Personal Finance's highly interactive approach, engaging style, and lively page design captures students' attention as they learn how to incorporate each important concept into their own financial planning. Students will leave the course with a ready-to-implement financial plan-and the tools and knowledge they need to effectively manage their own personal finances.

The Tax Update brings all tax rates and deductions in relevant chapters up to date through the end of 2004.

• Financial plan-based organizational structure: Each part of the textbook presents balanced coverage of one of the key components of a financial plan.
• Internet-immersed coverage: Over 100 full-color Financial Planning Online inserts throughout every chapter harness today's Internet-based financial planning tools.
• Hands-on Focus: Every critical concept is introduced and then applied in a real-life financial planning context. A continuing example focuses on Stephanie Spratt, a recent college graduate.
• Practice, Practice: A wealth of review questions, problems, Web exercises, cases, and an in-text study guide at the end of each chapter provides ample opportunities for students to practice applying financial planning concepts.
• Tax Update of the Second Edition includes the latest tax rates, standard deductions, and personal exemptions in pertinent chapters and end-of-chapter problems.
• Each new copy of the textbook is packaged with a Financial Planning Workbook and CD-ROM to aid students in completing their own financial plan, as well as the end-of-chapter and end-of-part cases. The templates on the CD-ROM are designed to run in Excel 97, Excel 2000, and Excel XP.
• The Second Edition features a new Part 4 , Protecting Your Wealth, on insurance planning with full-chapter treatment including all the pertinent policy provisions for auto and homeowner's insurance, health and disability insurance, and life insurance.
• New "Focus on Ethics" sections in each chapter offer consumer-focused advice on timely and important issues such as protecting against identity theft, the costs of insurance fraud, and evaluating analyst advice on stocks.
• The new release of the Excel-based Financial Planning Software guides students in making key decisions concerning every aspect of their financial plan. All of the worksheets in the software are linked; students are prompted to revise their goals, cash flow statement, and personal balance sheet to demonstrate their understanding of the interrelationships among their financial decisions.