What your financial advisor isn't telling you The 10 essential truths you need to know about your money

First-time author Davidson covers all the usual personal-finance topics, from paying off debt to taking advantage of employer benefits. Yet her perspective is vastly different than, say, Suze Orman's. When she headlines the 10 essential truths, she isn't necessarily talking about the magic of compounding. Instead, Davidson delves into the details of finding the right advisor, ensuring that taxes are considered when adding up assets, and tag teaming with your partner to agree about financials and the future. Hers is a highly commonsensible approach, one that draws on her own personal stories and disguised and alarmingly close-to-life case histories: John's hiring of a Bernie Madoff-type advisor, Marion's loss of a husband and a nest egg, Peter's search for one big score. Some handy tools, such as the Debt Blaster, and richly informative charts round out the good value of this clarifying and practical financial advice book.--Jacobs, Barbara Copyright 2015 Booklist

Davidson, founder and CEO of Financial Finesse, a financial education company, provides an informative, easy-to-understand guide to what to look for when contemplating financial options. Offering cautionary stories of inexperienced financial planners and investors, she warns that financial advisors often fail to share important information with clients. To remedy that, she gives research-based advice on 10 topics. One is to take advantage of the greatest financial resource available to many people, namely employer-provided services: matching 401(k) funds, free legal services, and health insurance, among others. She includes an invaluable chart that lists different benefits, covering how they work, how to maximize them, and the estimated value of each. She also explores paying off debt, avoiding bad advisors, choosing mutual funds, and recognizing the hidden cost of taxes. Elsewhere, Davidson examines the effects that life partners have on financial security and provides a step-by-step guide to increasing your wealth. She closes with a handy checklist to getting debt-free and financially independent. Accessible and practical, this guide contains valuable tools for managing one's personal finances for maximum results. Agent: Adam Chromy, Movable Type Management. (Jan.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.