50 Simple Steps You Can Take To Improve Your Personal Finances How to Spend Less Save More and Make the Most of What You Have
Everything you need to know about personal finance — whether you’re just starting out or starting over.
The hardest part of attaining personal financial freedom is getting started. Ilyce R. Glink makes it a snap. The smart, simple strategies presented in 50 Simple Things You Can Do to Improve Your Personal Finances let you take immediate control of your money. With her trademark wit, friendly style, and crystal-clear examples, Ilyce Glink helps you set financial goals and reach them. Topics include:
* Starting Out * Budgets and Savings * Credit, Credit Reports, and Debt * Investing Yourself in Investments * Big Purchases * The Ins and Outs of Insurance * Taxes * Marriage, Partnerships, Children * Planning for Your Retirement
User Ratings and Reviews
3 Stars Good basic information
I bought this book based off a suggestion from the company that handles my 401k and it was a quick and easy read. Many of her suggestions seem to be no brainers but you kind of forget about them until you read it in a book. I’ll definitely put a few of her suggestions to use and the others will be there to consider.
3 Stars Common Sense but Not Simply Laid Out
With all the reports in the news about high rates of bankruptcy, high credit card debt, and lack of understanding in the general population about how to manage their finances, certainly everybody would love simple steps that help them make their finances better.
The first three steps all seem to involve *spending* money. She wants you to set up a home office area with office supplies and filing cabinets. She wants you to buy a computer, and Quicken. Next, you tally up your finances, calculate your net worth and plan out your goals. So far, none of these things seem to natively improve your financial situation. Yes, they’re good planning steps.
OK we get on to #7 - a tip! “Spend less than you earn.” Yes, that qualifies as a good tip. She actually provides 10 sub-tips here, things like “don’t go out to movies” and “eat at home” (twice).
And on it goes. Don’t smoke. Buy with cash, not credit. Use the web for directory assistance, not the phone company. Check your credit report. Consolidate your insurance bills.
The glossary in the back of the book is actually quite helpful, with a number of terms that come up in financial discussions. However, using her own tips, I could easily get that information from dictionary.com 
Obviously this book *told* you they were “simple steps”, not complicated ones. Still, I think that the book could have covered a wider range of information, and provided tips that were much more thorough. She could have created tip 1 as “set up a useful home office environment” that included the filing cabinets, computers, software, etc and warned you that it’d be over $500 to get this step done. There could be tip 2 about “get a handle on where you are now” and explaining in detail how to do that. Too many of the tips are redundant.
I also think, if this book is aimed at the very-beginning-market of people just out of college who are hoping to get their lives in order, that they could have done a better job of making this step by step. Provide checklists. Give simple examples. They do that in one or two places, but it could have been very helpful to do that with each tip.
There are many other books I’d recommend before this one, for people who are in this situation and need this kind of knowledge.
4 Stars Sound Advice
This book presents good sound advice for people who want to manage and balance their finances properly.
The advice is not far fetched and outlandish…, like some other financial books.
Good for the common middle class person who wants to strive for better.
3 Stars Personal Finance 101
This easy-to-read book gives very basic information on personal finance. It is a great start if you really don’t know anything about managing your personal finances. If you have an average knowledge of the topic, you probably will not learn a lot. However, I did find it useful to reiterate things I already knew.
4 Stars A very good book
I have read this book and feel it is a very good book to start building a solid financial foundation. This is not a book for the advanced, but for people like myself in their twenties (I’m 28) trying to figure out how they can be smarter with their finances. As I read through the book, I wrote down the “things” on a list and checked them off as I completed them. One of the interesting “things” was to check my property tax statement to ensure I wasn’t be taxed for more property than I owned.
Again, this book isn’t for the advanced financial planner; but I found it very helpful.
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