Archive for the 'Reviews' Category

Book Review: The Money Book for the Young, Fabulous, and Broke

Published on February 17, 2008 in Books and Reviews. 0 Comments

When it comes to personal finance authors, Suze Orman is a staple. She has her own television show on CNBC and has written numerous books on the subject. So I was excited to read her latest book to see what advice she had for me and my generation. Unfortunately, I was very disappointed by this book. To me the tone of this book is very condescending, which made it tough to read at times. In addition to the tone, some of the advice makes me feel wary of suggesting this book.

My first issue is Suze Orman’s emphasis on your FICO score. While I believe it’s important to have credit history, and it is absolutely important to make sure there are no errors on your report, I don’t think it’s important to worry about things like having the right “credit mix” on your account. There are far more important things to worry about than the ratio of revolving credit to fixed installment loans. Also worrisome is Suze Orman’s involvement with the Fair Isaac Corporation. If she is being paid by Fair Isaac, is her advice really unbiased?

Another piece of advice that really made me take notice was that it is okay to use your credit card to cover living expenses when you are starting off in your career, since your future earnings potential will help you pay off that debt. She suggests pouring yourself into your work to get ahead. Looking back on how I racked up my credit card debt, using it to cover living expenses was how my card got so high. I probably bought a few things in there I shouldn’t have, but the majority of the balance came from using it to pay for groceries. So to me, suggesting that you should use a credit card to cover your living expenses is a slippery slope that you shouldn’t tread on. And I believe in working hard to get ahead in your career, but telling people to go into debt for their careers is a good way to keep them working for years trying to pay off that debt.

To her credit, Suze Orman does cover a lot of ground in this book. Her range of topics includes, your career, your credit, student debt, retirement, investing, buying a home, and money in a personal relationship. For someone just starting out this book might be a very handy if they don’t get annoyed by the lecture-style writing. Which is why I’m torn recommending this book. There is a ton of great information, and honestly a lot of good advice.

I would recommend picking this book up and thinking of it as a list of tools and ideas for you to use when you need them. Read another personal finance book, like Your Money Or Your Life to build up a proper attitude towards money and philosophy on financial living.

“The Money Book for the Young, Fabulous & Broke” (Suze Orman) is available for purchase from Amazon.com

Book Review: The Richest Man In Babylon

Published on January 14, 2008 in Books and Reviews. 0 Comments

21BYPFD7BFL._AA_SL160_

“Gold is reserved for those who know its laws and abide by them.”

 

The Richest Man in Babylon is an older book written by George Clason around 1926.  To give you a real idea of the age of the book, its author served in the Spanish-American War (that was in 1898 for those of you wondering).  The book is not written as one constant story; instead it is a collection of parables the author wrote over a period of time, all assembled into one collection.  Each parable has a theme to it, such as seven cures for a lean purse and the five laws of gold.

The writing style is unique.  Most of the story is told through character dialogue, in a language that I can only describe as Shakespeare without the rhyme.  You will see the words “thou” and “thy” frequently throughout the book.  It took me a few pages to get used to the style, but after that I hardly noticed it.

What I like most about this book is the length.  My copy is only 155 pages, but those pages cover most of the major personal finance lessons with easy to understand stories that still manage to get the message across.

 The Seven Cures for a Lean Purse is the first lesson.  The 7 steps to accumulating money (in my own words):

1.   Pay yourself first

2.   Spend less than you make

3.   Take advantage of compound interest

4.   Exercise risk management and don’t lose money

5.   Own your own home

6.   Create passive income so eventually you can stop working

7.   Improve your ability to earn more money 

The rest of book continues to build on these 7 ideas, as well as add a few new ones.  

 

Recommendation:

If you are looking for a short but great lesson on personal finance this is the book to go too.  The lessons in this book are timeless, and since it’s such a quick read it’s definitely worth a look.  If you’re just getting started on learning the basics of personal finance this is a great place to start.  

The Richest Man in Babylon is available for purchase from Amazon.com 

Book Review: Now Discover Your Strengths

Published on January 7, 2008 in Books, Personal Growth and Reviews. 0 Comments

21opmn9tsal_aa_sl160_.jpg

Now, Discover Your Strengths is a book based on the premise that the traditional model of becoming better by fixing your weaknesses is incorrect. Instead you would be better off finding out your greatest strengths and developing those to improve your performance. And lucky you, the authors provide an online quiz meant to help you discover your personal strengths.

The book begins discussing successful individuals and what they have in common. Generally people who make it to the top enjoy what they do, and they work in roles that emphasis their strengths rather than their weaknesses. One example is Warren Buffet, who thrives on investing in simple, boring companies. When tech companies were the top performers, he chose not to join in, since the complex products and aggressive accounting techniques were not his forte.

The authors introduce three requirements to develop strengths, which are covered through the book:
• Distinguishing natural talent from knowledge and skills. Knowledge comes in two flavors, factual and experimental, which can both be learned. Skill is what organizes experimental knowledge, allowing you to make use of it. Natural talent is what drives performance, but cannot be learned. The main focus of the book is to discover and define your talents.
• Identify your dominant talents. What activities do you pick up quickly? What do you enjoy doing, and do you excel at? The book continuously promotes the strengths finder profile, an online test that narrows down your five dominant talents.
• Find the proper language to describe your talents. Language is focused on the negatives, rather than positives. The book provides some excellent examples of how language leans to the negative. People who are meticulous and orderly are called anal; people who can’t wait to act are impatient or impulsive. The strength finder profile turns this around by naming each strength, defining it, and giving an example of someone that exhibits it.

Later chapters go on to discuss how to use the results of the strength finder, covering both individuals who would like to develop themselves, and managers who would like to use the results to build a better team. Techniques for creating a strengths-based organization include finding ways to reward employees while keeping them in the roles that they excel in, as well as focusing on the results of a goal rather than the means used to get there. Employees should be encouraged to use their talents to achieve goals, rather than forcing them to follow rigid routines.

While I enjoyed the book and felt that the premise was interesting, there is one problem that I feel overcomes the positives. The only way to access the profile test is to use a code present in the book. I borrowed the book from a friend, so the code had already been used. Without taking the strengths finder profile online, I was unable to accurately narrow down my strengths, making the later parts of the book less interesting. If I really wanted to take the test I would have to purchase my own copy of the book. I don’t know if this was an oversight by the authors, or a scheme to sell more books.

Furthermore, there is an entire chapter covering strengths based management, which assumes every employee takes the strengths finder profile. This of course would require every single one of them to buy the book.

Recommendation:

If you don’t know your strengths, and would like to find out more about yourself, this is an excellent place to start. This would also be a good book for managers. Even without requiring employees to take the profile test, there are enough suggestions for improving effectiveness and increasing morale that it could be a useful tool for some, although some of the topics are broad and very generalized.

For non-managers who are already familiar with their strengths it may be less useful. I feel like there is something missing, like examples on how to actually build on your strengths. It might be that this information is covered in other books in the series, and eventually I would like to look into those too.
Now, Discover Your Strengths is available for purchase from Amazon.com