Yep, I’ve been reading a lot of Suze Orman lately. It’s not entirely on purpose, however. This particular book, The 9 Steps to Financial Freedom, I read because it was free. Not even “trip to the library” free, but free free. It was sitting on the bookshelf outside my bedroom door – my mother had purchased it way back in 1997, and judging from the placement of the bookmark, didn’t get very far through it.
Which is a shame, because she really should have.
While reading this book, I have to compare it to her other book, The Money Book for the Young, Fabulous & Broke. My brain won’t let me not compare them. I’d like to keep this review very short, so here goes:
This book is meant for adults (older than the YF&B crowd) who are in some sort of minor financial trouble. “Minor” meaning still living paycheck-to-paycheck, no matter what your income, or having a fair amount of debt that you don’t know what to do with, or just having general clueless-ness about finances (“major” would be complete bankruptcy and poverty, I imagine, and this book would not be helpful if you had no resources at all). Obviously, if you fall into the “young and broke” category, then her other book would suit you better. But if you know someone who’s a bit older and struggling with their money, you might want to read it and recommend that they do so as well, so that the two of you can begin to talk. It’s obviously also a good read if you yourself feel you are in such a situation.
I enjoyed reading this book, because I did learn a lot of things that weren’t covered in YF&B, and I liked the anecdotal nature of the book (almost every topic is discussed within the framework of a story from one of Suze’s clients, or Suze herself). I’m really hoping to get my mother to finally read all the way though this, so that she and I can begin talking about finances. It will be nice to have read the same book and literally be on the same page.
A quick aside: some of the information was outdated, because I was reading the original edition, but the book has since been updated. However, the last edition seems to have been printed in 2000, so you might want to double-check any specific information from the book before acting upon it – then again, you should double-check any financial information, regardless of when it was published!
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Ah i have the audio book on mp3 =) The only thing that I dont like about the Suze is that she focuses a lot on love/relationship type issues, marriage, children. If she REALLY is about the 20-something crowd then she would know that these subjects dont pertain to the majority of her target audience. I only got through the first half of it and I was bored to death with the other half. Oh well. I saw Suze the other day at a Congressional hearing about student loans. Very cool.^_^
Juan!!
it is everyones dream to have Financial Freedom but it takes hard work to achieve it. i am blogging and making websites in the hopes that it could lead me to financial freedom someday.