Your Money: The Missing Manual

The Missing Credits

About the Author

J.D. Roth is an accidental personal-finance expert—a regular guy who found himself deep in debt. After deciding to turn his life around, he read everything he could about money and finance. To share what he’d learned, in 2006 J.D. started the award-winning website Get Rich Slowly (www.getrichslowly.org), which Money magazine named the Web’s most inspiring personal-finance blog.

Over the past 4 years, Get Rich Slowly has grown into an active community where 500,000 monthly visitors share ideas on how to save money on food, find the best savings accounts, dig out of debt, and otherwise improve their financial lives.

J.D. lives with his wife and four cats in a 100-year-old house in Portland, Oregon. When he’s not writing about money, he likes to read, eat, and laugh with his friends. You can read about his obsessions with books, cats, and comic books at www.jdroth.com. If you have questions, drop him a line at [e-mail].

About the Creative Team

Dawn Frausto (editor) is assistant editor for the Missing Manual series. When not working, she likes rock climbing, playing soccer, and causing trouble. Email: [e-mail].

Nellie McKesson (production editor) lives in Brighton, Mass., and spends her spare time studying graphic design and building a t-shirt business (www.endplasticdesigns.com). Email: [e-mail].

Dylan Ross (technical reviewer) is a fee-only Certified Financial Planner practitioner and owner of Swan Financial Planning, LLC in New Jersey. He provides financial planning and investment advice on an hourly, as-needed basis. In his spare time, Dylan enjoys the outdoors, strumming his ukulele, and spending time with his wife and twin sons. Email: [e-mail].

Charlie Park (technical reviewer), creator of the personal finance website PearBudget.com, is an indie web developer and family man. He lives in Williamsburg, VA.

Alison O’Byrne (copy editor) is a full-time freelance editor with over eight years’ experience specializing in corporate and government projects for international clients. She “lives a rich and happy life” with her family in Dublin, Ireland. Email: [e-mail]. Web: www.alhaus.com.

Jan Wright (indexer) lives in the mountains of New Mexico, and likes to ride an electric bike when she is not indexing, beading, or eating red chile. Email: [e-mail]. Web: www.wrightinformation.com.

Acknowledgements

You know, I’ve always skipped over the acknowledgement sections in books because they look so darn boring. What are they there for, anyhow? Now I know. After having devoted 4 months of more than full-time work to this project, I have a better appreciation for how much effort goes into producing a book.

First, I’d like to thank my editor, Dawn Frausto, without whom this book would be a dense, rambling mess. Dawn helped polish this rock into a shining gem. Along the way, Dawn and I were assisted by many folks, including tech reviewers Dylan Ross and Charlie Park, whose eagle eyes caught many stupid errors.

Many Get Rich Slowly readers contributed their stories and ideas to this book, including Courtney Cronk, Sabino Arredondo, Jason Corbett, Trent Hamm, Jessie Smith, Donna Freedman, Jim Wang, Mike Iannantuano, Matt Jabs, Jacob Laha, John Little, Sierra Black, Matt Haughey, Tim Ferriss, April Dykman, Adam Baker, and Ramit Sethi.

Thanks, too, to all the people who read chapters here and there and gave me feedback, including Jeremy Gingerich, Dave Carlson, Andrew Cronk, Paul Hosom, Josh Bennett, Tim Kutscha, Liz Weston, Bonnie Biafore, Adam Jusko, Curtis Arnold, and Chris Guillebeau.

Special thanks to Michael Hampton, without whom I never would have started my journey from debt to wealth. Without Michael’s gentle prodding, I wouldn’t have changed my profligate ways, destroyed my debt, started Get Rich Slowly, or written this book. Speaking of Get Rich Slowly, I’d be remiss if I didn’t thank my blog’s readers for the support and education they’ve given me over the years. You guys are awesome!

Finally, this book wouldn’t have been possible without the support of my wife, Kris Gates, who has not only tolerated my long hours in front of the computer, but read every word in these pages many times, and provided much-needed moral support. This project has proved what I already knew: Kris Gates is always right.

This book is dedicated to Sparky: http://tinyurl.com/GRS-sparky.