Personal Finance - Blog About Books

Money for Life is a book about personal finance and budgeting that I have not yet read, but I just downloaded the free .pdf copy of it.

The book follows the path of two fictional characters, Ryan and Christine, and they try to “regain control and to successfully manager finances in today’s society”.

This finance book is targeted at people “seeking a blueprint for achieving long-term financial wellness”, which I think is the audience that pretty much every personal finance book ever written is targeted.

Here is a quote from the site about what the book is about:

“Ryan and Christine Richardson once enjoyed a solid relationship. They were educated, had a good income, and were focused on successfully raising a family. Like so many in their situation, they had allowed financial stress and frustration to erode their happiness. Join them on a journey as they transform their lives and begin to understand how to live within their income, stop accumulating debt, and build a solid financial future.”

It looks like the free book is a lead up to, “Money for Life Success Planner”, which “with this companion piece, the Money for Life Success Planner, you too can easily follow the same 12-week financial fitness program to reach your objectives. A program that makes your journey to financial security more manageable, predictable and even enjoyable”.

There also appear to be adds in the actual book for some of the products and tools used to get their financial budget under control, like mvelopes.

Money for Life looks like it should be an interesting read, and since it’s free for download, which you can do here, I’ve got nothing to loose by trying it out ..

Over at the Get Rich Slowly Blog J.D. Roth writes a lot about personal finance, including some reviews about personal finance books.

One of his latest reviews is of the book The Incredible Secret Money Machine by Don Lancaster. Although the book is now 30-years old, being published in 1978, the book still has some fantastic and relevant tips.

The book is about starting and running a small business. It isn’t a book about earning millions, but rather a book about earning a comfortable income doing something that you enjoy doing.

The book states that to build a “money making machine” is to stay true to four basic principles:

You have to be heavily into a technical or craft trip on a total lifestyle basis
You must want to stay in control
Your income goals should be just enough to keep going
Be gentle

There are other tips that he shares for building a money machine:

Have as many different sources of income as possible
Have complementary sources of income
Deal directly with the customer
Work toward deferred income
Know the difference between cold cash, imaginary money, and megabucks
Separate frugality from stupidity
Avoid psychic energy sinks

J.D. Roth comes to the following conclusion about the book:

Some of the advice in The Incredible Secret Money Machine now seems quaint, 30 years after the book was published. The author’s “hip” language and many of his examples are outdated. But smart readers can extrapolate, and still learn a lot. You have to be able to read Lancaster’s advice on letterhead, for example, and think of it as advice for web sites.

Although Lancaster believes that you must be into your money machine on a total lifestyle basis, I’m not sure that’s true. I think you can have a part-time money machine. A full-time money machine will be more profitable, of course, but a part-time money machine is a great way to start.

You can read his full review on his blog: Get Rich Slowly – personal finance that makes cents – The Incredible Money Making Machine.