The basis of the book is that a person is a Spender, Slender or Defender, and each one of these personality types will influence their success with money management. While there is recognition that a person may sit ‘in between’ two of these types, the descriptions lack depth and depict one-dimensional characters that are not very relatable.
Similarly, many other concepts are glossed over in the book, without being explained very well or including references to further resources that might help to understand them. Ideas that were well developed did not clearly link to a better understanding of money – for example, there is a lot of time spent on mapping out a person’s life to days of the week (i.e. a decade of life equates to a day of the week) and this is referred to throughout the book with phrases such as ‘Rick is married to Kate. They’re both early Thursday (forties)…’ I don’t see how this adds value when you could just say ‘They’re both in their forties.’
Many of the ideas are ‘Money 101′ that I’ve heard so many times before, with just a few ideas that were advanced enough to pique my interest. Again though, I was disappointed that there was no delving into these ideas or reference to further reading.
Editing could have been more thorough, as I often found when reading a sentence that it was repeating an idea (and in some cases, direct phrases) from another paragraph on the same page. On several occasions I had to read a section a few times to try to make sense of it, before concluding that it was a collection of ideas loosely thrown together with tenuous links.
The authors’ information states that ‘they have worked together over the past 15 years to develop at-work financial wellbeing programs.’ I get the feeling that they are probably very good at what they do, but that the information has not translated well into the book form.
In summary, my feeling is that with more time to develop concepts, pointers to further resources, tighter editing, and more relatable case studies, this could be a really promising book.
” includes an unlikely story about a young suitor who woos a potential partner with a spreadsheet”
I have to tell you that one of my dear friends, weeks into dating her now husband of ten years said to me “Katie, he makes the most beautiful spreadsheets for budgeting and time management” and practically swooned. So, there’s at least one time in the history of human courtship that it worked!
🙂
Haha, that’s great! Thanks for sharing. I should eat my words 😉