Authors: Mark A. Grimaldi and G. Stevenson Smith

Publisher: Wiley

ISBN: 978-1-118-61446-7

Mark A. Grimaldi is co-founder of Navigator Money Management Inc and Chief Economist for the Navigator family of newsletters and G. Stevenson Smith is the John Massey Endowed Professor of Accounting at Southeastern Oklahoma State University. In the wake of our recent recession wherein many have lost a considerable amount of their savings, they have put together quite a “food for thought” book for those “who know someone who has been disenfranchised by their government, educational system, or banking institutions.” As a result of this disfranchisement, and according to the authors, we have organizations that are desirous of separating Americans into two financial groups, “the haves and the have nots.”

To find out how to fight back, Grimaldi and Smith in their The Money Compass: Where Your Money Went and How to Get It Back coherently present several steps and suggestions outlining how your financial net worth can be increased. Readers learn what is going on in the stock markets today, where their money went and understanding the most recent financial collapse, and how to hold onto your money once you get it back. In addition, they also learn how to deal with credit card companies that charge exorbitant rates and fees, how to use the US current tax code to your advantage, what were the decisive factors causing our last recession, the dysfunctional educational system, forecasting the next big economic shock and how to profit from it. Also explored are specific stock choices that will allow you to overcome all your losses, or so they claim.

Divided into thirteen chapters spread over 226 pages, Grimaldi and Smith identify and examine such timely topics as how government affects your everyday life by causing your money and net worth to disappear, paying attention to what people are doing and saying that does not appear on most economic reports such as information from family, friends, and strangers, credit cards that are being used to transfer resources from one group to another, pitfalls of target-date retirement funds, well-diversified investment portfolios, comparisons of ETFs, the collapsing school systems in the USA, growing economic divide between the poor and the rich, why purchasing hard assets as gold or other precious commodities will not advance your financial position, the Federal Debt bomb, the possibility of another recession and how to navigate it, changing job patterns and instituting new training and apprenticeship programs, and the drawbacks of government aid programs. Every chapter ends with a brief summary and extensive notes, which is in addition to the reference tables, graphs and other supporting documents that are included in the chapters.

Grimaldi and Smith present their topics in a straight forward no nonsense manner, easy to follow and comprehend, although some of their advice should be taken with a grain of salt and should not be entirely relied on.

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