There is increasing pressure for all of us to take responsibility for our own financial security and wellbeing, but we often overlook how the benefits that come with a job can help us do that. Essential Personal Finance: A Practical Guide for Employees focuses on these valuable work benefits and shows how you can build on this important foundation to achieve financial security and your life goals.

This unique book explores how making effective and practical use of these work benefits (such as pension scheme, life cover, sick pay, cheap loans, savings schemes and even financial coaching), means facing up to the behavioural biases we are all plagued with. Given that these can get in the way of even the best intentions, Essential Personal Finance tackles these biases head-on with practical ideas and tips for overcoming or harnessing them for good, and will help you to develop a positive and fruitful relationship with your money. With financial stress being a major cause of absenteeism and sick leave, low morale and lost productivity, the advice in this book also offers employers enormous benefits. By empowering employees through financial education and financial awareness, progressive employers will help them feel more in control of their lives, and experience less stress, resulting in higher morale and productivity.

Offering a distinctive approach which combines academic insight with practical financial wisdom and tools, this is a must-have book for all employees. It will help you make the most of everything your job has to offer so you can worry less about money and live life to the full.

Jonquil Lowe is Senior Lecturer in Economics and Personal Finance at The Open University, UK, and is also an independent practitioner who has published extensively on all aspects of personal finance. She started her working life in stockbroking but switched to consumer advocacy, becoming Head of Money Research at Which?, before launching her own freelance business.

Jason Butler is a Chartered Fellow of both the Chartered Institute for Securities & Investment and The Personal Finance Society. Following a 25-year career as a personal financial adviser, Jason is now Head of Financial Education at www.salaryfinance.com. He is also a personal finance columnist for The Financial Times and provides personal finance insights for Sky, BBC and a range of other media.

Lien Luu is a Chartered Fellow of the Personal Finance Society (part of the Chartered Institute of Insurance) and a Registered Life Planner with the Kinder Institute. Following many years as a financial planner, she is now an Associate Head of School at Coventry Business School, UK, where she enjoys lecturing on wealth management and writing books on personal finance.