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Excerpt from Quick Steps to Financial Stability

By Alan Lavine and Gail Liberman

Over the next few months, Alan Lavine & Gail Liberman's column will consist of excerpts from their new book from Quick Steps to Financial Stability, (QUE Publishing 2006). Everybody wants to build wealth and most desperately need help. In Chapter 1 of Quick Steps to Financial Stabilit y readers will learn how to do things like analyze their net worth, get their income and expenses written out and down on paper and free up cash.

Here is some of what that chapter contains:

The easiest way to calculate your net worthies to visit a financial website and use its online net worth, budget, and other types of financial calculators. That way, you don't have to burden your brain adding and subtracting. Just enter the information, and voila! You get a report you can print out. You can search for online net worth calculators suing Google or another search engine. Many brokerage firms, banks, insurance companies, and mutual fund companies also have excellent calculators on their websites.

Here are a few net worth calculators to consider:

CNNMoney.com ( http://cgi.money.cnn.com/tools/networth/networth.html ) lets you calculate your net worth budget as easy as one, two, three.

Smart Money.com (www.smartmoney.com/worksheets) also has a net worth calculator.

If you prefer to work through the calculations on your own, however, grab a pencil and paper and proceed.

NOTE: The net worth of the median American household was $93,100 in 2004, according to the Federal Reserve. That includes real estate assets and retirement accounts. The average savings rate of Americans is approaching -2%. Where do you stand?

You can purchase Alan Lavine & Gail Liberman's latest book Quick Steps to Financial Stability (QUE Publishing 2006) at most bookstores, and online at Amazon.com, Borders and Barnes & Noble and their website www.moneycouple.com .

Spouses Gail Liberman and Alan Lavine are syndicated columnists. Their latest book is "Rags to Retirement (Alpha Books)." You can e-mail them at [email protected] .

Published in Dian’s Fund Freebies.