Book Review: Women & Money

I checked out Suze Orman's book Women and Money from the library a few weeks ago. I had never read an entire PF book before, and overall I liked it. Here are a few of my thoughts:

*I like how she broke the chapters down into manageable ideas, mixed in with her own personal story. Some of the information was pretty basic for where I am right now, but I still enjoyed reading it.

*The end had a lot of good information about saving for retirement. Some of the charts were helpful, and I can see looking them up on her website.

*I really liked the focus on how women handle money. Suze talks about how the Women's movement has come SO far. Women are involved in every area of the work force, are closing the gap in pay, and are incredibly independent. But for some reason, when it come to money we still tend to defer to men, or when there isn't a man in our life, we just sort of flounder in our finances. I think this is very true, and I liked how Suze empowered women to take control of their finances.

*I also agree with Suze that all women should have a credit card and a savings in their name only. I have known women who had to stay in shaky situations because of finances. I'm not saying women should secret away thousands of dollars here, but I do think it's valuable to have financial independence with a savings, and a way to build credit separate from her partner. I don't worry about having to flee or anything like that, but I plan on keeping my credit union credit card in my name only, and I have my Roth IRA in my name. I plan on that being retirement money for my (future) husband and I (and hopefully with enough to travel the world together!), but in an emergency situation it could help me out. Again, I don't see myself in that situation, but I don't think anyone does before it happens to them.

Overall I liked the book, and I would read another book of Suze's...though I could see how they would repeat themselves. I'm headed to the library today for more books, and I plan to browse the PF section, so look forward to another haphazard review in a few weeks!