Accounting For Dummies®, 4th Edition

Introduction

You may know individuals who make their living as accountants. You may be thankful that they're the accountants and you're not. You may prefer to leave accounting to the accountants, and think that you don't need to know anything about accounting. This attitude reminds me of the old Greyhound Bus advertising slogan "Leave the Driving to Us". Well, if you could get around everywhere you wanted to go on the bus, that would be okay. But if you have to drive most places, you'd better know something about autos. You do a lot of "financial driving," so you should know something about accounting as well.

Sure, accounting involves numbers. So does watching your car mileage, knowing your vital health statistics, keeping track of your bank balance, negotiating the interest rate on your home mortgage, monitoring your retirement fund, and bragging about your kid's grade point average. You deal with numbers all the time. Accountants provide financial numbers. These numbers are very important in your financial life. Knowing nothing about financial numbers puts you at a serious disadvantage. In short, financial literacy requires a working knowledge of accounting.

About This Book

This book, like all For Dummies books, consists of freestanding chapters. Each chapter is like a tub standing on its own feet. You can read the chapters in any order you please. You can tailor your reading plan to give priority to the chapters of most interest to you, and read other chapters as time permits. ...