Broke, Broke, & Broke
I bought Suze Orman's The Money Book for the Young, Fabulous, & Broke several months ago but didn't get around to reading it until yesterday. The book covers topics such as how to increase your credit ratings, pay off debts (and in what order), start saving for retirement, and purchase big ticket items like a car and house.
Though I hate the sight and sound of Suze Orman on television, as she always seems to be yelling at you, I do like the book. It's a practical compendium of basic financial strategies for the ten or so years after college graduation. She lays out how to improve one's credit score without paying off your cards. She advocates using credit cards if necessary to establish yourself in a new career. She answers the questions, "Should I put more money into my savings account or my IRA?" and, "Should I use my IRA to pay off my credit card debt?"
Much of the advice can be used as a check to make sure you're doing the right things in the right order. For example, since the interest on my student loans is so low, it's better to pay the minimum and put money into a savings account rather than pay off the loans.
The latter half of the book is useless to me at this point. Since I'm broke, I won't be investing anything in the stock market, buying a car, merging assets with a spouse, or even thinking about owning property. But should I actually earn enough to consider any of those things (like if you happened to purchase 10,000 copies of Party Like a Rock Star), I'll go back to this book to see how to best go about it. It's a resource I plan to hang on to for a while, and that's more than I can say for most other books I've bought this year.
Though I hate the sight and sound of Suze Orman on television, as she always seems to be yelling at you, I do like the book. It's a practical compendium of basic financial strategies for the ten or so years after college graduation. She lays out how to improve one's credit score without paying off your cards. She advocates using credit cards if necessary to establish yourself in a new career. She answers the questions, "Should I put more money into my savings account or my IRA?" and, "Should I use my IRA to pay off my credit card debt?"
Much of the advice can be used as a check to make sure you're doing the right things in the right order. For example, since the interest on my student loans is so low, it's better to pay the minimum and put money into a savings account rather than pay off the loans.
The latter half of the book is useless to me at this point. Since I'm broke, I won't be investing anything in the stock market, buying a car, merging assets with a spouse, or even thinking about owning property. But should I actually earn enough to consider any of those things (like if you happened to purchase 10,000 copies of Party Like a Rock Star), I'll go back to this book to see how to best go about it. It's a resource I plan to hang on to for a while, and that's more than I can say for most other books I've bought this year.
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