Posted by Canadian Dream on December 22, 2011
I’m not sure if you have ever had this option in your life, but if you have ever spent a hour or two just talking about money to someone who is knowledgeable and excited about the topic the time can just fly by. This is more or less what reading The Wealthy Barber Returns by David Chilton feels like. The mans knows his stuff and it is quick and easy to understand book and it also has lots of humor.
In some regards I do feel sorry for David, since after his first book became almost a bible to most personal finance geeks (not surprising since it sold over two million copies in Canada), his second was almost doomed to disappoint somewhat because he couldn’t live up to the hype surrounding the book no matter how hard he tried. I don’t mean to say the book sucked or anything like that, but rather the expectations could easily be set far too high for the book.
I personally somewhat had this issue. Why? Well if you have to know the very first person finance book I ever read was The Wealthy Barber. So like it or not, that book defined a lot of ideas in my head early on in life about saving in general. So I did try to rein in my enthusiasm for the book, but I didn’t do that great of a job. It was rather like Christmas when my copy arrived.
David himself manages to echo a lot of standard advice that you have already likely heard: spend less than you earn, be careful with how much credit you use and for the love of God save something! Hardly earth shattering advice, but David does have a point about repeating it: the advice hasn’t sunk in yet for the majority of people. Thus this book is aim squarely at the majority of clueless Canadians who rather talk about almost anything else other than their money, despite the fact a large amount of their problems stem from their lack of knowledge about their money.
So while I did enjoy David’s humour and his explanations of everything, I didn’t learn anything new out of the book. Which is hardly surprising since if you look at the number of book reviews on this site and realize that is only a fraction of what I have read it becomes obvious I’m a personal finance geek from my toes to the tips of my hair that is standing straight up.
In the end I do think this is a great book for the majority of people to read, especially if they feel the topic of money is a dry and boring one. Yet if you have already read a lot on personal finance you likely won’t learn much, but you will still enjoy the funny parts.
So did you read David’s new book? If so, did you like it?
Posted by Canadian Dream on September 8, 2011
The word ‘cheapskate’ usually isn’t associated with positive images. For example, when you say that to me I picture someone loading up sugar packets from their table in a restaurant to save money at home. Jeff Yeager is on a mission to change that image with his second book The Cheapskate Next Door where he shares the tips of cheapskates across the US on how to live better on less.
While I typically don’t review many money saving tips books I was pleasantly surprised by Jeff’s book as he focus his book on living happily below your means. The point of saving money isn’t about hardship, but rather getting more of what you want in life and that message comes through loud and clear in this book. Also Jeff manages to actually inject a fair bit of humour in the book and also backup some of his findings with a research.
How do you research cheapskates? Simple, you give them a huge survey to fill out and let them share their tips for your next book. So while most books compare back to average people, Jeff’s actually has a lot of data on cheapskates which of course makes it more interesting to know where you fall compared to them. For example a few bits of interesting data include the average cheapskate home is only 1650 square feet well below the US national average of 2300 square feet and 80% of those polled have or plan to pay off their mortgage early. Suddenly my 1600 square foot house seems just about right compared to others of a similar mindset.
Yet I can’t hold a candle to one cheapskate that Jeff interviewed for the book: she literally got her house for free. She manged to find someone who had planned to wreck an older home and had it transported to her property and put in a foundation for it. Total cost $26,500 include remodeling and moving the house. Yikes now even I feel like I’ve paid too much for my house.
So for me it was nice to actually compare myself to similar people for a change of pace and get an idea that even for the frugal minded we don’t agree. For example, coupons tended to split people into even thirds: one third didn’t use them at all, one used them all the time and the last third used them sometimes.
I also really enjoyed the chapter on kids which approached parenting using the oxygen mask method, which simply put means look after yourself first so you can then really look after your kids. You don’t have to give you kids everything in order to love them and raise them right. In fact, showing them they can’t have everything in life all at once is likely good training for later on in life.
So overall if you can manage to get a copy from your library I would suggest reading this book. While most of the tips on saving won’t be new to you, you will likely find a few new ideas on how to save your money and get a few laughs while doing it.
Posted by Canadian Dream on August 18, 2011
Some times you read the right book just at the right point in your life and then interesting things start to happen to you. I recently had this occur to me when I borrowed The Art of Non-Conformity by Chris Guillebeau. Chris’s name might be familiar as he has written the online manifesto “A Brief Guide to World Domination” which is the inspiration for the book.
The subtitle of the book is “set your own rules, live the life you want and change the world.” Basically Chris is trying to teach people that you don’t have to just live a conventional life of: get some post secondary, get a job you don’t really like and buy crap you really don’t need and save for a distant retirement.
We far too often in life settle for what we want. We settle for our jobs, what we do with our time, or how much of a difference we can make in the world. Chris is trying to teach people in this book how to live a different way where you point your compass to your dream life and actually get there. He also deals with the common issues that are going to come up from doing this: fear of the change, people saying ‘no’ and generally people not understanding how you really do want to change the world.
He also rightly points out that most people really don’t want to ‘do nothing’, but we often actually done something that we love so we don’t understand how ‘work’ can be an enjoyable thing. Would you ever really get tired of doing something you love to help others? Likely a lot more slowly than your current job.
In a nut shell it is basically required reading in my mind for anyone wishing to be retired early as the book might change how you view your current goal of early retirement. I know it did for me. You see I have always had this idea that once I’m financially independent that I could then write as much as I want. Now I realize that I’m approaching the problem in the wrong way. By aiming to be financially independent first I’m basically making the assumption that I can’t make a living writing, which is really what I’m after. The problem is that is an assumption that I have made. What if I can making a modest living at writing? Would I need to be fully financially independent? No, I could instead aim for being partly financially independent from my investments and the rest from self-employment income.
So overall I enjoyed the book which was fairly short so you can read through it rather quickly, but working some of the ideas through your mind afterwards might take a little bit longer.
So what’s your dream and why are you not doing it?
