Focus on Personal Finance
5TH EDITION

By Jack Kapoor and Les Dlabay and Robert J. Hughes and Melissa Hart



Focus on Personal Finance is a brief, 14-chapter book, covering the critical topics in Personal Finance courses. This 4-color, paperback text is designed and written to appeal to a range of ages, life situations, and levels of financial literacy.
A unique aspect of this text is its active approach. This text will not only get your students thinking about their current situation and financial goals, but also encourage them to put these in writing to use as a guide and revise over the course of their lives. New for this edition, sections are oriented around specific action-items for students. The more a student involves themselves in the assessments, exercises and worksheets provided, the more they will discover about their current habits and how to improve them for greater financial freedom.

Students have many different financial goals, but none are more important than having a basic understanding of financial issues and peace of mind with regard to their decisions. The ultimate goal of Focus on Personal Finance is to get students to this point as a first step to achieving the many financial goals they have set for themselves.

New Features

• New “Money Minute” author blog (kapoormoneyminute.com) makes it easy to bring current events into the classroom. Each blog entry is written by an author and includes a synopsis of a current article or video, a link to that resource, teaching suggestions, and discussion questions. Each entry is tagged to the appropriate chapter in the text, making it easy for you to find relevant topics for your class.
• Every chapter has been revised and updated with information most relevant to today's students. New material includes coverage of:
• The “skills gap” – the difference between skills needed by employers and the skills possessed by applicants
• Storing financial documents “in the cloud”
• Changes in perception about credit and credit advantages and disadvantages
• Predatory lending and how some lenders exploit lower-income and minority borrowers
• The Health Insurance Marketplaces, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, and updates on the health care debate
• Stock market bubbles and how they can affect the value of investments
• The psychology of investing in bonds

Key Features

• Extremely rich pedagogy includes a number of helpful boxed features to tie concepts in with real world situations.
• Each chapter contains several "Did You Know?" yellow "sticky-notes" containing fun facts, information, and financial planning assistance. Green "Did You Know" features have been added to raise students' awareness about social and environmental issues. New blue "Digi-Know" features cover the intersection of technology and finance, giving students tips about the tools and strategies to better manage their finances.
• "From the Pages of Kiplinger's Personal Finance is a one-page chapter feature that presents an article from the well- known Kiplinger's Personal Finance magazine.
• A "Case in Point" hypothetical dilemma and data at the end of the chapter allows students to practice concepts just learned.
• A Continuing Case asks students to apply course concep
• Student-focused and active approach encourages students to write their own examples and goals in the book through self- assessments, in-chapter exercises, and end-of-chapter exercises, including:
• "Getting Personal" assessments at the start of each chapter focus on students' own current personal financial habits for the topics that will be covered in that chapter.
• "Your Personal Financial Plan Sheets" apply concepts to each student's own unique personal situation and serve as a roadmap to their personal financial future. The "What's Next for Your Personal Financial Plan?" section at the end of each sheet challenges them to take their responses and plan to the next level.
• A Daily Spending Diary at the end of each chapter provides a series of questions asking students to track and analyze their individual daily spending.
• At the end of each chapter, a Personal Finance Dashboard encourages students to rethink their personal financial habits and take action to make better financial decisions.

Page Count: 576