Book Reading Snowflakes

Ever since Oprah decided to give away Suze Orman’s latest book away for free on her website (you can still download it here), I’ve been on a bit of a Suze Orman reading kick. Or snowflake, in keeping with the building idea of paying off my debt.

I’m not normally a fan of Suze’s, as I do find her a bit overbearing and a tad condescending, but that’s usually when I see her on tv.  I have this visceral reaction to her and I end up changing the channel. But reading her books is a different story. I find her to be rather good as an author, as she does take her time and explain both her ideas and financial terms well.

Up first in the Suze Orman book snowflake is The Money Book for the Young, Fabulous & Broke.

The book is well-written, and speaks directly to all those 20- and 30- somethings who have a mountain of debt and don’t know what to do about it. It was written in 2005, but still resonates even today, as the ideas she talks about are still relevant. She talks about investigating your credit history, how to handle student debt, how to save, and making big ticket purchases. My only negative comment about the book is that it’s US-centric. There’s not much to be done if you don’t live in the US. Being a Canadian I’m always on the lookout for information that would apply to me. So while some of the specifics don’t apply to me and the rest of my countrymen (like opening a Roth IRA, or finding out my FICO score), the ideas are still relevant. Instead of finding out my FICO score, I just look up my credit history from TransUnion and Equifax. Instead of investing in my 401k, I invest in my RRSP. And so on. I just had to gloss over that US-specific information, and look at the advice that Suze was trying to communicate.

So go check out the book if you’re interested in hearing what Suze’s got to say about “Generation Debt”.

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