"Increasing your wealth is a worthwhile pursuit. But attaining wealth should never come at the expense of your self-worth and self-respect; that would be a tragedy. Using a creative format, this breakthrough book helps you fulfill your financial dreams without sacrificing happiness and personal fulfillment – the things money can’t buy. Financial literacy does have a heart and soul. Increase that literacy while discovering and applying those values and you will achieve your total wealth."

Drs. Lyle Sussman and David Dubofsky - Authors of Your Total Wealth

Financial Book Reviews [2021] | White Coat Investor https://www.whitecoatinvestor.com/financial-book-reviews-2021/

Your Total Wealth: The Heart and Soul of Financial Literacy — Lyle Sussman PhD and David A. Dubofsky PhD, CFA
David sent me a note with this book when he sent it here, and it says, "We've had many medical students in our classes. We know they need this, and will love this book." And I think that's true. This is more of the basics of a personal finance book. This is not the book you read after you've read 35 other financial books. It is a great book, though, if you are just kind of getting into finance and wanting to learn the basics from a great perspective. It goes through a lot of important information and even covered things like options, calls, puts derivatives, asset allocation, and more.

It takes it all from a relatively basic perspective and explains it from the very beginning. They don't assume you know anything when you pick up this book and explain it all.

Your Total Wealth: The Heart and Soul of Financial Literacy

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Meet the authors, read endorsements, and see a preview of the book – all right here

Meet the authors

We know the Yins and Yangs of personal finance

Dr. Lyle Sussman, PhD

Lyle Sussman
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Dr. David Dubofsky, PhD, CFA

David Dubofsky
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Try a sample of Your Total Wealth

We’ve put together a little preview of our book. Enjoy reading through the Table of Contents, Introduction, a sample Yin-Yang, and a small Conclusion.

Copyright © 2021 by HSF Publishing LLC, Dover, Delaware.
Note: This material is for review only, and not for distribution

Chapter 1

  • Finance
  • Balance sheet
  • Assets
  • Liabilities
  • Income statement
  • Depreciation
  • Cash flow
  • Central bank
  • The SEC
  • Stock exchanges
  • Inflation/deflation
  • Recession
  • Time value of money
  • Compound interest
  • Rate of return
  • Behavioral finance
  • Agency problem
  • Capital 101
  • Efficiency
  • Liquidity
  • Opportunity cost
  • Sunk costs

Yin and Yang of Personal Finance

Success is getting what you want. Happiness is wanting what you get. – Dale Carnegie

Imagine for a moment that you are in a large room filled with financial planners. They are not like your Uncle Harry or Cousin Sally, who pride themselves on being financially savvy, periodically giving you hot stock tips and advice on managing your credit cards.

No, these are professional planners, who devote 40-60 hours a week to clients willing and able to pay for advice on managing wealth and creating financial peace of mind. Many are professionally credentialed financial advisors.

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Dividends

Many stocks pay dividends, which are periodic (usually quarterly) cash flows to stockholders. Dividends are declared by firms’ boards of directors. Dividends can increase over time, decrease or be eliminated.

Firms pay dividends when they have reasonably high profits and cash flow, and they don’t need the money to invest in new businesses, products or plants and equipment. Rapidly growing firms tend not to pay dividends or at least very low ones. Profitable firms with fewer growth prospects tend to pay higher dividends.

As of July 2020, there were 66 “dividend aristocrats” in the S&P 500 Index – 66 companies that have paid increasing dividends every year for at least 25 years.

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Wealth is the ability to fully experience life. – Henry David Thoreau

When you die, the final test of how you lived your life will not be the size of your financial portfolio. It will be the legacy you created while you lived – the innumerable decisions resulting in that priceless portfolio.

Your legacy will be the memories your family and friends will have for the rest of their lives, memories about you and your relationship with them.

Life is short, but legacies endure. We wish you wisdom and compassion in creating those memories and that legacy – a legacy that defines you as one who balanced financial wealth with heart and soul.

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Endorsing Your Total Wealth

Your Total Wealth is a delicious meal for the mind and the soul. It never loses sight of the main purpose of personal wealth management – to provide for future needs and happiness. It serves its knowledge in easy digestible pieces, with short explanations put into the context of the overall financial picture. The book is a great guide for people who want to dive into an article in the financial press and understand the specifics. It’s also a good primer before one decides on a financial advisor.

Scott Lummer, PhD, CFACEO of Savant Investment Group, LLC and award-winning playwright.

Thanks for a wonderful, evergreen and engaging finance book that won't gather dust on my client’s bookshelf!

Toney Falknerhttp://www.pwmofnc.com/our-team

Finance as a basis for teaching life lessons? Really? Amazingly, Your Total Wealth does just that. For example, consider this simple idea that Lyle Sussman and David Dubofsky present: “budgets … are a comparison between what you could do with what you must do.” This is a life lesson for both an individual and a corporation. Balancing work and life, and realizing that financial gain can have a heart and soul is a lesson for us all.

Joel Naroff, PhDPresident of Naroff Economics LLC, author and multiple award winning economist. Quoted in Business Week, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Financial Times and Newsweek, with frequent appearances on CNBC, Fox Business News, and Bloomberg Television.

This book will become a classic. It is a must read for anyone who wants to make his or her money work for him or her over time. Topics are presented in bite size pieces, allowing the reader to pick up and put down the book to fit the available time. If you know someone who needs time-honored investment knowledge, suggest this book or provide it as a gift. It will also be appreciated by any experienced investor seeking assurance that he or she is on the right track to build wealth while keeping life in balance.

Jack P. Friedman, PhD, CPA/ABV, MAIFormer university professor, financial and real estate consultant, editor, co-author of 30 books including best selling business dictionaries and the 2nd edition of Encyclopedia of Investments

In the book, Your Total Wealth, Lyle and David have written a nuanced way to better increase your financial literacy. Their emphasis on finding the balance between the financial and the soulful- that which provides happiness- marks the growing need for understanding financial planning is not just about finances, but so much more. The authors are able to teach on a whole host of financial topics through relatable examples that show how the financial intersects with the behavioral, psychological, emotional, and relational. Financial professionals, as well as anyone interested in increasing their balance between finances and life, will find the lessons in this book beneficial.

Bruce Ross, PhDAssistant Professor, Department of Family Science, University of Kentucky, and President of the Financial Therapy Association

Sussman and Dubofsky have outdone themselves! Ingeniously, the authors write a glossary of quotes and vignettes linking financial wealth terms to “total wealth” life advice. Thoughtful quotes help us balance the yin of building financial wealth with the yang of building emotional ties or spiritual wealth. Each definition and financial term hooks you with wonderful quotes, epigrams and stories. Uniquely, the authors dispense wry and dry wit with sage advice that shine through each page. The day to change your total wealth enhancing choices is today (yes, procrastination is addressed as well). Start with buying a copy of Sussman and Dubofsky, flip open the book to the life advice quote by Hank Aaron, and just keep swinging!

James A. Conover, PhD, CFP®, CFE, CMA, CTPInvestor; consultant; LuminDX comptroller; and Emeritus Professor of Finance, University of North Texas

Sussman and Dubofsky do a masterful job of breathing life into the presumed dead subject of financial literacy by introducing personal fulfillment into the matter. Your Total Wealth makes financial literacy organic. It makes financial literacy into a living, breathing and evolving matter. (If chemistry can be made organic, why can't financial literacy?)

Scott E. Hein, PhDEmeritus Professor of Finance, Texas Tech University; Independent Board Member at FinPro Inc.; Financial Author, Consultant, Investor and Researcher; Lecturer at state and national schools of banking; Former Advisor and Senior, Economist, Federal Reserve System

Having taught finance and economics for more than forty years, I appreciate not only the need for financial knowledge but also how challenging the subject can be. Your Total Wealth by Sussman and Dubofsky does an excellent job of achieving their goal of simplifying financial concepts without creating undue complexity. One underlying theme of the book is to go beyond the math of finance and help the reader understand that financial concepts are a means to an end. The authors stress the importance of focusing on the why of achieving the reader’s own unique set of financial goals. The authors' approach is refreshing. What’s more it comes at a time when we all need to address financial literacy to help achieve our goals of financial and personal enrichment.

S. Scott MacDonald, PhDPresident and CEO of the Southwestern Graduate School of Banking at SMU, director of the Assemblies for Bank Directors, and Adjunct Professor of Finance, Cox School of Business, Southern Methodist University. Author of articles in professional and academic journals as well as co-author of the college textbook on banking, Bank Management

Finally, someone comes along and takes all those technical financial issues that individuals need to understand about building wealth and puts real life into our thought process. Your Total Wealth's constant interactions of financial considerations along with applications toward a more meaningful life help us realize that we all need to re-assess the consistency and balance between our financial pursuits and our personal, family, and spiritual lives. Here we have the Don Meredith color commentary to Howard Cosell's "Tell it like it is" play by play, and the result first helps you understand more financial areas, and then makes you think more expansively about where your values (should) lie. The year 2020 has provided the perfect incentive to read this book.

Randall S. JamesRetired Texas Banking Commissioner

Hello Lyle: This is a truly great blog. It combines two of my favorite subjects: psychology and finance. I love your approach to balance, the yin and the yang. Thank you for sharing your wisdom with the public.

Dr. Donald Moine

The fundamentals are here. Take the book and absorb as much as you can as it has a lot to offer. Even for those of us with a life in finance it is a great refresher, written to enjoy. Congratulations to Sussman & Dubofsky!

Merrill J. Reynolds, Jr., Partner and Founder, Reynolds Williams Group.A graduate of Southern Methodist University and The Southwestern Graduate School of Banking, Mr. Reynolds began his 40 + year career in finance as a bank examiner with the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.

Great to connect on here Lyle! I look forward to engaging with your content on LinkedIn. The blog looks to have a lot of valuable information and I will dive deeper into it. I see that some of the blogs are around behavior, and that's a topic that is very intriguing.

Alex Koynoff

A great read for anyone curious about index funds, ETF's and taking a trip to the gambler's resort paradise. Thanks!

Ronda CobbRonda Cobb, BSMEView Ronda Cobb, BSME’s profile (Human Being) • 1st"Done For You" Debt Resolution Services For Medical & Credit Card Debt | Financial Literacy iCourse | Wealth Creation | Retirement Plans |

Top Reviews From Amazon Readers

For some down-to-earth, basic advice on money and life, I have a book to recommend: “Your Total Wealth: The Heart and Soul of Financial Literacy.”

“For anyone starting out in life, Your Total Wealth is the ideal read. It is the most unique and accessible financial advice resource I’ve ever seen and goes well beyond how to make money.”

The authors give us a window into what “total wealth” means, how to achieve it, and demonstrate that it is much more than mere numbers. Total wealth is greater than the “stuff” we own or the balance in an investment account.

“I wish that I had this book years ago!”

“Your Total Wealth is filled with insights …. financial terms and life lessons that get you thinking about living a richer life.”

“Giving a copy to young, new clients, would be a great way for a financial adviser to begin a professional relationship.”

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