If you ever ignored your father's advice about overspending and learned the hard way that he was right about the self-inflicted pain caused by paying exorbitant interest charges, you will have a good idea of what Alvin Hall has in mind for you.

As the presenter of the BBC Your Money or Your Life programme, Hall is well-known as a financial adviser to television audiences - a kindly uncle who tells you to save a little bit every week, not to spend beyond your means and keep a close eye on the credit cards.

Money for Life aims to be a beginner's guide to the world of personal finance and succeeds admirably. To say it is intended as a guide for the man or woman in the street is to say it supposes that particular couple knows nothing at all about its finances except how to spend, spend, spend.

Hall covers everything from spending and saving, investing in shares and bonds, to pensions and property.

Money for Life can be dipped into for pointers on investing in shares, buying a house, or starting a pension - you don't have to read it all.

Starting out in life as a poor country boy in the Deep South of the US, Hall peppers his guide with homely advice on managing your budget. His granny, no less, is credited with giving him the simple wisdom which saw him conquer his spending monster and save up for a rainy day.

This is not sharecropper economics, Hall knows all about life in the big city and the trouble 29 credit cards can lead to - his book is as relevant to a futures trader in the IFSC as a struggling farmer in the Shannon basin.

Hall says that only when you have a clear understanding of your spending and saving habits - your "money personality" - can you begin to manage your finances properly. In case you think he labours the point, he reminds us that £13 billion sterling (€21 billion) is owed on credit cards in Britain. And our own League of Credit Unions issued a warning recently about credit-card debt.

Hall's advice on managing money sounds a little like a preacher delivering a sermon, but he knows his subject well enough to explain it all in a very entertaining way.

If there is a flaw in his approach it is a presumption that everyone has enough money to save and to keep an eye on the stock market for a nice little earner. But those stuck in a poorly paid job should not be put off - Money for Life has something for everyone.