The Complete Idiot's Guide To Money For Teens By Susan Shelly

The author is Susan Shelly, who has written twenty-nine books in total, many of which focus on finance. She is a freelance writer and journalist who currently lives in Shillington, Pennsylvania. Most of Shelly’s books target a certain age group in order to assist that group with financial problems they might be dealing with. Shelly’s books are very well organized and make the topic easy for the audience to understand. The real life examples paired with interesting facts about the topic ensures the reader will learn about the subject while not becoming bored of the book. “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Money for Teens” was organized into parts, chapters, and sections within the chapter, and each smaller part related to the main idea of the chapter

Department of Labor show that, as an group, teenagers spent $141 billion dollars in 1998 - an average of $4,548 each” (Shelly, 7). Although this statistic is from 17 years ago, the numbers from today are very similar. What seems questionable is not the average itself, but the fact that the amount teenagers spend depends on their and their parents income and where they live, which this statistic did not take into account. Teenagers who live in rural places and whose parents have a low income will spend much less than those teenagers with wealthy parents in urban areas. The second quote that seemed incorrect was, “People of great wealth are pressured to be socially responsible and share what they have.” (Shelly, 37). People always talk about how much money they would donate to charity if only they had the money, and wealthy people are praised when they donate large sums to various charities. However, the pressure wealthy people feel to donate must not affect them as much as society expects; in fact, from 2006 to 2012, the amount donated to charity by those who made $200,000 or more decreased by 4.6%, while the amount donated by those who made less than $100,000 increased 4.5% (Daniels, 4). Of course, this could be because the majority of ads for charities are aimed at the middle class or “average” people, and those who have less tend to be more compassionate towards others

While the class put economics in a more educational perspective, like what it is and the different parts of an economic, this book showed how economics relate to an individual person and how people are influenced by the economy. An important part of the economics curriculum was the types of business, and economics class provided good definitions for each one, like sole proprietorship, partnership, corporation, and franchise. While the book did discuss types of businesses, Shelly was able to relate them in a way that would help the audience in real life by explaining details like how to start a sole proprietorship, opening a franchise, and investing in stock of a company. Another topic covered in economics class was investing, but once again the class focused on the definitions of different investments. The book provided a good foundation for what each type of investment was (things like stocks, certificates of deposits, and money markets), however Shelly included how each could benefit a person. The advantages and disadvantages for each were examined to help and encourage the reader to find some sort of investment that will benefit their life in the long