Infomercial, shminfomercial: everything you need to know to get rich quick, or die laughing, is contained in Dave Barry’s Money Secrets. Barry, the Pulitzer Prize-winning humor writer and former Miami Herald columnist, knows that most of us are completely overwhelmed by the glut of personal finance books and yakking economist-pundits. He dumbs it all down in the complete goofus guide to corporations ( the critical role of office furniture ), the U.S. economy ( Adam Sandler is involved ) and personal finance topics such as teaching children about money ( let the little bastards starve ); health care ( you’ll need some leeches ); starting your own business ( harness the awesome power of human stupidity ); and saving money on travel ( good luck ). Detailed charts and graphs and photo collages provide more hilarity, and a tiny picture of overbearing personal-finance guru Suze Orman pops up as a punch line throughout the book. Barry’s explanations for his theories are the highlight of the ride, including why the back of the dollar has a pyramid and a giant eyeball (this replaced an owl standing on an elephant, which was too difficult to engrave); and why Presbyterians like himself can’t negotiate with shark-like car salesmen without the help of people like Gene Weingarten, a friend who would rather undergo a vasectomy with a WeedEater than purchase undercoating.”

The On the Road personal finance series from Dearborn includes three new titles to help navigate life’s financial milestones. At $15.95 each, these straightforward guides, edited by Sheryl Garrett, CFP, are confidence-building resources in situations that could otherwise be a tangled money maze. You signed the marriage certificate, but are you on the same page financially? On the Road: Getting Married helps partners create a financial plan together to address everything from how to spend and save money, determining the kind and amount of insurance to buy, planning for the kids’ college education and budgeting for retirement. Your home will probably be your most expensive investment, so you want to make the best buying decision possible. On the Road: Buying a Home helps demystify what can be a daunting process. It includes such topics as deciding what type of home is right for you and how to find it, finance it and close on it. On the Road: Surviving Divorce helps the newly separated get through this difficult time with clear, step-by-step information on weathering the financial part of the process. This book addresses issues such as what to look for when hiring an attorney, arbitrator or mediator; how to divide up assets, pension and retirement plans; making decisions about alimony and child support; and creating a new budget.

The On the Road personal finance series from Dearborn includes three new titles to help navigate life’s financial milestones. At $15.95 each, these straightforward guides, edited by Sheryl Garrett, CFP, are confidence-building resources in situations that could otherwise be a tangled money maze. You signed the marriage certificate, but are you on the same page financially? On the Road: Getting Married helps partners create a financial plan together to address everything from how to spend and save money, determining the kind and amount of insurance to buy, planning for the kids’ college education and budgeting for retirement. Your home will probably be your most expensive investment, so you want to make the best buying decision possible. On the Road: Buying a Home helps demystify what can be a daunting process. It includes such topics as deciding what type of home is right for you and how to find it, finance it and close on it. On the Road: Surviving Divorce helps the newly separated get through this difficult time with clear, step-by-step information on weathering the financial part of the process. This book addresses issues such as what to look for when hiring an attorney, arbitrator or mediator; how to divide up assets, pension and retirement plans; making decisions about alimony and child support; and creating a new budget.

The On the Road personal finance series from Dearborn includes three new titles to help navigate life’s financial milestones. At $15.95 each, these straightforward guides, edited by Sheryl Garrett, CFP, are confidence-building resources in situations that could otherwise be a tangled money maze. You signed the marriage certificate, but are you on the same page financially? On the Road: Getting Married helps partners create a financial plan together to address everything from how to spend and save money, determining the kind and amount of insurance to buy, planning for the kids’ college education and budgeting for retirement. Your home will probably be your most expensive investment, so you want to make the best buying decision possible. On the Road: Buying a Home helps demystify what can be a daunting process. It includes such topics as deciding what type of home is right for you and how to find it, finance it and close on it. On the Road: Surviving Divorce helps the newly separated get through this difficult time with clear, step-by-step information on weathering the financial part of the process. This book addresses issues such as what to look for when hiring an attorney, arbitrator or mediator; how to divide up assets, pension and retirement plans; making decisions about alimony and child support; and creating a new budget.

<b>Don’t will it away</b>

No one wants his or her will to cause trouble in the family. And by using the advice in <b>Creating the Good Will: The Most Comprehensive Guide to Both the Financial and Emotional Sides of Passing on Your Legacy</b>, it won’t. With years of experience as an estate-planning attorney and now president of a consulting firm that helps families with wills and estate plans, author Elizabeth Arnold has written a comprehensive guide including nuts and bolts information such as what wills and trusts are and how they work. Moreover, she has written a very human book encouraging a process of self-examination including one’s hopes in life, values and beliefs and what is wished for loved ones in order to help clarify what readers want to do in their will and why. <b>Creating the Good Will</b> is organized around the seven laws of distribution the people and personality issues that the will should take into consideration. Among the laws: Consider Your Values; Face Family Dynamics: It’s Not Just About the Money; Recognize Fair Is Not Always Equal; It’s Not What You Say, It’s How You Say It . . . and If You Bother to Say it at All.

If you start off right by buying good insurance and setting up an automatic system for saving, investing and clearing debts, your finances can run themselves. From then on, it’s hands off. Sound simple? It is, according to Jane Bryant Quinn in her new book, Smart and Simple Financial Strategies for Busy People. Quinn, a leading commentator on personal finance, award-winning Newsweek and Good Housekeeping columnist and author of several best-selling books on money, offers the most straightforward and sensible products and strategies she knows and uses to manage money and accumulate wealth without having to think about it.

First of all, Quinn recommends that you start saving. Even if you have a paycheck-to-paycheck life with no money to spare, she has a tried, true and simple technique to prove you wrong. And if you’re already saving, she has ideas for how you can save more without feeling a pinch. She helps you assess your current situation and then provides effective strategies to get you to your financial goals in a smart way.

<b>What’s your number?</b> When it comes to their financial future, most people have a number in mind the amount of money they will need to live comfortably but many anxiously wonder if they can really make it. There are 77 million baby boomers in America, many of whom are just now realizing that the corporate pensions, Social Security and inheritances they were banking on might well add up to less than they had hoped. <b>The Number: A Completely Different Way to Think About the Rest of Your Life</b> by Lee Eisenberg, examines the most common financial and emotional issues related to the number and how to get a handle on them. Eisenberg, a former editor-in-chief of <i>Esquire</i>, writes with wit and insight as he urges people to examine the life they want to lead, not just how much money they need but what they need it for. While not a how-to book, <b>The Number</b> is designed to help people examine their goals, anxieties and dreams so they can better determine their number and create a financial plan for achieving it.

Money is never just about money. There’s always an emotional component to it, representing our fears, desires and doubts. In Master Your Money Type: Using Your Financial Personality to Create a Life of Wealth and Freedom, Jordan E. Goodman helps readers discover their dominant money values, attitudes and behaviors and discusses the emotional baggage standing in the way of improving one’s finances. Host of the radio program The Investor’s Edge and a regular contributor to American Public Media’s Marketplace Morning Report, Gordon is also the author of two previous best-selling books, including Everyone’s Money Book. In Master Your Money Type, he contends that there are six money types, and that readers can work within their type to take action and change what’s preventing them from doing better. Each chapter opens with a type profile and its particular strengths and weaknesses, followed by case studies and recommendations on making emotional and financial path changes that will help readers develop successful strategies to an improved financial plan. The book also includes easy-to-understand cash flow/asset and liability worksheets, quizzes and monthly budgeting worksheets.

All business books are how-to manuals in some sense, but our three picks this month are perfect for the times. If you’re a CEO worried about customer service or an investor wanting to save what’s left of your portfolio, here’s some advice for the long haul.

How to rescue your retirement The investors hardest hit by the Nasdaq nosedive were retirees who overdosed on stocks, says Wall Street Journal columnist Jonathan Clements. People in their 40s and 50s saw their savings get decimated and are now wondering if they will be able to retire at all.

In You’ve Lost It, Now What?: How To Beat the Bear Market and Still Retire on Time, Clements gives straightforward, realistic advice on how to get your investments (and retirement plans) back on track. Don’t count on another bull market to bail you out, he warns. You’ll have to save yourself.

The good news is that most folks can invest successfully on their own, and Clements’ roadmap is easy to follow. He explains how to balance a portfolio for maximum diversification and stresses keeping trading costs and fund-management fees to a minimum. He shares his stock picks (he’s a “huge, huge, huge fan of index funds”), tells what type of bonds to buy, and shows how to invest in real estate without purchasing properties. His biggest piece of advice: save a lot and start now.

This is a book for the average investor, and the advice is clear and sensible. Focus on little things like holding down taxes and rebalancing regularly. Diversify and don’t bet the farm on one investment. And did I mention save like crazy? How to save the corporate soul Does a corporation have a soul? Yes, says author David Batstone, and he can prove it. “I will show that a corporation has the potential to act with soul when it puts its resources at the service of the people it employs and the public it serves.” He shares eight principles that define this concept in Saving the Corporate Soul &and (Who Knows?) Maybe Your Own (Jossey-Bass, $26.95, 262 pages, ISBN 0787964808). Stories about businesses gone bad are a dime a dozen these days, but this lively and thought-provoking book takes a different approach. Batstone teaches his tenets (treat workers like valuable team members, think of the company as part of the community, treat the environment like a silent stakeholder) by profiling companies that are doing it right. One of them is Timberland, a New Hampshire-based footwear maker which gives each employee 40 hours of paid time each year to volunteer. Ninety percent of employees take part, returning to work recharged and happier; their positive energy has a ripple effect, Batstone says. The small Hanna Anderrson clothing company invited customers to send used Hannawear back and receive 20% off their next purchase. Thus the Hannadowns program was born, and thousands of needy children got clothes. Both are great examples of corporations that have combined soul with shrewd business sense.

How to wow your customers One of the top five challenges facing CEOs today is improving customer service, a recent study reported. What makes service stand out? “It’s about creating pleasant surprises for customers grown weary of bland, mundane, and truculently impersonal service and keeping them coming back for more,” say the authors of Service Magic: The Art of Amazing Your Customers (Dearborn, $18.95, 224 pages, ISBN 0793164672). Customer service experts (and amateur magicians) Ron Zemke and Chip Bell use magic to explain how to read an audience, create rapport and manage magic recoveries. In magic, the music and lights build excitement, and in business you set the stage by playing to a customer’s senses with sight, sound, smell and touch. Place magic is the first of the three Ps that include process magic and performance magic (think the fish throwing at Seattle’s Pike Place waterfront market).

With chapters on QVC, Romano’s Macaroni Grill and Walt Disney, there are plenty of ideas here to emulate. But the real inspiration comes from the mini-snapshots of dozens of companies that bring magic to customers in small, unexpected ways.

Those investors still recovering from the burst of the dotcom bubble will appreciate Active Investing: Take Charge of Your Portfolio in Today’s Unpredictable Markets. Author Peter Sander, an MBA who has written Value Investment for Dummies, among other finance books, believes that the new and forever-changed financial climate requires active investing, which means staying on top of the bull no matter which way it bolts. This guide is written for the highly motivated amateur who has the time to check into the markets a few times a day, but doesn’t want to get caught up in trends and excesses. Active Investing includes chapters on solid print and online investment resources; trading tools and techniques; designing a portfolio of blended vehicles including stocks, bonds, mutual funds, options and value investing; as well as day trading, swing trading and a specialized investing potpourri. Sander’s approach isn’t for the casual or lazy investor, but could help the time-compromised find a way to keep their fingers in the market without getting burned.

Reading Jim Cramer’s Real Money: Sane Investing in an Insane World is like overhearing a barstool monologue by a streetwise MBA from the School of Hard Knocks: if you interrupt with a dumb question, be prepared for a blunt answer that may blow your assumptions clear out of the proverbial water. Cramer is co-founder of TheStreet.com, author of Confessions of a Street Addict, columnist for New York magazine, and hyperactive host of CNBC’s Mad Money and the nationally syndicated radio program Real Money. In Real Money, Cramer presents a regimen to riches for investors with bloated theories who feel defeated by every decline in the stock market. Cramer doesn’t believe in the current if you can’t beat the market become the market via index funds mentality. Instead, he sets about teaching how he made hundreds of millions as a professional investor using common sense and simple arithmetic precepts that no longer stump my 10-year-old. He punches back at some arrogant and dumb theories in his Ten Commandments of Trading (tips are for waiters; don’t trade headlines; never turn a buy into an investment) and 25 Investing Tips to Live By (look for broken stocks, not broken companies; why discipline trumps conviction; hope is not part of the equation). Cramer’s cocky style retrains the amateur in how stocks are meant to be traded and how to spot stock moves as well as those topping or bottoming out before they happen, perhaps turning some of this century’s reluctant investors into people who might actually enjoy managing their own retirement fund.

Even the most downtrodden corporate drones will believe that they have the ability to turn their unknown assets into limitless prosperity after reading the wildly optimistic and inspiring Cracking the Millionaire Code: Your Key to Enlightened Wealth. Popular authors Mark Victor Hansen and Robert G. Allen (The One Minute Millionaire) have developed the 101 Day Plan, which posits that everyone is destined for a more prosperous, abundant life right now, and that the secret lies in cracking the code to our own wealth vault. The authors examine the practical avenues sometimes populated by angels in enlightened entrepreneurship and take a bold look at how a Higher Power would run a business. Their advice is often needlessly complicated by corny and confusing acronyms and coined words like loverage, soulstorm, hundredfolding and the millionairium. But the overall ideas lead to a paradigm shift in viewing personal power, from the insight that every item in your house made someone a million dollars to the idea that only a few tiny adjustments or tweaks to any idea or business stand between okay-ness and greatness. Cracking the Code prepares people not for the get-rich-quick sprint, but for the millionaire marathon, when endless streams of brilliant ideas sparkle in infinite prisms of uses and applications, bringing personal wealth and more than enough to share with the world.

Money and emotions are intertwined, and Conscious Spending for Couples: Seven Skills for Financial Harmony by Deborah Knuckey covers both topics with a unique blend of practical steps and psychological insights. The author of The Ms. Spent Money Guide explores how men and women feel about money, examines their different attitudes and beliefs, and lays out three rules, seven skills and four decisions to help balance the “mine, yours, and ours” goals.

Conscious Spending is an interactive book that uses practical quizzes, checklists and other resources to teach couples to become “conscious spenders.” Knuckey’s seven skills include planning together, getting help when you need it and creating a simple financial structure that both parties can follow. Then couples can tackle the four decisions: where you live, what you drive, whether you have children, when you retire. Knuckey stresses communication, noting that money has become a taboo topic that many people find hard to discuss, even in an intimate relationship. A perfect book for newlyweds or any couple mired in debate over whether to spend or save.