Your Money…The Missing Manual
By Artie Alinikoff
Your Money…The Missing Manual
By J. D. Roth
O’Reilly Media
http://www.safari.oreilly.com
US $21.99, CAN $27.99
ISBN: 978-0-596-80940-9
324 pages
Anyone who has seen the award-winning website Get Rich Slowly (www.getrichslowly.org) knows about our author, J. D. Roth. In short, J. D. was a lousy money manager who turned his life around, financially and personally, by learning everything he could about finances and putting his new knowledge to work for him. In the beginning of his turnaround he helped his friends and family with money matters. He started the website, Get Rich Slowly, as a leg up to those he knew. Soon his enthusiasm and smarts got him more recognition than he ever expected, and the rest is history. Money magazine named J. D.’s site the "Web’s most inspiring personal-finance blog."
Of all of the subjects one can talk about, money is one of the most discussed and least understood. Here in the United States many of us have terrible money managing habits. Yet we have more money per capita than any other country on the face of the earth. One would think we’d be better at managing it.
We are inundated daily with radio, television, and magazine advertising to buy this if you want to be liked, or sign up for that if you want to be happy. The list of items available, for a fee, which will supposedly change your life for the better is almost infinite. But the fact is that most of these items, schemes, or products just don’t make us happy. Why? Because, as has been documented by psychologists and scientists, even though in the short run things can make us feel happy, in the long run they have little or nothing to do with our true feelings of well-being.
J. D. Roth has that common thread running through his text: "Money and things will not make you happy." Throughout the book he shows us why and how we respond to buying necessities and luxuries, and proves, through interviews and real-life stories, that happiness comes from a feeling of personal fulfillment not attached to items or money. He also shows us how to achieve that personal fulfillment while we fulfill our financial obligations to ourselves, our families, and creditors.
Your Money…The Missing Manual is not a cutesy quick-fix for those of you with the "McDonalds Mentality."
If you’re looking for something like that, keep looking. But if you’re looking for a real manual, a text book if you will, on money management, spending habits, and the psychological insight needed to understand why we do some of the dunderheaded things we do, this could be your ticket. Your Money The Missing Manual can show you how to get out of debt and to truly understand what makes you, personally, tick. You will learn how to manage your resources so that you can pursue the things/activities that make you truly happy.
This book is written for you and me; regular folks who would like to be able to control their spending and create a budget that works for us (not some accountant somewhere). The lessons and included examples can lead us gently through many of the facets of living life in this dollar-centric world and come out smelling like a rose. It is full of common sense tips and true stories of folks just like us who got themselves into a mess and were able to climb out of the hole. He reveals some of the psychological games which cause us to trap ourselves into damaging thoughts and habits. J. D. ought to know. At one time he was the poster boy of bad money managing habits. Now he’s the prince of sound fiscal reasoning and hard lessons learned.
We can all learn something from this wonderful book. It is a text book, pure and simple. It can be read straight through, or it can be referred to as times and situations warrant. The only criticism I have of J. D.’s comprehensive offering is that it is written as a text book, with a lot of detail, charts, and mathematical examples a-plenty which can make it ponderous reading at times. If you’re serious about getting your financial life in order this should not present much of a problem, and I have no suggestions as to how this subject matter can be presented in a more entertaining way.
Best of all, the information is right there. All you have to do is follow along. Use the strategies J. D. has laid out for you, and your money problems, thus many of your personal problems, will eventually be behind you. And I might suggest, true happiness and fulfillment will become you.
email – MyMac Magazine – Twitter – Advertise – Reviews Archive – Podcast
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.