Pay It Down!: From Debt to Wealth on $10 a Day

by Jean Chatzky

Book Overview

This companion book to a yearlong Today show series tackles the number one personal finance challenge: getting out of debt. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 159184116X
• ISBN13: 9781591841166
• Release Date: January 2006
• Publisher: Portfolio
• Length: 238 Pages
• Weight: 0.46 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.1" x 7.1"

Customer Reviews

Conscious of every $10 you spend.....

This book was great to keep in the car and at my desk. I read it between stoplights during my commute. I'd been searching for a simple solution to my debt dilema and found it in this book. I am now conscious of each $10 I spend. I relate it to the Wendy's commercials when the girl is looking at shoes and saying "That's 40 Jr. Bacon Cheeseburgers" off the dollar menu! Those shoes would put me back four days more from getting further out of debt! Simple plan, great solution.

A Map for Financial Success

Jean Chatzky takes the mystery out of "making ends meet" and draws you into a host of exceptional (though simple) steps to help gain a handle on personal financial freedom. Casting off all those quick-rich schemes dominating cable television infomercials, she shows you how to set money aside in simple (yet compounding) steps. And, she does it with easy-to-read, quick-to-comprehend, step-by-step instructions that any one can plainly understand. No complex investment strategies, these are simple solutions that our high-tech, fast-paced world left behind decades ago. Her approach draws into the simplicity of making choices that will free you from long-term debt and open your eyes to how to better use the money in your hands, while allowing you to keep more of it for yourself. As a financial services industry manager, I'll be resourcing this material for my members and using the book in classroom and seminar settings. I only wish I had this book in my hands 30 years ago. It should be required reading for all high school students today. They'll wish they had when the reach those sunset years of the daily grind and realize there's not much in the piggy bank for retirement. Guy DiTorrice Newport OR

Great read! A quick, useful lesson in focusing your finances

Our entire family have been fans of Jean Chatzky's NBC Today appearances for several years. Her clear, plain-spoken approach to understanding and tackling financial challenges is once again on display with this latest book - which offers straightforward, practical advice on identifying and fixing the common problems that nearly all of us seem to share. Check out the website at www.payitdown.com. i use it as a good morning reminder that a simple, small and consistent effort can have a great big payoff!

Debt Diet

I love this book!!! Jean Chatzky has written a diet book for those of us who have a few extra pounds of debt. Like the South Beach Diet did for people who couldn't tolerate Atkins, this books makes it easy to shed the excess debt and firm up our fiscal condition. Like any diet guide, the book starts by asking that you "assess your problem" and forces a good, hard look at how you got here, and how bad a problem you have. Only after a careful self-analysis are you able to fix the mess you may find yourself in. Chapter 2 encourages you to break your debt problem into small, manageable steps. Jean helps you lay out a realistic timetable and set practical goals for yourself. Additional chapters get more technical, explaining your credit score, how to track your spending, how to find new opportunities to save, and how to make the hard choices to get back on track. And, like any prectical "diet" book, Jean explains what to do when, inevitably, things go wrong and you find yourself taking a step in the wrong direction. This is a non-nonsense book with a straightforward step-by-step plan. If you're feeling a budget crunch, if you feel your spending has gotten a little out of hand, this book is for you. I also subscribe to the accompanying web site, www.payitdown.com for an additional daily dose of Jean's wisdom. It's like South Beach, with regular Weight Watcher meetings thrown in. I'm feeling better about myself already.

We've Finally Found a Plan that Works!

The only thing better than the book is to have Jean Chatzky personally walk you through this amazing plan. That is exactly what she has done for us. With America watching, Jean has helped us and other TODAY Show viewers break our debt down into more manageable pieces. We are only half way through this plan and have already reduced our debt (which was close to $50,000) by thirty percent. We have learned that there is no quick fix. By doing exactly what Jean says in this book we are well on our way to Paying It Down!