Budget Books

Craig S. Rice is the former president of Royal Crown Cola Ltd.-Canada.

If you work in a small or medium-sized businees, you want fast help from a marketing book, not long lectures on theory and boring case studies. The book must be concise, and must address immediate concerns. It must answer key questions with workable, cost-effective solutions. It must be easy to read- even if you're pressed for time. Finally, it must offer ideas that you can quickly understand and implement.

This book gives you quick, proven answers. You'll find solutions to the most common marketing problems encountered by businesses like yours- small and mid-sized operations that can't afford to waste even the smallest amounts of time or money on their marketing efforts.

Emphasis here is on practical ideas you can do yourself, or give to others to do. The accent is not on theory, but on the steps that make sense, are affordable, and are most likely to GET RESULTS.

Where did the ideas come from? The techniques outlined in this book are proven winners from the highest levels of American business. The reason they're often ignored by smaller firms is not that the ideas are too complex or difficult to carry out...but rather that many of the techniques are not widely circulated. By using this book, you can benefit from the experiences of the many, many marketing professionals who have come before you. And you can do it without a "Fortune 500" marketing budget.

Who should read it? This book is for people in small or medium-sized units- those who usually have a very limited amount of marketing resouces at their disposal. Specifically, it will appeal to people who are in marketing or soon will be, and who want to see the best possible results from their marketing work, regardless of the size of the investment.

What if the reader is in a hurry? Most businesspeople are, and the ideas to this book have been organized with just such readers in mind. Yhe text is designed to be read any way you want. You can go from first page to last. You can scan the table of contents for the answer to a single question that's particularly pressing at a given moment. You can go down the list and highlight only those chapters that seem applicable to yor business.

But whether you read the entire book or not, please be sure to TRY some of the ideas suggested. It will only take a couple for you to realize the value of the book.

Despite its quirky graphics, this book could be a gem for small business entrepreneurs just getting started. It's easy to read, with bullet-style writing. While some advice is obvious and intuitive, there are some more creative ideas for establishing and building a customer base using good public relations and customer service as the primary tactics. These are definitely tried and true means of positively impacting sales. What's missing is a more modern twist (e.g., web & internet methods) because the book was published in 1989, but remember: you can't discount the benefits of traditional business-building! The personal touches and creative marketing strategies suggested by Rice can mean a critical difference (for the better) in your bottom line.

I bought this book secondhand to compliment my web research into cheap accommodation in Northern California. I was hoping I'd find some hideaways that weren't mentioned anywhere on the internet, and maybe save some money when I travel there next year. Unfortunately, the places that are listed are either seriously out of date price-wise (there is a later version of this which presumably solves that problem) or in some cases no longer exist at all. The places that were useful I had already easily found by other means. The author aims to list accommodations under US$70 a night, but many of the places listed now have rates that soar waaaay out of that range! The other disappointment was that she really doesn't list that many places. The majority of the book is taken up with sightseeing information — some of it useful, but this IS called "Cheap Sleeps"! Where are they? Crammed into a page or 2 at the end of each section! Also, Northern California is made up of a great many more areas than she has included - only the "touristy" areas get a mention at all.. the rest are apparently non-existant in her eyes - not much use if those absent areas are the very ones you're visiting! In conclusion, DON'T buy this expecting to find the best cheap places to sleep in N Cal - I found many, many more places off my own bat which don't rate a mention in this book. The only thing I found it useful for was that it DOES mention a number of interesting places to visit in each area and covers a few things rarely covered by other guide books: used bookstores, interesting cinemas etc etc. Hopefully the latest edition is MUCH better than this!

Rebecca Poole Foree has written a guide to northern California from the Cascades to Lake Tahoe to Berkeley to Big Sur that is ideal not only for the budget traveler but for any traveler with good taste and common sense. The descriptions of all areas are not only budget conscious but perceptive and share the author's personal reflexions about what is of interest in each area. I finally put all the other tour books aside while visiting the area and used the insight and advise of Ms. Foree

exclusively. For the discerning traveler, this guide is the best! Unfortunately, the title implies that only accommadations are included. Perhaps in the future edition( I hope there is one), a title change would give the traveler a clearer sense of the richness of this travel guide. Also, for the budget conscious, The San Francisco Residence Club, 85l California St., (at the top of Nob Hill) is a wonderful place to stay while in San Francisco.

I have very little policy experience; I read this book for a class on public policy. Having no experience, I found it to be a great help in understanding how we got to the place we are. It traces through the post-WWII years up to current times, detailing how the approach to policymaking has changed over the years. I now have a whole new appreciation for the fiscal state of our country, and if nothing else, this book is valuable to someone who hasn't paid much attention to politics just for that. It's pretty readable for the average person which is very nice; there are only a few spots where it helps to have a background in public administration theory.

I chose this book to read because, of those I had to choose from, it seemed the least likely to be hell-bent on bashing Republicans. It did a relatively good job of remaining neutral, but at times the political bent of the authors was clear.

I think this is pretty darn good book, and I'm glad I had a class to force me to read it. I gave it 4 stars because a few questions that were left unaswered for me - is everything REALLY only a result of policy, or can fads among the public steer things too?

This book by two professors of public policy convincingly demonstrates that supply-side economics and the policies pursued by Republicans and conservatives for the past 30 years have failed and in doing so have badly damaged the U.S. economy and society.
Using numerous graphs and charts the authors reach many surprising conclusions:
-- cutting taxes produces more government, not less. As they say, the programs funded can be those favored by liberals like social programs and welfare benefits and health care or by conservatives such as prisons, police and the military. But the budgetary implications are the same. This surprising assertion is fully backed up by the data.
-- the authors compare the records of the Republicans in the current decade and Democrats in the 1960s and find similarities but one important difference. Both funded wars (in Iraq and Vietnam) and expanded education and health programs but the Democrats funded their programs from taxes while the massive increase in government under George W. Bush has been funded through borrowing. The result is a massive increase in the budget deficit and the national debt which will be borne by future generations.
In fact, the authors demonstrated irrefutably that cutting taxes has never led to increased tax revenues as the Reagan and Bush administrations both said they would. They lead only to deficits.
-- the data shows the greater the Republican control of Congress the higher the growth of spending. So those "fiscal conservatives" who care about small government have been doing the exact opposite of what they intended.
-- Bush is the second biggest-spending president since 1945, second only to Johnson. The two presidents under whom real discretionary spending rose the least were Carter and Clinton.
This book sometimes makes for difficult reading, which is its major fault. It's not written in a particularly user-friendly style and the frequent charts and graphs may be off-putting.It's as if the authors were not clear whether they were writing for specialists or a wider audience. If the latter, more care should have been taken to make the book more readable.
It's unfortunate the style is so academic because the message needs to penetrate a wider audience. Bottom line: these failed policies have reduced the fiscal solvency of the federal government, eroded middle class living standards, vastly increased income inequality and left millions of Americans facing the greatest danger to their living standards since World War II. They could in future leave the U.S. economy paralyzed by the interest payments needed to finance a massive national debt.
Time to wake up, folks!

I needed this book for a class in a masters program and I really think that it has good information for budgeting. However, it was hard to get through with its really long chapters, many many charts, and it was very boring.

I purchased this book because the professor teaching a class that I tooked suggested to us that it was a great book! I am glad that I purchased this book because there is a lot of helpful information in it that I plan to use in the near future. Great book!

I have read this book and it scares me to death. People my age must realize that doing nothing is tantamount to giving our futures away. We must come to terms with the fact that there are 76 million Baby Boomers approaching retirement age, and there is no national plan to accomodate their pension and health needs. And to complicate matters, the problem is already occurring elsewhere around the world. Just read Peter Peterson's newest book, Gray Dawn.

This book addresses the problem of growing government entitlement programs for Americans in light of limited resources for providing them. Yes, everyone should be aware of the funding problems. Mr. Peterson should be thanked for bringing out a book on the subject. The color graphs are quite attractive. The writing is quick and easy to read, but even though he says he is not an alarmist, that's the impression he gives. There are many assumptions which readers usually swallow whole and that's what is wrong with the presentation. The book states that Americans do not "save" enough and that the Japanese save more. It infers that the Japanese are better off. In comparison to the amount Americans have in terms of goods and services, the Japanese have much less to consume. First, Americans as a whole save as much as any people in other industrialized countries. Our saving is not just at the bank, but involves mortgage payments, insurance premiums and employer pensions. Very few people in Japan own or are buying their homes. If we counted ALL savings of Amnericans, it would equal savings of people in other countries. If in fact, greater "saving" is responsible for a growing economy and a higher standard of living, why has Japan with its high saving rate been in a recession for the past seven years? (During the same time period the U.S. economy has been growing more prosperous.) The graph on page 24 shows how many American workers are needed to support each U.S. social security beneficiary for selected years between 1955 and 2040. In 1955 it took 8.6 workers, in 1995 it was 3.3 workers per retiree and by the year 2040 there will be only two workers per beneficiary. (In 1995 workers AND retirees all had more of material goods than in 1955.) This is the same kind of projection that was used years ago when at the turn of the century it took 50 percent of the working population to provide enough food for everyone else in the country. Everyone thought it was an ominous sign that so many young people were leaving the farms and that there was sure to be shortages of food unless the trend was stopped. Well, by the 1930's we had food surpluses which continued right through the 1980's even though only two percent of the working population is in farming. Even now, if we did not sell our surplus farm products overseas, we would have surpluses. In the U.S. today it takes one average farmer to produce enough food to feed 90 people. Only a few decades ago it would have seemed impossible. Its not obvious what method was used to get the numbers on the federal government's "red ink" chart on page 18, but just recently a review of the federal government's report for 1995 indicated that the accumulated federal debt of approximately $20,000 (liability) per U.S. population is compared to $205,000 of public assets per U.S. population. There are very few organizations of any kind that have such a favorable balance. Yes, there should be more reliance on private funds for medical care for the elderly and also some level of means test. But also keep in mind that spending on medical care causes people to live longer and people living longer results in more spending on health care. If old people had to pay for life-lengthening medications, they might not spend as much and health care companies would not have the profits to fund more advanced products to keep more people living longer. Think of the implications--investments, employment, life spans, etc Out of the complications we see that with or without government involvement, the industries that grow and prosper are the ones that get funded, either privately or by government. Each area of decision-making is made up of lots of individual choices which together move mountains. We agree that no one should have the idea that people should rely on social security benefits to fund their retirements. As far as the past is concerned, people with ONLY social security have NOT lived real high. Mr. Peterson is right when he says that young people do NOT expect to live on social security benefits when they retire. And, so, THAT finding may be the solution yet.

Cynthia Yates is an inspiration for anyone that wants (or needs) to tighten their belts without feeling completely deprived. Her upbeat attitude and sense of humor make this a fun read. Her tips range from grocery shopping and cooking tips to gift giving to entertaining to big ticket items to maintaining things we already own, and more. This book has many good ideas that are easy to implement. Ms. Yates makes you stop and think how a lot of things we think of as necessary can be either done without or obtained in a more intelligent way. Nothing fancy here-just common sense and a well thought out approach to making it in a tight economy, especially helpful if you are new at scaling down. She is a Christian author who is quick to tell her readers that God comes first in her life, however her ideas work well for anyone who sees a need to get a grip on their spending. To fully benefit from this book be prepared to "roll up your sleeves."

I am a pre-k Sunday school teacher and bought this book to use for them because it is mixed in with all other preschool books. It is a fine book, but most-all of the activities are too advanced for them. It says on the cover for ages 5-10, but I couldn't read that in the picture. Just a heads up.

Cool party ideas, for young people living on the cheap. A lot of retro themes. This book is a feast for the eyes, because the photograhy is really well-done.

The menus were biased towards carbs, which I guess is to be expected.

I'm not sure if I would have the flair and panache to pull off some of these party ideas...

September features a "Back-to-School" wedding theme in a rented cafeteria. The 100 guests line up to get cheese pizza and tater tots on a tray. Instead of a guest book, a 3-ring binder. Instead of flowers, blown-up balloons. Instead of a wedding cake, they rented a cotton candy machine for $60. Instead of champagne, juice boxes.

...I wonder what the guests wish they had brought instead of presents! But the point is, is that when you look like an Abercrombie model: anything goes.

My favorite month was November, which featured a Thanksgiving that reminded me of the ones we used to have in the Peace Corps. It was a group effort: the guys grilled small hens and made kettle chips, while the girls whipped up lighter and less-fussy variations on old thanksgiving favorites. The "pumpkin fool" looked especially interesting: a no-crust, no-bake pumpkin *thing*.

This last Thanksgiving, I made Thanksgiving Omelets, with thanksgiving-themed ingredients folded in. I'm telling you this just in case you're looking for even more fun and cheap Thanksgiving ideas.

After reading this book several times in the bookstore, I finally decided that I had to have it, if only to laugh along with the young and beautiful people at their zany, crazy, money-saving soirees.

This "Budget of the United States Government," (Fiscal Year 1999) contains much more than just numbers. It includes President Clinton's February 1998 budget message to Congress, and his administration's plans for the nation's economic future. The "Budget" shows where the federal government would get its money (mostly from individual income taxes, and from Social Security contributions), and where the money was going to go. For example, 50% was for "direct payment benefits to individuals," and 15% was for national defense. This "Budget" presents the material competently. I recommend it.

Beginners in this field will find lots of information in a very easy to understand format. Those with more experience, however, are likely to be bored.