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Working for yourself, especially at home, requires the skill of a juggler and the versatility of a short-order cook. How can you balance your family's financial needs with those of your enterprise? How can you satisfy your business's insatiable appetite for your time without depriving your family of attention?

This trio of books can help you build your business while you keep all the balls in the air. Each is aimed at a different audience. The first is an excellent hands-on course in financial management written for the entrepreneur who's ready to harness computer power as a business tool. The second is a soup-to-nuts survey for anyone thinking of launching a home-based enterprise. And the third will lift the spirits of work-at-home parents whose children are at home, too.

Author Linda Stern, a financial writer and syndicated columnist, begins Money-Smart Secrets for the Self-Employed (Random House, $20) with the premise that "working for yourself is the most fun you can have and get paid for it." Judging by her sense of humor and down-to-earth writing style, Stern is certainly having a good time, and she even manages to make it fun to learn smart business techniques -- no small feat.

Her book is like a paper version of a good site on the World Wide Web: You always know where you are and you can find your way around easily. Clear headings and graphics lead you from major topics to subtopics.

This package of goodies will become dog-eared as you follow Stern's directions on how to set up a budget and a cash-flow system that works, price your products and services, raise money, hire employees, and even plan for retirement. Particularly noteworthy are Chapter 11, on midyear and long-term planning; Chapter 13, on how not to run your business; and Chapter 14, a program for annual checkups. The section on "100 strategic saving secrets of the self-employed" -- which covers ways to save on everything from phone bills and business equipment to travel and printing costs -- is itself worth more than the price of the book.

"Secret" boxes, indicated by an icon of a fist clutching dollar bills, signal special tips. For instance, if you label late fees on a client's bill as "interest," you risk running afoul of banking regulations. In other boxes the author cites the advantages of choosing one accounting system over another and summarizes all the tax deductions available to businesses.

# posted by Medical Information : 3:20 AM