Among the weekly topics covered by the book are how to set up a budget, take stock of credit cards and debt, set up investments, decide on insurance and estate planning. Along the way, Lemon intermingles poetry, quotes and anecdotes with financial charts, questionnaires and worksheets.
The book itself is stuffed with worksheets, checklists, illustrations, essays by Lemon on subjects stretching from the philosophical to the meticulously financial and numerous quotations. Also included are four CDs, which provides readers with video and audio presentations by Lemon that take the reader through each step of the program, which requires the use of Quicken software.
It was a project that consumed much of Lemon's life during the past three years. Aside from the hours spent working on it, Lemon spent $300,000 of his personal funds to publish it. That included hiring contractors to illustrate it, lay it out and produce it. He also hired a writing coach, and paid $50,000 for the rights to use screenshots of Quicken software in the book. He estimates that he rewrote the volume about 20 times.
Even after all that, Lemon is not counting on it being a best seller. The book is self-published, so it is not widely available in bookstores. He advertises on Quicken's Web site, but most sales have come through his own site, at www.tenweeks.com. He's sold about 300 books thus far, at a price of $39.95.
"It's not one of those books you can sell at an airport that flies off the shelf," he says. "I've surrendered to the fact that it may not sell. But I know what I did is the best that could be done."
Lemon says his goal was to provide people with a way to become active participants in their financial planning, whether or not they have a professional helping them along the way. In the process, he hopes the book will provide a roadmap for those who can't afford a planner themselves.
But he also sees the book filling another role: as a tool for financial planners. Lemon believes advisors can provide the book to clients as a way for them to become more engaged in the planning process, or to walk-ins who don't have the income to use their services.
Lemon says the book partly grew out of his concern that clients are too detached from the process used to plan out their financial futures. Lemon says he too often felt like a doctor filling out a prescription, telling his patients to take a pill a day.
"Clients come to us and we give them a plan. But the plan is really kind of our plan," he says. "We then give it to them in a nice binder and say, 'OK, now you're all better.' But they're not involved in the emotional nitty gritty of putting it together, so they don't have ownership."
Among the first to go through the program were Brian and Kathy Derry, a couple in Bayfield, Colo., who began seeking out a financial planner after Brian retired from his manufacturing management job in 2002. They volunteered to be among the first to use the program after contacting Lemon during their search.