Make Money Not Excuses Review: I Don’t Know Where To Begin
For the foreseeable future, every Friday afternoon I will be reviewing a section of Jean Chatzky’s Make Money Not Excuses and how it relates to me and my financial situation and outlook. The first review is here.
Last week I started my review of Jean Chatzky’s Make Money Not Excuses. The book sets out to empower women to take charge of their financial future by overcoming the fears that are holding them back. Today we’re going to look at the first fear: I don’t know where to begin.
Chatzky talks about that wherever she goes to give talks and presentations, there is always someone in the audience who eventually admits that their problem is that they have no idea where to start. Why? Why is that such a common problem, when we all make dozens of decisions every day? The answer is that with money, especially investing, there is often not a clear cut “right” and “wrong”. Which stock? Which mutual fund? The entire thing becomes too overwhelming. I know that I related to this when I read it, because it often does seem like I’m just shooting in the dark and hoping I don’t do something stupid. And, as the book says, the world of money involves higher stakes. So what if the South Beach bars I bought for my spouse don’t get eaten? I might hate wasting $3.00, but I’ll hate more losing thousands in the stock market. I saw myself in this, and I realized this is probably another of the long list of reasons I haven’t opened 529 accounts for my kids, and why my spouse hasn’t rolled over his IRA from a CD to mutual funds yet.
The best part of this chapter, to me, was The Power of Good Enough. In so many ways, I always think I need to be perfect, or the best, but Chatzky reminds us that we don’t. We simply need to be good enough. Our investments don’t have to outperform everyone else’s, they just have to do well enough to meet our goals. I have a lot of trouble with this, but its true. Trying to be perfect gets in the way of being good enough.
The Get Rich section of the chapter outlines eight ways to begin. I’m not going to go over each in detail, but I wanted to give a little snippet of what they are. In the book each has a great little mantra you can repeat to yourself to remember why it’s a smart choice along with the specific place to begin:
- Sign up for an automatic savings plan
- Call a local lawyer and tell him or her you need a will
- Pause before you purchase
- Start protecting your credit score
- Use a debit card, not a credit card
- Take money out of your savings or money-market account to pay off high interest credit card debt
- Call your benefits department at work and sign up for a 401K or increase your contribution, or a flexible spending account
- Save money on homeowners, auto, and life insurance – investigate options
The chapter ends with some questions from the money group, and my favorite is “What if I make a mistake?“. The answer? My short version of the answer – you will make a mistake. Do your best and move on. 
Next week we’ll look at I Like Money, It’s Numbers I Can’t Stand. I myself love numbers, but I found some useful tips here for the math-phobic among us.
April 18th, 2008 at 2:01 pm
I am putting this on my list to read. It looks like I might learn a thing or two. Thanks for posting your reviews. I look forward to seeing more.
April 18th, 2008 at 4:48 pm
Indeed, we all make mistakes. And I think she does a good job conveying that mistakes will be made and you don’t have to settle for perfect. Just good and good enough.
April 19th, 2008 at 3:57 pm
A lot of people won’t want to spend the money to have an attorney draw up a will. You can get a sample off the Internet or even buy a form, and that is far better than doing nothing. Half of Americans die without a will. Drawing up one yourself is much better than doing good enough. In accordance with this article, it’s “good enough.”
Be careful with debit cards. They can be swiped with hand held devices by unscrupulous cashiers who later download your information onto a blank card. They can drain your bank account. If you have overdraft protection hooked to your savings account, they can drain that too. Never use a debit card at a restaurant (where they take it to the back to swipe it), holler stop if someone tries to swipe your debit card out of sight, and do not use your savings account as overdraft protection. It’s also a good idea to put your paycheck in savings and transfer only what you need into checking to pay bills as they come due. Use cash or a credit card when eating out.
April 20th, 2008 at 11:11 am
I think when I first started on the money saving track I could completely relate to not knowing where to start and I like the summary you have provided of the book having read it myself. I thik that the best aspect that I like is that the way she wites is so straight forward and the ideas are often so simple and yet insightful that I ended up thinking, why didn’t i think that myself, it was so obvious!