What's Your Future Worth?

81 pages. Temps de lecture estimé 1h1min.
You often have to consider how a decision you make now will impact your future. Most of us just make our best guess. Peter Newwirth says there’s a better way. He takes the idea of “present value,” developed by actuaries, and turns it into a practical and simple tool that anyone can use to evaluate possible future outcomes and make better decisions now.We weigh every significant decision based on how it will affect our future. But when it comes to figuring that out, we mostly make the process up as we go along. While financial professional Peter Neuwirth can't help you actually predict the future, he can offer a simple, systematic way to make much better guesses about it—and so make better decisions.Neuwirth offers an accessible, step-by-step guide to using the powerful concept of Present Value—which allows you to determine the value today of something that might happen in the future—to evaluate all of the outcomes that might arise from choosing one path as opposed to another. Using examples that anyone can relate to, Neuwirth walks you through the process. Your old refrigerator doesn't work as well as it used to—should you buy a new one right away or muddle through for a while? You're offered a great discount on a service you don't need at the moment but eventually will—buy the service now or wait? With just a little math and some common sense, you can compare future costs and benefits with present costs and benefits and make “apples to apples” comparisons. This book will be indispensable for anyone who has ever had to figure out whether to stick with an awful job or follow his or her bliss, fix that old car or buy a new one, increase 401(k) contributions or keep the same take-home pay, and a thousand other decisions.Introduction: A Different Way of Choosing1. Mordecai's Proposition—a Question of Present Value2. Present Value in the Day-to-Day World 3. Present Value and Making Big Decisions 4. Using Present Value—Step 1: Clarify the Choice5. Using Present Value—Step 2: Imagine the Future6. Using Present Value—Step 3: Evaluate the Possibilities7. Using Present Value—Step 4: Weigh the Now and the Later8. Using Present Value—Step 5: "Do the Numbers"9. Present Value for Organizations and Communities10. Present Value When Money Doesn't Matter 11. Present Value and the Distant Future—Planting Trees and Leaving a Legacy12. The Value of the Actuarial Perspective and "The Rest of Your Life"