Gail Vaz-Oxlade

I do not have kids, I read this book to look at my own values regarding money, but it is a well-organized and articulated method for building skills at age-appropriate levels to develop good financial habits later in life. Revolutionary? Probably not: you could likely think out most of the lessons. However, this plan is well-thought out and can be of great help if there was something lacking in your education that now you will have trouble passing on to your kids, e.g. Most generations did not get any education in credit cards because our parents didn't have them. There's so much to teach kids, I think it can only be of a help to have one lesson thought out for you, a starting place for you to make it your own.… (altro)

While I would not say this is Vaz-Oxlade's best book, it has all the typical elements you would expect from her writing. The advantage to it is the short size of its information: each rule encompasses a page or several, but nothing more. This information is pretty basic but can give a solid foundation to get your started.

This book I think would be best described as the "big picture" book: she gives a wide perspective on practically all the subjects that encompass your personal finance picture, with enough detail to get you started and estimate what the finer details are going to look like. However, this book cannot form the basis of your entire personal finance collection. Eventually, you are going to need more that will go into greater detail.

I tried to sympathize with her goal in organization, a fairly random/distributed organization, in her trying to be certain that one couldn't take in information in isolation. However, this jumping around led me to have trouble synthesizing the information and having to take MORE breaks in reading, either because I was in a certain mode and would take time to switch subjects, or trying to look back to connect one rule to another. That jumbling just made me have to think harder.

As well, Gail did a few of her typical rants or acting like an expert in more than finance (cobbler, no further than the shoe!). However, if you have read Gail's writing before, or even watched her shows, you should be familiar with her style. You can always just skim the paragraph until it is over.

Overall, I took the most notes for this book as opposed to any of the other personal finance books in my notebook (in part because I wrote every rule, even if I did not make notes on that rule). While I would not recommend this book for everyone, it can be good for widening your perspective (especially if you suspect you may have a gap in your financial management) or if you are a beginner in this area, ready to think beyond the "money in, money out" aspect of financial management. However, this book is not going to help you with intricacies or advanced topics.… (altro)