Wake Up and Smell the Money: Fresh Starts at Any Age-And Any Season of Your Life

Applegarth (The Money Diet), a certified financial planner and frequent TV talking head, offers advice in a comforting ""if I did it, then so can you"" style. Although other personal finance tomes have followed the ""life stage"" approach, Applegarth takes a different tack by dividing the life cycle into beginnings, taking root, settling down, building up, fresh starts and happy endings. She offers the usual array of advice--put away more savings early, maximize your contributions to a 401(k)--but also includes some refreshing suggestions: a single person should meet with a single friend to help address their financial concerns; as an experiment, people should ""wear their money for a week""--i.e., cash a paycheck and see exactly how easily the money disappears. Applegarth reminds readers not to focus solely on investment returns but rather to concentrate on their investment goals. Her advice on keeping track of retirement plans before switching jobs is also sound and worth repeating: sometimes, leaving a job just a few months later can mean a substantial difference in what benefits are available to an employee. This is an appealing and practical primer that will be as useful for people in their 20s as it is for retirees. Author tour. (Apr.)