Books by the Greats: Broke Millennial: Stop Scraping By and Get Your Financial Life Together

Hi friends,

Today, I would like to talk about a financial book (not investment) but about personal finance. I think it is time for me to zoom back out to the personal finance topic that my blog first started out with (Not sure if you remember that there was a time when I talked beyond the scope of investing?)

But yes, the decision to zoom out to personal finance has led me to this book - Broke Millennial - Stop Scraping by and Get Your Financial Life Together. The writer, Erin Lowry, is a millennial, who did a fantastic job of bringing across financial topics in a relatable and easy way for her reader. Oh, something relatable is that Lowry actually first started out blogging about her financial situations and her approach to personal finance before releasing this book (sounds familiar to a certain someone?). Hence, her story was especially inspiring to me and I hope that one day I may spread proper and correct financial knowledge to people.

Because of the knowledge that I already possess regarding personal finance, I was actually a little bored as I read the book. Let it be known that my previous comment does not mean that I find her book to be wrong or bad. Quite the contrary, it is because the information she wrote was so inline with my personal finance approach, I did not actually learn much from the book.

But here are the things that I love about the book:

1. Correct information - You can actually feel that she was writing in an objective and unbiased point of view (unlike me when I write about mutual funds/ insurance agents). Especially regarding investing

2. Comprehensive and wide range of topics - The content in the book covered a wide spectrum of personal finance topics (Approaches to debt, housing, credit cards, investments, renting, budgeting, how to handle finance in your friendships, how to handle money in your relationship) It is also because of this wide spectrum that I have decided to switch from my usual approach of summarising the majority topics in a book review to just commenting on the book. Hence, for those of you who are interested or want to start taking control of your personal finance and want a relatable and clever book to read, you can start with this.

3. Tips on managing your relationships - This was where I learned the most from the book. Lowry has done a great job writing about how to take steps to talk about money with the people in our lives (This can be your friends, your partner, and your parents).

For friends - The principle is easy here (the people who are not happy when you tell them you have a budget constraint ARE NOT YOUR FRIENDS). She has also advised that we should be direct with our friends when we are facing a budget constraint, furthermore, our friendships should not be materialistic (If your friend wants to spend time with you, the focus should be on spending time with you. Not spending money). 

For partner - Lowry has suggested taking the steps to get financially transparent (she calls this financially naked) with your partner. 1) Talk about your approaches to money (What is his/her mindset about money? Is it something to be spent away? Is it something to be saved?) 2) Talk about your debts (IMPORTANT: DO NOT JUDGE EACH OTHER  as you two are going through this process. The debts can be credit-card debts, student loan debts, mortgage, personal loans). 3) Talk about your net worth (Net worth = Asset - debt) 4) Decide your financial plans (This is such that you two can have a goal for you two to work towards) 

For parents - Lowry has advised that we should not expect our parents to support our financial situations. She has also suggested that when we begin earning a salary (and we are still living with our parents), we should be paying rents to our parents. This is as our parents may not have plans for us to continue staying with them (paying them rent might mitigate this)

But of course, there are still some limitations in the book. Because of the comprehensive topics in the book, Lowry did not have the opportunity to elaborate on the different topics. This is especially a pity as I felt that Lowry had a lot of "stuff" to write on the topics (especially about establishing a solid credit score, investment, financial relationships). Hence, when I was reading, the moment that I was hook onto the content - Lowry had to move onto another topic already.

So yes, it was a bit of a disappointment, because the content did not dive deep enough into the topics. 

Here are some of the things that I would change about my own financial journey after reading the book:

1. Having a credit card when I go out into the workforce (putting in 2-3 transactions a month and paying it off immediately when the bill arrives. Which is different from what I had in mind, I didn't have a good impression of credit cards since young)

2. Setting apart salary as rent for my family (Initially, my plan was to live rent-free in the house, which allows me to increase my personal stash faster, LOL. But I guess it would help in my family's relationship in the future)

With that, I hope that you will have the chance to read this book. I felt that Lowry's writing would be highly appealing and relatable to her target audience - Millennials. 

Till then,
Stay vested, stay frugal my friends.

Dionysius

Source:

Broke Millenials