The Complete Cheapskate How to Get Out of Debt Stay Out and Break Free from Money Worries Forever
In need of a Money Makeover?
Let America’s most popular cheapskate show you how to go from financial chaos to freedom and security–painlessly and in less time than you ever imagined.
Mary Hunt has helped thousands live a debt-free life with her popular newsletter, “The Cheapskate Monthly.” In The Complete Cheapskate, Mary puts all the very best money advice she has in one place. Becoming a classy, dignified cheapskate is not all that difficult, and Mary shows how with her user-friendly principles of saving, restraint, and living debt-free.
This book will teach you how to:
- Create–and stick to–a monthly spending plan
- Live well off 80% of your income
- Climb out–and stay out–of debt’s hole
- Stretch every dollar to its absolute maximum
- Manage savings and investments
- Lower bills on clothes, food, and gifts without lowering living standards
- Live within a financial plan that includes a margin for fun and spontaneity
With hundreds of tips on cutting expenses, The Complete Cheapskate is the indispensable guide for people ready to regain control of their finances, relieve the stress money has created, and prepare for their future.
User Ratings and Reviews
2 Stars Overall, Very Bad Advice
As someone who really enjoys shopping and nice meals (but can be thrifty where and when it’s needed), I was initially attracted to Hunt’s book because I knew a bit of her backstory–but most of her advice is obvious at best, quite bad at the worst.
Basically, the only truly sound piece of advice she gives is if your situation is really dire, you need to get help from CCCS or a similar agency (and yes, they definitely have their black marks, but sometimes that structure IS what’s needed) and not to be afraid, they’ve heard way worse.
Past that, most of her advice (and I include her many on-going columns, etc) is either absurdly complex (I agree about her “plans” essentially entailing hiding money from yourself) or based on very fuzzy math of worse possible versus best possible case scenarios.
Or she just plain doles out really crap advice, like one couple she featured in Woman’s Day and how she “helped” them. In this scenario she had a family living madly beyond their means, including owning a far too expensive house. She “helped” them beginning in late 2006, when the bubble was still inflating—but rather than have them (sensibly) sell an obviously too expensive house (and pay off their credit card debt with the proceeds), she put them on her plan.
The result after a year of her “help” (which involved sometimes going hungry if they didn’t have the money, including never touching savings)? They did now have some money in savings (and also had taught themselves to set aside $$ for gifts!!!), but they had bearly made a dent in their unsecured debt. Plus they still were living in the house—which is now no doubt worth less than they owe on it.
With her worst case/best case scenaios, she thinks you should plan ahead if you notice a major appliance weakening, start squirreling away money each month–so you can pay cash. She’ll then illustrate how much more the item will cost you with a 22% APR credit card, making just the minimum payment.
Okay, this is certainly all true BUT: sometimes things die with little to no warning (and sometimes old things last for a long time). It also fully ignores the fact that generally you can purchase the item interest free for a year or so (and pay it off in that time) or that many credit cards have significantly lower interest rates than 22% AND that you can certainly pay more than the minimum if you so desire.
She did a similar thing in comparing the cost of getting a hybrid to keeping her old, fully paid for car—DUH!!! Obviously, even if gas is $10 per gallon, it’s cheaper to keep the NO payment vehicle. Just not a valid comparison.
Oh and her Christian stuff gets really old, too.
2 Stars Doesn’t help much
Being the ultimate cheapskate I went to the library to look at this book to see if I would want to buy it. I am so glad I didn’t buy it first. Everything in this book you can look up in the net for free. There are no suggestions that I haven’t seen before.
If you are brand new to the frugal experience, save your money and do web surfing instead. You are already paying for that.
5 Stars Read it, Believe it, Do it!
This book changed my life. It only took five years. I now have $0 bills and a nice nest egg. Just follow the advice in the book to the letter. I give this book to everyone I care about.
1 Star PSA: The Author’s a Fraud
Her style is annoying and smarmy, but that’s the least of it. Claiming it came to her “out of the blue,” Mary Hunt stole her newsletter idea (and story ideas and some illustrations) from Amy Dacyzyn’s Tightwad Gazette (Dacyzyn has records that Hunt subscribed to her newsletter from Dec 91 - 93; Dacyzyn corresponded with Hunt regarding obvious “copying” of ideas and illustrations but Hunt did not reply or attribute the source).* First called “Cheapskate Monthly” and now “Debt-Free Living,” the preview issue on Hunt’s website likewise presents unattributed ideas as Hunt’s own (Heloise’s vinegar hints, for instance). She advises you to buy a house at half the price that you can afford, make double payments so that you can pay off the mortgage in “about five years,” and then sell that home and buy the house of your dreams. This is a program outlined in Ted Carroll’s LIVE DEBT FREE (published 1991), which she cites (amazingly!) in “Complete Cheapskate” but claims as her own idea on her website. “Owning your home free and clear,” she says, “…is what Harold and I are working on now.” (Cough, cough! She’s had plenty of time to put her plan into action, plenty of dollars to do it, and she’s “still working on” it?!?) Meanwhile she has churned out an armload of books and regurgitated her ideas for every TV camera she can find. She doesn’t have to practice what she preaches because she hauls in the dollars of the faithful through coaching seminars, books, and her newsletter (a $29.95 value, she claims, but if you check it out, you’ll see it is a compendium of links to other sources, outdated quotations, and self-promotion).
I’m afraid that with the current economy, a lot of people will be tricked into shelling out for this kind of warmed-over hash. Check it out at the library, if you must, but don’t buy it. I’ve found Ron Blue’s Master Your Money to be a more practical, Christian and truthful resource. Amy Dacyzyn’s work is the original (which is why she is so widely copied). Flylady.net has budgeting and checkbook hygiene advice; googling will provide more information than you can ever process. Why doesn’t Mary just admit that the way she got out of debt and broke free from money worries was not by being a cheapskate, but by being a plagiarist?
*Sept. 1996, Issue 76, The Tightwad Gazette
5 Stars Very useful
Loved this book. So many practical ideas for getting out of debt. Especially her rapid debt repayment plan. I appreciated Mary Hunt’s inspirational story for motivation. It’s a very useful book!
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