30 Days to Financial Fitness, by P. M. Tave, MBA
My review: ★★★★★
This book is a very practical, common sense, approachable way to get your finances under control. It breaks up what may feel like a large and daunting task, into 30 approachable assignments. Each day’s assignment takes only a few minutes to read, but will take longer to act on. Some days that’s working on a list of debts, others it’s thinking about goals, others it’s connecting with people you’ve recruited to help you stick with your plan. I love that the plans in this book include recruiting your “village,” your supporters, to keep you on track. While some of the steps in this book will be real work – and the whole process will take some discipline and changes to your habits – everything in this book is manageable. It takes you step by step through some very achievable changes, and take a lot of fear and uncertainty out of the process.
The author has been through all the financial mistakes you can imagine, and has not just managed to recover for herself, but has helped a lot of other people get back on track. She knows the kinds of problems people struggle with, and knows how to make the process less frightening.
I definitely should have had some of these lessons myself before I left home and started living on my own! There are really only two ways to learn financial wisdom: read a book like this one, or run yourself out of money. Whether you’re just starting out on your own, or you’re in big trouble, or you’re just trying to make your income go farther – you will find this book helpful.
Through the book’s web site, FitMoney101, and its sister site, SingleParentSaves, there are links to a fair number of useful resources. They’ve compounded set of resources on Pinterest too.
There are some attempts to build a Facebook community around this book, but it doesn’t seem to have gone very far yet. I’m not sure if I would personally use those anyway – I find the concept of building my own village of supporters more powerful. But it might help people who don’t have a tight circle of friends to work with, or who would find more strength from a community of acquaintances who are trying to accomplish the same financial goals.
