Fresh Start™ is an easy to read survey course designed to give you some basic tools for managing your personal finances. Using humor, candor, and a few simple forms, Fresh Start™ will help you,

• Create a balanced budget and begin saving
• Identify ways to rebuild your credit
• Learn to use debt as a productive tool
• Invest for the future and plan for your retirement
• Decide which insurance products are right for you and your family

"Budget" is not a four letter word. Yet people find the word "budget" offensive, and few words create the same sense of dread. We've come to associate "budget" with sacrifice, denial of gratification, and burdensome attention to detail. The reality is that everyone has a budget, just like everyone has a diet. With a diet, we can choose to be healthy and responsibly control our eating, or we can eat with abandon and hope we don't have a heart attack. In the same way, with a budget we can choose to be financially sound and responsibly control our spending, or we can spend with abandon and hope we don't go bankrupt (the financial equivalent of heart failure).

This book is designed to assist you in learning the fundamentals of personal budgeting, give you the tools to determine your current budget, and identify areas of your budget where improvements can be made.

However, the budget is only part of the picture. This book also teaches you about individual net worth by providing tools to determine what your current net worth is and explaining why it is important. We’ll also demonstrate how net worth and budget are the foundation upon which you can build your financial goals and plans.

Budget! It’s Not a 4-Letter Word is written from the perspective that you’re looking to improve your personal financial management skills in the areas of budgeting, understanding net worth and financial goal setting. I don’t assume that you’re financially insolvent, financially inept or that you’re looking for my mother's recipe for tuna fish casserole in order to save a buck. Budgets are a very individual and personal thing. They are living and breathing documents that can change from month to month and even week to week. My hope is to help you understand that budgeting is a great personal tool, not something to be feared or dreaded.

The Personal Finance Series consists of three programs that help the reader build a solid foundation for managing their personal finances. Using humor, candor and step-by-step instructions, the Personal Finance Series breaks the reader's overall financial picture into easily digestible pieces that can be addressed one step at a time. From the conversational tone to the layout, the Personal Finance Series is designed to maximize the reader's retention of the information presented and help them take control of their personal finances.

The Institute for Financial Literacy offers a Certificate of Personal Finance™ to any individuals who complete all three Personal Finance Series programs, Guide to Budgeting, Guide to Credit and Debt Management and Guide to Investing and Retirement Planning.