About Us

The Financial Planning Toolkit provides trustworthy, comprehensive, and user-friendly personal financial information that helps people improve their lives. Content is organized into six modules:

• Goal Setting and Data Collection
• Investments
• Taxes
• Insurance / Risk Management
• Retirement Planning
• Estate Planning

... and is designed to provide our consumer audience with "total know-how for their financial future."

Meet the Toolkit Team

The Financial Planning Toolkit^TM is brought to you by Toolkit Media Group, a Wolters Kluwer business, a leading provider of business, legal, and tax information and software to the business community in the U.S. and abroad since 1913. More than four generations of business and tax advisors have trusted our products for their accuracy, reliability, comprehensiveness, and timeliness.

And now, TMG has designed the Financial Planning Toolkit^TM to bring you the information that you need to successfully manage your personal finances.

Publisher

John Duoba has more than 20 years of experience in book and magazine publishing, fulfilling various roles in editorial and production management. He has been involved in the publication of scores of titles, with multiple editions and issues raising the total well into the hundreds. John is a professional journalist and holds a degree from Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism.

Please feel free to contact him for any reason...including content licensing, advertising and reprint requests.

Editorial Organization

Alice H. Magos has over 35 years of experience running the operations of numerous small businesses. She is the author of the CCH Business Owner's Toolkit^TM online advice column Ask Alice. Alice is an accountant,a Certified Financial Planner, a Certified Fraud Examiner, and holds degrees from Washington University in St. Louis and Northwestern University in Chicago.

Catherine Gordon has over 17 years of experience in the tax, business, and financial publishing field and has worked as a tax consultant providing services to individuals as well as large and small companies. Catherine holds a juris doctorate degree from the State University of New York at Buffalo School of Law and a BA in sociology from the State University of New York at Stony Brook.

Robert Steere has served as general counsel for a state tax department, as tax policy director for a state chamber of commerce, and as a tax specialist for two major CPA firms during his 30-year professional career. Bob holds a BS degree from Michigan State University and a JD degree from University of Michigan Law School.

Joel Handelsman has 30 years of experience writing about business, tax, and financial topics. He has experience with multiple new product and business ventures in the publishing industry and has held a variety of management positions. He has also taught legal research at the post-graduate level. Joel holds degrees from Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism and DePaul University College of Law.

Susan Jacksack was the original author of much of the content in the Financial Planning Toolkit. Susan was also a major contributor to our companion small business web site, the Business Owner's Toolkit. She was a nationally recognized and frequently quoted small business and financial expert.

Unfortunately, Susan lost a lengthy battle with cancer in 2001. She was admired, respected, and appreciated by all those who knew her. Her friendly and helpful nature is sorely missed by her family, friends, and all those who came to rely on her throughout the years.