best advantage.
Lucky for me, I've always been naturally frugal, but I had to learn the ins and outs of investing, retirement accounts, asset allocation and other financial matters on my own. I am a self-employed opera singer, so it has been especially crucial for me to learn to take care of my personal financial health, since I don't have an employer-sponsored retirement plan to back me up. Unfortunately, they don't teach this stuff in music school! I was naturally drawn to the subject of personal finance, so even as a beginner learning came easily for me. I gained personal finance knowledge through a combination of reading, asking questions and good old-fashioned trial and error. There are plenty of books and websites out there for beginners with all sorts of information on the topic of personal finance, but the sheer quantity can be overwhelming. Also, I've found that many "beginner" materials don't do a great job with the basics - they assume a certain amount of prior personal finance experience on the part of the reader and use terminology that can confuse or intimidate a complete beginner. On personal finance forums, beginners are often scared to ask "dumb" questions, or they simply don't know what to ask.
As I said above, this series is written with the true, absolute, complete beginner in mind. There are no dumb questions, so ask away. I look forward to hearing from you and I hope you enjoy the series!
robert shumake detroitA partial solar eclipse darkened European skies just after dawn this morning, casting an eerie darkness over the continent just as morning light was supposed to be spreading. But cloud cover prevented sky-gazers across much of the ...
Executives at CNN confirmed Monday that John Roberts, who served as the morning anchor for the network since April 2007, would be joining Fox News as a national correspondent.
Days after 100000 fish and approximately 4000 red-winged blackbirds were found dead in Arkansas, 500 deceased blackbirds and starlings were discovered on a Louisiana highway.
robert shumake
robert shumake
By the end of 2010, Harlequin Enterprises will have sold a grand total of more than 6 billion books in the company's 60-year history. But on Dec. 28, Harlequin will try to sell its first personal finance book.
The Frugalista Files, written by former
Miami Herald personal finance blogger Natalie McNeal, is a diary of the year that one 34-year old spent trying to pay off her credit card debt -- "without giving up the fabulous life."
McNeal's book is written in a diary format, with all the personal details and emoticons entailed in that approach: "I admit it. My name is Natalie. I am a spending slut." It's certainly not a book that targets my college-age demographic, but many readers will find her story inspiring. If Natalie can do it, so can you.
"My book is for anyone who is a promiscuous spender and is looking for real-life tips on how to be financially chaste," McNeal tells DailyFinance. "It's highly personal personal finance."
Katherine Orr, Harlequin's vice president of public relations, sees the move into financial advice as a logical step for the world's largest publisher of romance novels.
"For 60 years, we've provided escape from
problems, and now we can help solve the
problems," she says. She calls McNeal's book "very prescriptive. It's clear and simple, and it's helping young singles navigate in a tough world."
Harlequin first began publishing nonfiction in October 2008 with a book from syndicated radio host Delilah. Subsequent titles have included fitness guru Tosca Reno's best seller
Your Best Body Now: Look and Feel Fabulous at Any Age the Eat-Clean Way, along with titles like
The Happy Baker: A Girl's Guide to Emotional Baking; Life Beyond Your Eating Disorder;
The Dog Who Healed a Family; and
Queen of Your Own Life.
The market for pink-covered personal finance books for women hasn't been especially strong. None of financial adviser Suze Orman's mega-bestselling money books have boasted a pink cover, and none of the slew of recently released girl-talk guides for women have sold well. Titles like
Shoo, Jimmy Choo!;
Bitches on a Budget: Sage Advice for Surviving Tough Times in Style; and
A Purse of Your Own: An Easy Guide to Financial Security have all failed to register much of an impact in terms of sales.
Kimberly Palmer, the personal finance editor with
US News & World Report and the author of
Generation Earn, says many financial guides for women are marketed as "simplified [and] dumbed-down."
"Women don't like to be talked to as if we're bad with money, because we're not," she says. "Too many books for women assume that we overspend on shoes and cosmos when we're really just looking for the same kind of smart, solid financial advice that men want."
But if there's one publisher in America that knows what women are looking for when they buy a book, it's Harlequin. Perhaps it'll be able to reach a segment of the population badly in need of financial advice -- one that other publishers have so far been largely unable to connect with.
Five Best Mobile Personal Finance Tools
It's easy to convince yourself to spend and save responsibly when the numbers are right in front of you, but it's a different story when you're on-the-go. These five great mobile personal finance tools keep your money goals nearby at all times.
Photo a composite of images by neernijus and mellowr.
Smartphones have brought nearly every aspect of desktop computers to your pocket; it only makes sense they'd bring money management, too. Earlier this week we asked you to share your favorite mobile personal finance tool. Now we're back to highlight the five most popular options.
Mint (Android/iOS, Free)
Popular web-based personal finance tool Mint has an equally as popular mobile application for Android and iOS devices. It sports the same simple design as Mint's main site and makes it easy to track your spending, receive alerts about bills and budget issues, and monitor your savings goals. It's polished, the graphs are easy to read, and the total-overview that Mint provides helps keep you on top of your personal finances in ways other tools don't.
Pageonce (Cross-Platform, Free)
Pageonce isn't only about personal finance, but it does personal finance well, and it's available for nearly every mobile platform around. On top of a web-based interface, they have highly polished apps for Android, iOS, BlackBerry, and Windows Mobile (including the newly released Windows Phone 7). It's easy to get real-time updates via email or push notifications on your phone, set alerts to warn you about impending bills or overspending, and view all of your financial stats in eye-catching charts and graphs.
EasyMoney (Android, $9.95)
EasyMoney is an Android-only personal finance manager that includes a home screen widget for speedy transaction inputs, bill notifications, graphs to help you analyze and chart your past and future spending, and a host of small but very useful features like the ability to split transactions between multiple categories. Easy Money also includes a tool for photographing receipts and importing data as well as a checkbook register and easy import/export to .CVS files. EasyMoney offers a 30 day-trial if you're on the fence about spending $10 on the app (consider also, many of the features in EasyMoney are paid upgrades on similar applications).
Pocket Money (iOS, $4.99)
Pocket Money puts a sweeping view of all your accounts and transactions right on your iPhone or iPad. You can manually enter transactions, create repeating transactions based on cycles or dates, create custom filters to view your money the way that is most useful to you, and more. On top of the plethora of features in the stock app you can expand the feature set with in-app purchases like the $0.99 Photo Receipts plugin that allows you to photograph your receipts and import the transaction data off them. Pocket Money has a companion desktop application available for Windows, Mac and Linux—a nice break from the common pattern of iOS apps having Mac-only desktop companions.
ProOnGo (Cross-Platform, Starting at $0.99/Month)
ProOnGo is the most distinctly business-oriented tool in this week's Hive Five. You could use it as a personal finance manager if you desired but the feature set is weighted heavily towards business users who need to track things like automotive mileage, business-related expenses, and generate reports for tax purposes and submission to their company. The basic package runs $0.99/month and is limited to manual entires and expense report generation, the premium package runs $4.99/month and includes web-based access, backups, custom spreadsheets, and synchronization to your American Express business card.
Now that you've had a chance to look over the five most popular mobile finance tools, it's time to vote for your favorite:
Have an idea for the next Hive Five? Shoot us an email at tips@lifehacker.com with "Hive Five" in the subject line and we'll do our best to give you idea the attention it deserves.
Send an email to Jason Fitzpatrick, the author of this post, at jason@lifehacker.com.
robert shumakeA partial solar eclipse darkened European skies just after dawn this morning, casting an eerie darkness over the continent just as morning light was supposed to be spreading. But cloud cover prevented sky-gazers across much of the ...
Executives at CNN confirmed Monday that John Roberts, who served as the morning anchor for the network since April 2007, would be joining Fox News as a national correspondent.
Days after 100000 fish and approximately 4000 red-winged blackbirds were found dead in Arkansas, 500 deceased blackbirds and starlings were discovered on a Louisiana highway.
robert shumake detroit
robert shumake detroit
