Personal Investing: The Missing Manual

The Missing Credits

About the Author

Bonnie Biafore has always been a zealous planner, whether setting up software demos, cooking gourmet meals, or scheduling a vacation to test the waters of spontaneity. Ironically, fate, not planning, turned this obsession into a career as a project manager. When she isn’t managing projects for clients, Bonnie writes about personal finance, investing, project management, small business accounting, and technology. She’s also branching out into other “dry” topics with a recent article for Wine Enthusiast. As an engineer, she’s fascinated by how things work and how to make things work better. She has a knack for mincing dry subjects like accounting and project management into easy-to-understand morsels and then spices them to perfection with her warped sense of humor.

Bonnie is the award-wining author of more than a dozen books including QuickBooks 2010: The Missing Manual, Project 2010: The Missing Manual, Quicken 2009: The Missing Manual, the Better Investing Stock Selection Handbook (which won an APEX Award of Distinction), Online Investing Hacks, and On Time! On Track! On Target!. She also writes regularly about financial topics for Better Investing, bankrate.com, and interest.com. When unshackled from her computer, she hikes in the mountains, cycles, cooks gourmet food, and tries, mostly unsuccessfully, to say no to additional work assignments. Email: [e-mail].

Amy E. Buttell is a journalist who writes about personal finance, investing, healthcare and accounting. She is the author of The Better Investing Mutual Fund Handbook and contributed to the book Online Investing Hacks. She lives in Erie, PA, with her two sons and two cats in a house near Lake Erie.

Carol Fabbri helps people achieve their financial goals. To accomplish this mission, she writes, speaks, and presents on personal finance to her clients and other audiences. She uses a decade in management consulting and the finance education she got at MIT to teach people how to shed emotional baggage so they make smart investment decisions.

She is the managing partner of Fair Advisors (http://fairadvisors.com), an independent financial advisory firm, and is the President of Fair Advisors Institute (http://fairadvisors.org), a nonprofit dedicated to improving financial literacy in the US. She is frequently quoted in national publications like the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and Smart Money. Carol’s other passions are her husband and her son. Before becoming a mom, she had hobbies. Email: [e-mail].

About the Creative Team

Peter McKie (editor) is an editor at Missing Manuals. He has wanted to commission a practical, clear, insightful consumer book on personal investing since he read Peter Lynch’s Beating the Street a decade ago. Thanks to its authors and their unwavering diligence, this book is everything he envisioned and more. Peter graduated with a master’s degree from Boston University’s School of Journalism and lives in New York City, where he researches the history of old houses and, every once in a while, sneaks into abandoned buildings. Email: [e-mail].

Nellie McKesson (production editor) is a graduate of St. John’s College in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She lives in Brockton, Mass., and spends her spare time studying graphic design and making t-shirts (www.endplasticdesigns.com). Email: [e-mail].

Jan Jue (copy editor) enjoys freelance copyediting with care and precision, reading a good mystery, and searching for the perfect potsticker. Email: [e-mail].

Angela Howard (indexer) has been indexing for more than 10 years, mostly for computer books, but occasionally for books on other topics, such as travel, alternative medicine, and leopard geckos. She lives in California with her husband, daughter, and two cats.

Jason Bowers (technical reviewer) is an independent financial markets consultant and is building a nonprofit hedge fund to support education and independent art projects. He provides confidential analysis, coaching, and economic reporting to wealth managers, traders, and personal investors (http://21Cconsulting.com). He has worked with Goldman Sachs and SMB Capital in New York and with other clients worldwide. After market hours, Jason enjoys creating music and playing chess. Email: [e-mail]

Kristen Tod (technical reviewer) is a freelance technical editor. She was a technology consultant working in the hardware and software industry for more than 10 years.

Acknowledgments

We are deeply indebted to the horde of folks who worked so hard to make this book as good as it is. Special thanks go to Peter McKie for dreaming of this book and then doing the hard work to make it a reality. As always, a huge round of applause goes to the O’Reilly team, including Nellie McKesson, Jan Jue, and Angela Howard for their awesome attention to detail and astonishing productivity. Jason Bowers and Kristen Tod, the technical reviewers, offered valuable insights and suggestions, which taught us some subtleties we didn’t know and made this book better.

—Bonnie Biafore, Amy E. Buttell, and Carol Fabbri

The Missing Manual Series

Missing Manuals are witty, superbly written guides to computer products that don’t come with printed manuals (which is just about all of them). Each book features a handcrafted index; cross-references to specific pages (not just chapters); and RepKover, a detached-spine binding that lets the book lie perfectly flat without the assistance of weights or cinder blocks.

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Netbooks: The Missing Manual by J.D. Biersdorfer

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Office 2010: The Missing Manual by Nancy Connor, Chris Grover, and Matthew MacDonald

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QuickBooks 2010: The Missing Manual by Bonnie Biafore

QuickBooks 2011: The Missing Manual by Bonnie Biafore

Quicken 2009: The Missing Manual by Bonnie Biafore

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