Review of: Money Rules

The Simple Path to Lifelong Security by Jean Chatzky. Copyright 2012 Published by Rodale, Inc NY, NY

Jean Chatzky was a keynote speaker at FinCon13, the conference for financial bloggers at which I spoke in October, 2013.  She is a finance editor at the Today show and contributes finance articles to Prevention and Newsweek magazines.  She has written 5 books.

Summary:

Chatzky believes that we Americans need to have money concepts simplified in order to understand them. This book is all about trying to establish simple rules to attain financial security.

She puts forth 94 ‘rules’ to guide you there. The rules are divided into book sections including:

• Make Money
• Save Money
• Avoid (most) Debt
• Spend Wisely
• Invest for Tomorrow
• Cover Your Assets
• Do’s and Don’ts

A sample rule in the Spend Wisely section of the book is:

“Shop with a list.”

Money rules validates many of the habits I have formed over years of wealth building.

Read this book to understand and address:

This book covers commonsense rules of money management.   If you have misbegotten or no experience handling money or life, this book may be of value to you.

What I liked:

The book is a very easy read – short and in large print (in the copy I had). The format of a one sentence ‘rule’  followed by an explanatory paragraph made the book easy to put down and pick up without spending a lot of time figuring out where you are in the book.

What I wished for:

Many of Chatzky’s rules were actually more of a statement, such as this one

“Your education is your second most important investment”,

Her explanation made it plain that the rule was really more like

“Invest in yourself with a college education”.

If you have been around for a year or so in the adult world, you will find that many of Chatzky’s rules are the tired (not a misspell) and true ones we have often heard.

Favorite quotes:

“If you don’t ask for more money, the answer will always be no.” Rule 5, page 6

“The four most powerful words in any negotiation: Can you do better?” Rule 6, page 7