America has evolved into an ownership society. Home-buying decisions, resource allocation, debt exposure, and financial planning for the future are now left to individuals who may be poorly equipped to handle them. Economics, with its insistence on quantifying ideas and putting specific quantitative values on all manner of phenomena, can help. Economics for Life: Real-World Financial Literacy is designed to help soon-to-be college graduates emerge into the start of their "real lives" with better comprehension of how to analyze the financial decisions that they will soon have to make. Written in an easy-to-read, conversational style, it will help readers make decisions on saving and investing for retirement, buying a car, buying a home, as well as how to safely navigate the use of debt and credit cards.

Donald Wargo is Associate Professor of Instruction at Temple University. Prior to his teaching career, he held executive positions in a number of large real estate companies in the Philadelphia area, including vice president of finance and president. For fifteen of those years, he ran his own development company, Wargo Properties, Inc.