TERRY SAVAGE TALKS MONEY <i> by Terry Savage (Dearborn Financial Publishing: $22.95) </i>

It’s Sunday morning. Do you know where your money is, and what it’s doing?

Chances are, you don’t.

If you don’t have much, the worry is next week’s bills. If you do, you probably turn over some control of your money to experts--accountants or investment advisers of one sort or another--who manage it for you.

In either case, you can benefit from “Terry Savage Talks Money: The Common-Sense Guide to Money Matters.” Savage is a business reporter for a Chicago TV station, and a registered investment adviser, but she writes in a language even a civilian can comprehend. Her TV training (make it fast, make it simple) may have helped her in putting together this book; it’s basic stuff, and it’s presented in easily digestible form.

For example, Savage explains not only how to invest in Treasury Bills or notes but also how the payout of those instruments works. She’s as clear on buying a house or a car, and, for anyone with a dime left over, investing in stocks and bonds, commodities, precious metals and real estate. Her cautionary attitude on the last category is in marked contrast, and a welcome antidote, to the pie-in-the-sky promises made by promoters, both on TV and in print.

What Savage has to say may sound like eat-your-oatmeal to people who tend to spend today and worry tomorrow. But she’s trying to protect your assets--from your own carpe diem madness (why buy a T-bill when I can have a new Armani suit?) as well as from financial “experts” who manage to plunder the funds funneled through them. What Savage suggests is that we all invest wisely, whether a little or a lot; money is not some mystical language known only to a select few.