Book Review: Tales from a Financial Hot Mess
Nov 24, 2019
When Penguin Books got in touch offering to send me the Frances Cook book, Tales from a Financial Hot Mess, my very first question was, can I have three copies please so I can give some away? Of course, they said yes. If you would like to win one of two copies, check out how to enter at the end of the post.
When something took my interest I placed a sticky note to mark the page.
My own copy has ended up a right hot mess. I read it in fits and starts over a month and each time something took my interest I placed a sticky note to mark the page and as it turned out, quite a bit took my interest. Yet, when I sat down to write this review I found it hard to find the best way to summarise the book, so instead, I thought that I would share with you what got MY interest and where I put all of my sticky notes.
Consider my book review a random walk through my mind as read I her book:
So what is the best and cheapest mascara Frances? Please don’t make me have to google it, I’d rather you just told me. Pg 57
“...human psychology. If you get something that was $80 and is now $20, you’re not saving $60. You’re spending $20”. Pg 61 Yip, too true.
Frances paid cash for her car, a 2010 Mazda Demio. Same car as me! She explains about turning your back on trying to achieve status because no one really cares and it’s unattainable in most instances anyway - there will “always be someone the next level up, looking down at you”. Pg 73 + 79
“Make a budget, free up some money and before you do anything else with that cash, cut the debt”. Pg 100. I love hearing any and all “kill debt” messages.
If you want to be happy, get a savings account. Pg 119 Heck yes!
In regards to KiwiSaver “I knowingly held myself back from three years of stronger returns just because I felt unqualified to even look at it. Don’t do that”. Pg 151 Too many people have missed out on KiwiSaver returns, so PLEASE take action!
“You are not the exception, you are the rule”. Such a great heading to a chapter! Pg 153
“For me, I stick with index funds” Pg 159 (which relates directly to the chapter heading above), let’s not try to pretend that we know how to pick stocks as an active investor OK?
“The average person makes the most money with the least effort from passive investing”. Pg 162. Yip.
“Passive index investing made more money over a long time than active fund management. As always, the key ingredients are time, doing your research at the beginning, then leaving it alone to do its thing”. Pg 167
“Being a ‘good’ investor is not about picking the right stock or getting that one golden investment. It’s about regular, disciplined investing”. Pg 180. So very true.
“Supercharging your KiwiSaver is an important first step in saving for a house” Pg 202. I could not disagree more! KiwiSaver was developed as a retirement tool, how about we get back to using it for that instead?
Page 217 - The whole page! Going against public opinion she bought the smallest house she could afford, ‘resale’ be damned. It was cheaper in every way and when it came time to sell (because she needed to move cities), it sold! Nice one Frances.
And still on housing, regarding resale…”Personally, I’m not gambling such a big investment trying to guess what some mythical person in the future will pay top dollar for”. Pg 218. I used to work in the housing industry and I lost track of how many times I tried to have this conversation with clients who were in the process of over-committing themselves for the sake of ‘resale’.
“The end result is a mortgage we could pay off in about 20 years - maybe less - at current rates” Pg 223. This length of time surprised me given all the great advice she was giving which I thought should have lead to faster debt paydown?
Regarding salary - “You can talk to other people around you to see if they’re willing to tell you how much they’re being paid” Pg 229. “I’m quite open about my salary these days, at least with people I know and trust” Pg 238. She refers to her salary a lot throughout the book, which begged the question, what are you being paid, Frances? I’ve read your entire book, I think you can trust me.
On talking about her own money situation “I didn’t take the stigma away before feeling okay to talk about it. It took talking about it before the stigma in my mind went away”. This could have been the opening paragraph of the book because we should all just forget our insecurities and talk about money more. Pg 244
“I truly believe that secretiveness about money is hurting us more than it’s helping us”. Throughout the book, she said that she kept separate finances to her husband and in this chapter, she finally explained why - and why she changed. Pg 245
“My story shows that any idiot can get it together and learn more about money. This idiot did”...As it turns out, the basics of personal finance aren’t all that complicated. Truly” Pg 260
This might go down in history as the most poorly executed book review ever, but the point is that there is a lot of information in here that will appeal to a wide range of people and at the end of the day you will read this book and put your sticky notes on different pages to what I have selected. My notes above don’t summerise what was in the book, she tells a pretty long story (as with any book on money I wish it was half the length), it’s just what I pulled out as being relevant to me.
And that’s fine.
Because each of us is at a different stage in our personal finance journey we each need different information and chances are you will find something appropriate to yourself in the pages of her book as there is a lot of good stuff in there.
She wrote the chapters in the order with which she began to change her financial life, starting with “rehab won’t work until you’re ready to get sober” and she spoke with a lot of experts to round out her story and I think she has managed to encapsulate her fears and successes pretty well. There is a lot of behavioural stuff in here; she is a reformed shopaholic and had to change her mindset and her behaviour to tone down her spendy ways and she explains her techniques well. She has a friendly writing style and she explains how “any idiot can get it together and learn more about money”. So this book is part psychology and part practical and that fits my own personality pretty well. Some money books are dead boring, but I reckon that anyone could read this and manage NOT to fall asleep which is high praise indeed!
I guess my only niggle was given that the title on the cover included “the realest guide to money...and how to have more of it” and given that in the final chapters she really encouraged us to talk about the specifics of money with our nearest and dearest and to those who have an interest (which I figured is everyone who has read to the end of her book), I did want some of her actual numbers in regards to salary, house prices, mortgages and KiwiSaver etc. Not because I am nosey and want to pass judgement but purely because as Frances understands and as I understand, people want to know actual numbers because it gives them a reference point to start from themselves.
I had a coffee with a woman recently who is the same age as me and in conversation, I told her my KiwiSaver balance sits at about $77,000 because her knowing my number was relevant to our discussion. It was the first time she had ever known someone else’s balance and she instantly thought of her own and it gave her a point of reference and something to think about. Sharing this simple stat saves us having to guess if we are on the right track or not. Perhaps, as Frances explains, she will share this if she is one on one with you if you happen to be having a coffee with her, but the chances of that happening are unlikely so it would have been helpful to just lay it out in the book as I could not have seen the harm in it. Personally speaking, I would find it far harder to put “I have horribly sensitive skin, which can break out in both eczema and acne at a moment’s notice” (Pg 55) in the pages of my book than what my KiwiSaver balance is.
So, in conclusion, because all good book reviews should end with a conclusion and a recommendation, I’m giving it a 👍. It will do you absolutely no harm at all to read this book (except where the advice is to use your KiwiSaver purely as a house deposit), you might even have a bit of a laugh and you will most likely learn something too. I have a carefully selected library of personal finance books and I’m happy to keep this one on my shelf, sticky notes and all.
If anyone local to Central Otago would like to borrow my copy, just get in touch.
If you have already read her book, it would be wonderful if you could also leave a comment below about what you took out of it.
Happy Saving!
Ruth
BOOK GIVEAWAY
The BOOK GIVEAWAY of Tales from a Financial Hot Mess by Frances Cook was a great success and congratulations to our two winners who each won a copy of the book. Thank you to all my subscribers who entered.
