No Regrets: A Common Sense Guide to Achieving and Affording Your Life Goals.

Janet Arnett is the former campus manager of adult education at Ontario’s Georgian College. She is the author of Antiques and Collectibles: Starting Small, The Grange at Knock, and 673 Ways to Save Money.

You need a plan. A plan for your life. And a plan for your finances in order to carry out your plan for your life.

Abboud, a financial planner, jumps right into the big issues by hand-holding the reader through the intimidating task of identifying personal life goals then assigning a dollar figure and achievement date to those goals. He uses Maslow’s hierarchy of needs to get the ideas flowing. Goal-setting, he says, has to be in relation to where we are on the needs hierarchy. It’s a way of exploring what money means to us as we move on to creating an appropriate financial plan, with an emphasis on goal-focused savings.

The basics of what should be included in a financial plan, strategies for staying on track, a budgeting system, seven steps to successful investing, and advice on how to select a financial advisor round out the content. There’s a sample cash flow analysis for a family, and a copy of the blank form that could be used to track income and expenses on a monthly basis. The proposed budgeting system involves putting cash into envelopes earmarked for specific expenses and goals.

While there’s little in the way of new ideas here, the book has the advantage of being short, sharp, and focused — an easy-read introduction for newbies to financial planning principles.