The Money Habit
The Worry-Free Way to Financial Independence
The Money Habit is an accessible, practical personal finance guide whose advice is applicable across tax brackets, taking a variety of saving and spending habits into account.
Simple but innovative, former angel investor and entrepreneur Mike Michalowicz’s personal finance guide The Money Habit is about stress-free money management.
Arguing for a systemic approach to fiscal management that takes human nature into consideration, preventing bad money moves and automating cash flow, this book includes tips as about what percentage of one’s paycheck should go toward necessities, luxuries, savings, and emergency funds. It also proffers advice for gaining financial clarity, setting long-term goals, investing, planning for retirement, and managing one’s debt. All of its recommendations build upon a person’s natural habits: “We’re working with what you already do, not asking you to become someone else.”
Adaptable across income brackets and for financial tendencies including overspending, impulse purchasing, reluctance to spend money, and money shame, the book works to account for different financial situations using memorable metrics like four financial seasons of life (recover, activate, fund, and balance). All draws upon personal experiences, case studies, and the anecdotes of friends and clients. For example, the book recommends opening “clarity accounts” to be used in conjunction with its six-account system, allocating money for specific expenses or to build toward a particular goal, using the illustration of an automatic transfer to move a small amount of money into a hidden account toward the goal of a dream vacation to a well-known health spa as support.
The book’s lightheartedness is often a boon, as with its dedication, which embodies both its money-saving mission and its general irreverence: “I dedicate this book to your wallet.” However, its overreliance on sometimes puerile humor undercuts its ultimate authority. Indeed, its use of expletives, shortened to their first letters and represented through grawlix (”@#$%!”); the hashtag #WorthIt; and a bad joke followed by “Ba dum tss” make it less persuasive.
While the book is helpfully interactive and includes immediate calls to action as well as long-term guidance, it is not fully self-contained to its ultimate detriment. For instance, it includes encouragements to visit a website for additional information and promises a bonus chapter after completing its 66 Days of My Money Habit challenge. Further, its abundant references to Michalowicz’s earlier book, Profit First, wherein he established an experience-based money management system for small businesses, are stultifying.
The Money Habit is an accessible, practical personal finance guide that is designed to ease financial stress in any season of life.
Reviewed by
Hannah Pearson
Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The publisher of this book provided free copies of the book and paid a small fee to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. Foreword Reviews and Clarion Reviews make no guarantee that the publisher will receive a positive review. Foreword Magazine, Inc. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.
