THIS WEBSITE---Clean, crisp, straight-talk, no jargon or gobble-de-gook, easy to navigate, valuable information and advice.

BOB ROSEFSKY is one of the nation’s most distinguished authorities on personal finance. A multi-award winning author, broadcaster and educator, he has published 12 books, including his long-running college textbook, “Personal Finance.” (See right column for more details.) His Emmy Award winning college-credit TV series, based on the textbook, was nationally distributed by PBS for over 25 years. He has also won the prestigious national John Hancock Award for Excellence in Financial Journalism.

THE UNIVERSITY OF BOB is an admittedly light-hearted title for a serious subject, but it was chosen because it illustrates Bob’s sense of humor and his light touch on weighty matters, as well as his educational skills. Web technology now allows him to offer his expertise to a much wider audience in a much more efficient way.

THE COURSES

SPEAKING DOLLAR-WISE--These postings will keep you up-to-date and give you valuable action insights into the world of money. Bob has no sponsors and is not beholden to anyone. He tells it like it is, often to the dismay of those who are selling something.

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"WHAT WERE THEY THINKING?"--Whimsical observations of America's foibles, taken from a unique book written by retrospective speculative historian Hubert Hindsight and published in the year 2020.

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If you want to go beyond the website you can access Bob Rosefsky’s broader source of expertise--his college textbook, “Personal Finance.” As originally published by John Wiley & Sons, one of the nation’s major textbook publishers, it was sold in hardcover for close to $140--a fearsome price. It was used by by colleges across the country for eight editions and 25 years.

The complete 700 page Eighth Edition is available here for a limited time AT NO CHARGE. The book is written in "plain talk" language and covers virtually all personal financial concerns. Of particular importance are the extra end-of-chapter features which explain how the economy impacts on our lives, plus how to anticipate and solve real-life financial problems, and much more. PLEASE NOTE: Give the pages a few moments to load. Some of the first few pages are blank, owing to the way the book was originally published. The "Quick Click" links and the Update Link (www.wiley...etc.)are no longer operative; they will be replaced in the website's articles. Scroll to the textbook's Table of Contents for a complete look at the subject matter.

Click below to access the book, which is viewable on your monitor but not currently downloadable. The contents of the Eighth Edition, plus the postings on this website, will constitute the Ninth Edition of Personal Finance.



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©2008 Robert S. Rosefsky. All rights reserved.

Saturday, January 12, 2008

THERE'S NO SUCH THING AS FREE MONEY


The U.S. government has not done a very good job (among other things) at marketing coins. Remember the Susan B. Anthony dollar coin that looked and felt just like a quarter, which is just one reason why it never became popular. And then there was the Sacajawea dollar of a few years ago that had a similar fate. Will they never learn?

How can you resist when you're being offered free "Presidential Golden dollar" coins? That's the latest in a very long chain of come-ons meant to lure collectors and anyone else wanting a handful of free money. The full-page full color ad in my local newspaper (and, for sure, many other papers) touted it as a "free money giveaway."

Let's play a game of "The Big Print Giveth, The Small Print Taketh Away" to see just what you'd be getting if you fell for the pitch.

* The ad say that the coins are "golden," not "gold." Big difference. "Golden" refers to the color, or appearance, not to the base metal.

* To hype the supposed (in your dreams) appreciation in value of some coins, it notes that "if you had saved just one uncirculated Eisenhower dollar from as recently as 1973…believe it or not it's now worth 1,200% more today." It doesn't say "any" such coin. It says "just one." Clever wording, right? Maybe, out of the millions of those coins minted there is "just one" that has zoomed in value. But it took only about two minutes on an internet search to come up with coin dealers who would sell brilliant uncirculated 1973 Ikes for $10 to $20 a pop. That's a far cry from $1,200. If you believe what you want to believe, you may get what you deserve.

* The offering includes 2---count 'em---2 free coins. At a value of one dollar each that comes to, let's see, $2. But wait. There's more! Act within the next 72 hours and you also get a frame to put all 40 coins in, "a $231 value" for only $28, plus service and handling, of course, of $4.85, bringing your total to $32.85.


GET READY FOR THE HARD SELL

Hold on there. 40 coins? Right. The two free ones are just for starters. Four times per year for the next 10 years you will get another coin to add to your valuable collection. Oh, and how much will those additional coins cost? The nice young salesperson on the phone didn't know what the cost of each coin would be year by year. But---get ready for the hard sell---if you want to sign up right now, you can buy the whole ten years worth for the incredible price of just $162, payable at $18 per month for the next 9 months, and that includes service and handling. Add to that the $32.85 you pay for the starters, and your total cost, for 40 one dollar coins, is $194.85.

Incredible price? Do the math. It's about a 500% markup. And….AND…your name will be included, at absolutely no extra cost, in every sucker list that the promoters can sell it to. For 10 years.


Still interested? Lots of folks who don't read this article will be. For all the credibility that such ads lose because of their outrageous claims, they gain credibility because the ad was "in our newspaper." And "our newspaper" would protect us from such evils. As noted earlier, in your dreams.

This article supplements Chapter 4 in Personal Finance. Access the textbook by clicking on the box in the right column.



posted by Bob Rosefsky at 9:50 AM