Beating Broke

Personal Finance from the Broke Perspective

The Skinny On Time Management

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The Skinny On: Time Management

By: Jim Randel

I recently did a review of The Skinny On: Credit Cards, by Jim Randel.  This book came along with that one and several others.  Disclosure: The publisher sent them to me for review.

As any of the other Skinny On books, this one is short and to the point.  Randel wastes none of your time filling you with fluff.  Instead, he breaks down several much more complex time management systems, adds a few things of his own in, and then presents it in a stick-figure laden slide show of a book.  Having read most of the books that he talks about previously, most of the information was merely a review.  The few things that Randel added in of his own were minor.  What I really liked about this book is that it can act as a quick and easy refresher of the principles that I’ve learned elsewhere.  If it were my first book on time management, I might feel a bit differently, and it might have been much more educational.

I did like it, though.  And it’s probably one that I’ll keep around to reread every once in a while for that reminder factor.  And since it’s nice and short, I don’t have to worry about taking a whole lot of time out of my schedule to reread any of the longer time management books that I have read, just a quick read through this one.

Early Retirement Extreme

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Early Retirement Extreme

By: Jacob Lund Fisker

When many of us think of retirement, we think of some far off time in our future when we’ve saved enough money and reached an age where the government will allow us to withdraw our money without significant penalties.  When Jacob Lund Fisker thinks about retirement, he’s thinking about the here and now.  You see, Jacob retired when he was 33.  How?  By following  the principles that he outlines in the book.

What this book has done for me is to turn much of what I thought about personal finance on it’s head.  At this point, I can’t say whether I will attempt to try and join the ERE army or not, but I can guarantee you that I will be looking at things from a different point of view from here on out.

The book itself is dense.  Dense in that it’s packed full of information.  There’s no way that one read through will be enough.  You’ve either got to read it several times, or supplement that first reading with plenty of reading of Jacob’s blog.  It reads (the book, not the blog) much like a textbook does.  It’s even segmented into sections the way a textbook would be.  Luckily, it’s not all facts and figures and there’s a bit of discernible humanity in there as well.  Jacob lays out how he managed to retire at 33 by some extreme saving.  Then he goes into how he lives off of less than $10,000 a year that he draws from his investments and a few odd jobs (that he enjoys) during the year.

By no means is the Early Retirement Extreme going to be for everyone.  It’s a hard read.  But, it is well worth the read.  It’s the “thinking man”s personal finance book.  It’s not chock full of anecdotal evidence, but raw hard facts and numbers.  It will change the way you think about personal finance, and life in general.

You can buy it directly from the Printer or from Amazon(click the picture)

Psych Yourself Rich

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Psych Yourself Rich

By: Farnoosh Torabi

As a personal finance blogger, I read a lot of books on personal finance.  These books range from the simplified budgeting and saving books to more complex books (like Early Retirement Extreme, which I’m reading now).  In all honesty, Psych yourself rich lands somewhere in the middle.  Parts of the book are over-simplified.  Other parts seem to make things more complex than they should be.

One of the biggest things that I had against the book was that it wasn’t written for me.  What does that mean?  Well, the book was written for the younger folks out there.  The 20-somethings that are struggling with their careers, relationships, and money.  I’m a 30-something (just barely, though) that is pretty secure where I work, married, and have a pretty good grasp on my money despite my money being a bit unruly at times.  Many of the topics just didn’t apply directly.  I certainly could take the general lesson involved and it could apply, but at the surface, it isn’t the same.  Also, it’s more of a primer.  It doesn’t go in depth on a lot of the topics, choosing to cover more topics, but shallowly.

The one thing that I really enjoyed about this book.  Yes, enjoyed is the right word.  Even for as strange as it may seem to use that word with a non-fiction finance book.  I’m a sucker for the psychology of things.  The why we do what we do.  Torabi did an excellent job of exploring the psychology behind many of the financial moves that we make.  Speaking from experience, she wrote extensively on the psychology of the layoff.  I, personally, have never experienced a layoff.  I’ve been lucky.  I know there are plenty who have in the last few years especially.  More important than the psychological effect of the layoff, she takes on the attitude you need to take once you’ve been laid-off in order to quickly recover and gain your feet again.

The psychology aside, this is an excellent book for a beginner in personal finance.  Someone who finds themselves deeply in debt, or facing repayment issues based on a layoff.  It’s also aimed at those (like me) who like to know why they are doing something, or why they are feeling the way they are about their finances.  The book is well written, with some very nice asides that give it a personal touch.