A GOOD personal-finance book is tailored necessarily to the peculiarities of a country's banking, insurance and financial systems. The two books reviewed here provide general pointers for people in Hong Kong and Asia, but are vital tools for anyone battling with the United States and British systems.
The United States-orientated guide is called Smart Questions to Ask Your Financial Advisers (Bloomberg Press, US$19.95). Its no-nonsense author, Lynn Brenner, writes a weekly personal finance column for the Long Island-based newspaper Newsday.
Most usefully, Ms Brenner focuses on traps into which ordinary investors often fall when investing, getting married and divorced, buying and selling a house, coping with job loss, choosing insurance and planning for retirement.
For example, she warns investors to examine the fees involved in transactions - sales commission fees, administrative fees and marketing expenses. These are all passed on to customers and eat into any investment returns.
A few of the questions she raises are relevant to readers in Hong Kong. For example: 'What steps should I take ahead of time if I have reason to expect I'll be laid off?'. The answer, of course, is pay off debts, maximise access to new cash and find out about severance and employee benefits.
Many parts of the book do not apply to Hong Kong, such as the section on 401(k) employer-sponsored retirement-savings plans.