Why I love money | Money Made Easy book review

When I think about money, I think about having fun. Sure, money is a tool. It can build your business. It can buy you a house. It can buy you a camera. Should it be easier than it has been? Absolutely. 

Alright. Keep reading, and let's find out how to have fun with money. Specifically, we are discussing the nonfiction book, Money Made Easy. The author of the book is Alison Baggerly. The book's theme is business economics. The tagline of the book is how to budget, pay off debt, and save money. YES!

Why did I pick this up? Because I want to know how to make money easier. I want money to be easy. I want to spend money more easily. I want money ideas to be easy. I want to think of money as a tool that I use at my disposal. I want money to be easy. 

Allison is phenomenal. Money made easy. So lots of things in this book. Allison talks about investments. Allison talks about what to do with your life insurance account. She talks about how to max out your 401 (k). What I really thought was important was that there were enough personal stories in this book to make her relatable without you being like, yeah, but that's not gonna work for me. So Allison and her husband are school teachers, and there's a time when they decide they wanna be financially independent. And when they decide that, she gets so excited. She's telling everybody she knows, oh, I can't wait to do this. And one of the teachers at her school is like, you can never do that. You're a school teacher. Excuse me? 

So lesson number one that I thought was the biggest from the book. If people are not gonna appreciate your dream or at least cheer for you, you don't have to tell them. I know we like to share things with people, especially on social media. I'm on my financial independence journey. Yeah. But if everybody around you is literally living paycheck to paycheck, they don't give a shit that you're on your financial journey. They don't. And so sometimes you need to share your goal, Allison, with your husband, and you two work on it, and let everybody else understand it once they see it's done. This was written in 2023. So I would say you don't need to crowdsource your ideas. You don't need other people to rally for you. Sometimes that can be beneficial, but you have to know that they understand what you're doing and that they're gonna support you. That was number one. Allison had her husband through this entire journey. Now that doesn't mean that they were on the same page. Right? She talks about how she likes to go shopping when she's having an off day.

She likes to show up at the big box store. No agenda. What jumps into my cart? What do I feel like buying? 

So I really like that. There was an entire chapter on impulse shopping, but what I really appreciated was second major lessons from the book is that Money Made Easy enocurages you to set up a bidget every month. This. Blew. My. Mind.

Why did this resonate with me? Because other books have told me that I'm not a budgeter. I'm a tracker. I don't really look at what I'm spending. I'm just like, oh, well, this is or I don't plan for how to spend. I just look at what I spent and then decide, I wanna adjust or change something, but then I don't adjust anything because I don't actually have a budget. I just could not wrap my head around, if I want a pair of jeans, how am I supposed to have money set aside for this pair of jeans I never knew I needed? I just my my mind was just like, I don't what do you mean? And so that sounds silly to say right now that, yeah, would just go on and buy the jeans and just be damned.

I'd figure out where to find the money later. But sadly, a lot of books I was reading were telling me that. And they were just like, don't be the person who doesn't do that. Buy the jeans and figure out how to make the money back.

Please don’t do that. Especially if you're married and you guys have financial goals. 

You can't just be all willy-nilly like that. But all that said, Allison says you need a monthly budget to create one. This is what we have money for. Bam. Bam. Bam. Bam. Bam. 

So then, when you want a pair of jeans, you don't look at your account and say, "Have $500." Great. You look at your account and say, what am I planning to come out of that $500? If there's anything left, I can get that. Because she also has you add a little section, a little special little, like, 10% boost that you just always have there. So then you could be like, great. Nothing is allocated for the $75 jeans. But also, you would look at where you're supposed to be spending your money. Then at the end of the month, you come back, and you look at it, and you're like, oh, we severely underestimated the food. Oh, we forgot that Christmas was coming and we need to prepare for that. Oh, oh, oh. Then you make changes and now that is your budget for the next month. First of all, that's too much work. Right? Not if it works. And so I'm the type of person who actually likes to get into the finances. The problem is you can start to look at your numbers, and then it's been five hours, and you're still looking at them.

I thought I had forty-five minutes to do this. That's because I'm trying to reconcile the spending over the last four months. If you're doing it every month, you actually can break it down into chunks. I've actually enjoyed it so much, and it's become so easy that I have money dates every Monday and Friday, where I sit down and look at it because I'm not even trying to wait for the month. I know. That blew my mind. I frequently say that I dislike passive-aggression; in fact, it makes me aggressive-aggressive. I want to know what's happening. The fact that I get to review it every month, maintain my tracker status, and adjust based on the actual budget.

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So I took this with a couple of things that I learned from other books, where as soon as I get paid or any amount of money, I don't care if it's $25, I take that, I split it up 50% into things that I have to pay for, and then the other five different 10% accounts. And that has worked out really, really well for me. So, yes, this book really did make money easier. The book starts with a story about how Allison is surprised to find out she's pregnant before she and her husband were planning it, and then they have a second son just as they're hitting their financial stride and managing everything. BAM, like throws a curveball at you.

And so there's a lot of stuff in there about how kids come into your budgeting, and that really changes. And I appreciate that because I have a five-year-old, and we're going through some of that. Right? So that was excellent. Really, really love that. 

The third lesson that I enjoyed was removing shame when it comes to budgeting. I absolutely loved. Allison talks about how no matter what you plan for, if you are not going to be doggedly to your budget and just shame yourself, and just how dare you, I knew you couldn't have saved it, I knew you'd never be ready, you're probably going to slip up. And by slip-up, we mean just live your life and end up spending more than you planned. If that happens, look at the next time you're gonna be paid and make a mini budget. She's like, alright. So let's say you have $500 last time you looked, you went and did something, now you got $1.75. When's the next time you pay? Four days out? What needs to be paid within those four days? Damn it. That's easy. Gotta do that. Gotta do that. Gotta do that. Oh, I don't have the money for that. What else can you do? Oh, I like to pay it on that date, but technically, it's not due to the I'll be paying by then. Or, oh, remember we had that money in that extra account? Or, oh, maybe I could just ask my spouse if he had some money set aside. Or a check. Then that's when you get to get creative. Oh, remember we had that gift card to that store? Remember we had the this? Remember we had the that? 

Suddenly ou're already thinking about things in terms of I am paying attention to this and we're handling it now, all of a sudden, you can see all the opportunities that your mind was previously blocking out. 

Amazing! I mean, it literally cannot get easier than that. It it absolutely cannot. And I wish I could take you guys through every single example, because it's so good. And it really made things really, really simple. She wasn't condescending. She just laid it out. Now I never would have considered a mini budget. I remember I did one, I was like, okay, until next payday, I need $3.31 for something. And I was like, well, let's go on and just do a mini, mini budget. Well, for the next one, okay, I'm gonna need $6.64 by the next payday. And I was like, alright, cool. And it's just like, I know it's cliche, but it's true. What you put your attention on grows, and also the thing that you avoid controls you. And so if you are constantly like, oh, I just have money. Money is just everywhere, blah blah blah blah.

You're not dealing with it. And so then you're actually in the back of your mind always thinking about it, or you can't even go to a fast food place without checking your account because it's like, your avoidance is actually controlling you because it's like, look, she cares so much about this money. She refuses to even look. Whereas if you're looking at it and you're like, okay. I kept finding myself, no lie, sitting down and being like, shit. Did I spend money today? I haven't spent money in three days. And guess what? I haven't needed or wanted anything. Because it's actually really fun to sit down and be like, I needed $3.31 and I spent $3.31. Oh, now that does not take away from the spontaneous times when you want jeans. But I tell you what, someone's birthday came up, and I was like, okay. Let's see. I had already wrote it down. Because when you are reviewing things from point two when you're reviewing them every month, you're just like, oh, remember you got that birthday party coming up. Oh, wow. It's October. Remember, December is coming. You're gonna need Christmas You are now in control. Your money is easy because you're constantly looking at it. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Okay. I have quite a few money book reviews on this channel because I don't even wanna call it an Achilles heel.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJSrdCCfBHM

I just could not make heads or tails of it. I just was like, why do I need a budget if I can just make a shit ton of money and then just pay for everything I want? Well, because my expenses would probably grow to the amount of the money I was earning. I've done that before. I've literally started a business, needed some spare money, got a job to pay for VA to handle things in the time I didn't have because now I was working, and then I literally ballooned the business because I had all this money coming in from working. I know how to spend some money. Now how to make money easy, how to make budgeting easy, how to make paying off debt easy, how to make saving money easy. I needed Allison. I needed this book to help me with that. Alright? So would I read this book again? Absolutely. This is from the library. I do not buy a book unless I've read it three times. If I pick this up and read it another two times, I would absolutely buy it, but it was phenomenal. I'm definitely gonna return this so someone can use it, and I know I'll pick it up again because it was really weird. Alright. So if you enjoyed this book review, I know you’ll enjoy the book reviews tagged below. 

Until next time! 

Kyla