The Business Owner’s Guide to Personal Finance: When Your Business is Your Paycheck

Jill Andresky Fraser’s new book, "The Business Owner’s Guide to Personal Finance: When Your Business is Your Paycheck," (Bloomberg Press, $25.95,) is based on a simple though profoundly important insight. For the vast bulk of entrepreneurs, your personal finances and the financial life of your business are inexorably intertwined; and to ignore this link invites disaster. Accordingly, Fraser provides wise advice to entrepreneurs on tending to critical such matters as paying yourself a salary, creating a good credit history, and thinking through the tradeoffs of working at home or how to communicate with investors who are often friends and family. Naturally I am drawn to this book for recognizing the dynamic link between the individual who runs the business and the way in which this person’s behavior animates the enterprise; in financial matters the cause and effect takes on critical importance which Fraser carefully limns. Her book goes beyond keeping the books to guide one in all aspects of starting and growing a business. I rank this with "Small Time Operator" by Bernard Kamoroff, "Self-Defense Finance for Small Business" by Wilbur Yegge, and "Managing by the Numbers" by Chuck Kremer and Ron Rizzuto with John Case, as the top finance books for entrepreneurs.