Plan Your Money Path

Create and Control Your Own Financial Plan

By: Bill Hines, Grady Moshay

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Paperback | 28 May 2026

At a Glance

Paperback
244 Pages

Dimensions(cm)
21.59 x 13.97 x 1.3

Paperback

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Revised and expanded second edition. Welcome to the start of the rest of your life-the one where you aren't wandering in the (financial) dark without a flashlight. The one where you have a clear roadmap to your future, and mathematical confidence that you and your family can have the kind of life you dream of! This book contains thousands of dollars worth of professional financial planning advice, hints, tips, and hacks.

This book shows you how to take control and build your own financial plan, using high fidelity, inexpensive software, not the simplistic financial/retirement planning tools you find all over the internet.

I'll take you through some important general financial planning context, and then through the steps to building a financial plan for a sample family. Along the way, we'll discuss the different inputs and assumptions required for any financial plan, as well as how to interpret the results and put your plan into action.

This book will first take you through some general financial planning context, and then take you through the steps to building a financial plan for a sample family. Along the way, we'll discuss the different inputs and assumptions required for any financial plan, as well as how to interpret the results and put your plan into action. I'll minimize the use of screen shots, as they're quickly outdated and a detriment to those who need to or prefer to listen to audiobooks. I won't use them for pages with just a few simple inputs. It will also help to apply this book to high-fidelity financial planning tools other than the one I use (Pralana). This is not a user manual for that tool. I won't go into every obscure nook and cranny of Pralana, because it would get boring and those side areas aren't relevant to most people. This book is more of a casual, informative walk through how to use the tool to set up a financial roadmap for the average household, using an average household as our example. It is how I would guide you, as a client, to learning and using the tool for your benefit.

This is a book about creating your own financial plan, using a sample representative family and reviewing their configuration, optimization, and analysis. We cover the most commonly used settings, inputs, and assumptions, but simply can't delve into every seldom-used side case nook and cranny. The book would be quite unwieldy, not as useful, and certainly difficult to get through. The user manual is now built-in to the tool, context sensitive, comprehensive, and awesome, so please defer to it to clarify or add to anything in this book that you don't fully understand, as well as the extremely helpful user forum at the Pralana website. If you don't have a basic understanding of personal finance, investing, and retirement planning concepts, start with my companion book, Kiss Your Money Hello (and Financial Stress Goodbye). This theme of this book is simplicity, as you'll see. I didn't want to write a wieldy 400-page tome. I wanted something easily digestible, succinct, and to the point.

Industry Reviews

âââââ "Excellent guide to creating a DIY retirement plan using the Pralana online software. The book is thorough without being complex. It is easy to follow and walks you through the process. There is good guidance for retirement in general, and the Pralana Planner guidance is simply a very large bonus."-Bruce W, Amazon reviewer

âââââ "I purchased this book to learn more about the Pralana Online Calculator, but was pleasantly surprised with the amount of financial literacy and fluency information provided by the author, Bill Hines. He writes with a unique blend of financial information and humor that makes this book easy and fun to read. I read the entire book with a smile and an occasional outburst of laughter."-Todd W, Goodreads reviewer

âââââ "Very straightforward and easy to understand help with entering information correctly in the program. Money well spent"-Ken S, Amazon reviewer

âââââ "Folksy, easy to read style of writing. Very very helpful walk-through of the Pralana online menus, with good insights into where problems in data entry may exist. Bill's review tips helped me find where I'd made a pension plan data entry error that I would not have caught on my own."-Tim R, Amazon Reviewer

âââââ "This book walks you all the way through Pralana Online. It is a full-featured, comprehensive financial planning tool and will provide more comprehensive financial planning than our previous Certified Financial Planner to whom we paid a.75% fee of assets under management."-JB, Amazon reviewer

âââââ "Love the fact that this creates a financial plan for YOU. Not a generic one, but one based on YOUR numbers. This has given me the confidence regarding my retirement plan. Typically I'd have needed a professional financial advisor (they are often interested in selling you various products) to make this happen. But Bill is your financial advisor here guiding you through his book, and Pralana is the tool. I can't say enough good things about Bill's writing style. The book is comprehensive, without fluff, and easy to follow."-DG, Amazon reviewer

âââââ "It is a masterfully concise description of how to establish financial plans to fund and manage retirement. It could be used with other financial software but as I mentioned, I started with this software believing it was the best route for me ... The book becomes the resource on the shelf so that you don't have to continuously email Bill with questions about additional details or nuances."-Allen W, Amazon reviewer

âââââ "A big thank you to Bill Hines for writing this book. It's wonderfully easy to read. More importantly, I have picked up many retirement tips while learning about the ins and outs of Pralana Retirement Calculator (PRC) Online. "-AM, Amazon reviewer

âââââ "I have been using Pralana for many years now and IMO it is the best DIY retirement tool. But on the flip side, due to the depth of analytical tools it contains, it has a long learning curve...And wow, it is indeed even more powerful than what I had visualized. Thanks, Bill, for this wonderful book."

âââââ "I read this from cover-to-cover and enjoyed Bill's light-hearted tone, not stuffy at all. He manages to walk us through the potentially complex subject of setting up a personal financial plan in a very understandable way. By starting with simple, example plan, I can see how he adds income, expenses and investments and ends up with quite a comprehensive plan. Bill also includes practical advise from his years helping many of his own clients. I am looking forward to adopting this for my own use."-CS, Amazon reviewer

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