The book of financial wisdom that your future self will thank you for reading

For many adults under 40, ‘debt’ is a four-letter word—something that should be avoided but is all too often unavoidable. In The Value of Debt in Building Wealth, bestselling author Thomas J. Anderson encourages you to rethink that. You’ll walk away from this book with an understanding of how you can use debt wisely to secure the financial future you envision for yourself and your family. Student loans, mortgages, lines of credit, and other forms of debt are all discussed in detail, with a focus on smart planning for those who are accumulating assets—and debt—now.

Should you rent or buy? How important is liquidity? What is good versus bad debt? How much debt should you have? What debt-to-income and debt-to-asset ratios should you aim for? Fixed debt or floating debt? What’s the best way of saving for college and retirement? These are big questions that deserve thorough answers because the choices you make now could influence the course of your life. This thought-provoking book will open your eyes to savvy financial strategies for achieving your goals faster and with healthier bank accounts. Explore strategies for smart debt management, explained by one of the nation’s top financial advisors Gain an understanding of investment basics and key financial concepts you’ll need to achieve your long-term goals Understand the risks of having debt and the potential risks of being debt-free Make financial decisions now that will maximize your wealth, freedom, and opportunity later

This book is not about buying things you cannot afford. It is about liquidity, flexibility and optimizing your personal balance sheet. The Value of Debt in Building Wealth is full of ideas you can apply to your own situation—no matter what your current asset level. Read this book today and thank yourself later.

College tuition and student debt levels have been rising at an alarming pace for at least two decades. These trends, coupled with an economy weakened by a major recession, have raised serious questions about whether we are headed for a major crisis, with borrowers defaulting on their loans in unprecedented numbers and taxpayers being forced to foot the bill. Game of Loans draws on new evidence to explain why such fears are misplaced–and how the popular myth of a looming crisis has obscured the real problems facing student lending in America.

Bringing needed clarity to an issue that concerns all of us, Beth Akers and Matthew Chingos cut through the sensationalism and misleading rhetoric to make the compelling case that college remains a good investment for most students. They show how, in fact, typical borrowers face affordable debt burdens, and argue that the truly serious cases of financial hardship portrayed in the media are less common than the popular narrative would have us believe. But there are more troubling problems with student loans that don’t receive the same attention. They include high rates of avoidable defaults by students who take on loans but don’t finish college–the riskiest segment of borrowers–and a dysfunctional market where competition among colleges drives tuition costs up instead of down.

Persuasive and compelling, Game of Loans moves beyond the emotionally charged and politicized talk surrounding student debt, and offers a set of sensible policy proposals that can solve the real problems in student lending.

As Europe began to grow rich during the Middle Ages, its wealth materialized in the well-made clothes, linens, and wares of ordinary households. Such items were indicators of one’s station in life in a society accustomed to reading visible signs of rank. In a world without banking, household goods became valuable commodities that often substituted for hard currency. Pawnbrokers and resellers sprang up, helping to push these goods into circulation. Simultaneously, a harshly coercive legal system developed to ensure that debtors paid their due.

Focusing on the Mediterranean cities of Marseille and Lucca, Legal Plunder explores how the newfound wealth embodied in household goods shaped the beginnings of a modern consumer economy in late medieval Europe. The vigorous trade in goods that grew up in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries entangled households in complex relationships of credit and debt, and one of the most common activities of law courts during the period was debt recovery. Sergeants of the law were empowered to march into debtors’ homes and seize belongings equal in value to the debt owed. These officials were agents of a predatory economy, cogs in a political machinery of state-sponsored plunder.

As Daniel Smail shows, the records of medieval European law courts offer some of the most vivid descriptions of material culture in this period, providing insights into the lives of men and women on the cusp of modern capitalism. Then as now, money and value were implicated in questions of power and patterns of violence.

Slight shelf wear. Pages are clean and binding is tight.

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• Used Book in Good Condition

Communication strategies, financial crisis management, negotiation techniques, and litigation and bankruptcy tactics told through the stories of a loan workout and financial restructuring consultant. How do you protect yourself, or your clients, or your family and friends from aggressive creditors, lawsuits, and bureaucracy? When do you need protection from the advice of your own advisors and friends? Debt & Circuses is a true story of seven years of loan workouts, lawsuits, and bankruptcies during the Great Recession (2009-2015) and beyond. Debt & Circuses explains real-world negotiation strategy and courtroom tactics through the true stories of finance and accounting advisors, lawyers, and courageous entrepreneurs who followed the counter-intuitive, asymmetrical, and risky advice of a few creative consultants. Debt & Circuses demonstrates, through first-hand experiences, effective methods of: Preparing the mind (and your assets) for conflict. Coping with emotional pressure tactics. Responding to unreasonable demands constructively. Understanding why victory or defeat in court can be irrelevant. Preventing the two things that produce an unfavorable outcome. Negotiating with inferior bargaining power. Going on offense against an opponent with unlimited resources. Capitalizing on bureaucratic failures. Avoiding the big mistake made by all companies in financial distress. Clay Westbrook is an attorney and consultant who spent six years involved with over 100 loan workout cases, dozens of lawsuits and business bankruptcies, and $100s of millions of bad debts. He advises clients on business breakups, litigation and bankruptcy strategy, and negotiating with taxing authorities and governmental entities. He saw many spectacular wins in unlikely circumstances, learned valuable lessons from a few disappointing losses, and drew inspiration to tell the story from one woman’s experiences with debt collectors that destroyed her family and her future. “‘The mortgage company told us that we weren’t allowed to file for bankruptcy. They said it wasn’t an option,’ Maria explained. She didn’t realize what this meant. The mortgage company didn’t just lie to them; they violated state and federal laws in doing so. We might have had a case, or at least an issue to run with, which is usually enough. But it was too late.” The consultants quickly learn that to save their clients, they have to forget about “doing the right thing,”forget about the legal merits of the case, and forget about logic. The solutions come from psychology and math, human nature, and realizing neither side understands (nor cares) what the other side is saying. “After witnessing it firsthand many times, accomplishing the impossible takes specific knowledge, character, and action. As simple as it sounds, you rarely see all three when the cards are down. If they don’t have all three, they lose.” Achieving success against long odds is more than “when to stop paying,” or “if the bank files a lawsuit,cut your settlement offer,” or remembering to stash the Ferrari at a covered garage in Reno if the bank gets a judgment. Debt & Circuses shows: How to know and have the confidence to trust your instincts under pressure. How human nature affects the strategies and results conflicts are never “just business” and are always personal. Ways to identify and avoid traps lawyers, advisors, and others miss. The one principle that explains the entire process. Through the experiences of business owners and advisors, and the entertaining, if not ridiculous,stranger-than- fiction situations in which these people found themselves, Debt & Circuses provides essential knowledge and skills for surviving financial distress, and serving clients whose future depends upon your advice. “You are not alone. Don’t be frightened, and don’t feel hopeless. We will never, ever give up.”

Higher education should not be a business from which many profit while millions go into a lifetime of debt! American higher education is at the point of colossal failure. Thanks to the creation of “Higher Ed Inc.,” we now live in a dysfunctional country with millions of Americans struggling to pay or completely unable to pay their student loan debts. Millions of new students going to college will end up equally in debt, saddled with loans and unable to join the middle class and enjoy the American dream. The student loan debt crisis is no longer a matter that each student or family can solve on their own. We need everyone to put our voices together to push aggressively for change. Read this book and join us if you are among the millions of current student loan debtors, future students and parents about to take out loans, or policymakers and politicians who want to help fix our broken system of higher education.

The Debt-FREE & Prosperous Living manual will take you through a simple-to-follow system for prioritizing, then paying off, EVERY PENNY of your debt… in the shortest possible time. It’ll show you how to operate 100% on cash…even in emergencies…so you’ll NEVER need to use credit again. It’ll teach you how to focus every dollar you’re currently wasting on debt payments towards building your wealth. And, it’ll show you how to do all this with the money you ALREADY make! You’ll learn how and why you’ve been misled…taken advantage of… all you life, by a system designed to keep you in a prison of debt. You’ll learn how to save thousands of your hard-earned dollars when buying insurance. You’ll learn how to stop car dealers from picking your pockets. You’ll learn why it can actually be a BAD idea to save a little money each month. You’ll learn why you won’t care what your credit rating is. You’ll learn how to get a 31.32% return on your money.

“WE REQUIRE A DIFFERENT BATTLEFIELD.” Nobody expected the war to last three hours, let alone three years. The star system of Archangel holds the line against invading corporate fleets, but a quarter of its territory is already lost. The navy can’t hang on much longer. Faced with this grim truth, Archangel’s leaders shift their strategy to diplomacy and espionage. For both arenas, they call upon a reluctant weapon: a frontline grunt named Tanner Malone. These days, Tanner doesn’t aspire to win the war. He merely wants to survive it. Now he’ll be thrust into the center of events once again, pulled back and forth from covert missions to the media spotlight. Yet with every battle, he gets closer to the old enemy hidden in the shadows, and the ugly truth about the war that could unravel everything Archangel might hope to win.

The current approach to resolving sovereign debt crises does not work: sovereign debt restructurings come too late and do too little. Though they impose enormous costs on societies, these restructurings are often not deep enough to provide the conditions for economic recovery (as illustrated by the Greek debt restructuring of 2012). And if the debtor decides not to accept the terms demanded by the creditors, finalizing a restructuring can be slowed by legal challenges (as evidenced in Argentina).

A fresh start for distressed debtors is a basic principle of a well-functioning market economy, yet there is no international bankruptcy framework for sovereign debts. While this problem is not new, the United Nations and the global community are now willing to do something about it. Providing guidance for those who intend to take up reform, this book assesses the relative merits of various debt-restructuring proposals, especially in relation to the main deficiencies of the current nonsystem. With contributions by leading academics and practitioners, the volume reflects the overwhelming consensus among specialists on the need to find workable solutions.