Making Right Money Decisions
Whenever Nancy Lloyd comes face-to-face with consumers, they often ask the same question: "How do I pay off my credit cards as quickly and inexpensively as possible?" "Most people get this wrong," says Lloyd, the local author of "Simple Money Solutions: 10 Ways You Can Stop Feeling Overwhelmed by Money and Start Making It Work for You" (Times Books, $23), "but the rules keep changing, so I can't really blame them."</br></br>Lloyd rarely blames consumers for their financial pitfalls and pratfalls.. The former Federal Reserve Board economist knows firsthand how easy making wrong money decisions can be, whether paying off credit cards, purchasing a new car or buying life insurance. That's why her new how-to book, which addresses those kinds of everyday and sometimes complex money issues, starts paying dividends from the first chapter on ending "money yo-yo diets" to the "Time-Is-Money Calendar" in the appendix.</br></br>"I always approach these problems as if I had to make the decision: What do I need to know and how do I do it?" says Lloyd, who started tracking money issues 10 years ago in The Washington Post's Style Plus pages and since has been a contributing editor for Family Circle magazine, a money adviser for CBS News and ABC News, and National Public Radio commentator.</br></br>Despite impressive credentials, Lloyd is no windbag. "Simple Money Solutions" proves to be exactly that--simple. "A lot of the books try to show everybody how much they know about money and they use phenomenally big words," she says. "I wanted to present it in a way you could just pick it up anywhere and follow the advice."</br></br>Indeed, the book is driven by mistakes Lloyd or people she knows unwittingly made. "In a lot of these financial issues," she says, "people don't know what questions to ask until after something's gone wrong."