Book Review: The Money Book for the Young, Fabulous & Broke by Suze Orman

Financial well-being, while extremely important to a successful and happy life, is not taught in schools and often not talked about at home as well. So is it no wonder then that Generation-Y is leaving college knee-deep in debt and thousands of first-time home-buyers are having their homes foreclosed on after failing to meet their sky-rocketing mortgage payments?

Financial guru and Oprah regular, Suze Orman, does an excellent job of outlining solid, practical advice on everything from getting a credit card to opening a 401K in her book, The Money Book for the Young, Fabulous & Broke. She offers information and real-life examples on how to manage the following:

• Credit scores
• Budgeting
• Job hunting
• Using credit wisely
• Retirement plans
• Investing
• Buying a car
• Buying a home
• Merging finances

This book is a must read for anyone just entering the “real-world” or for those who’d like to get a better handle on their finances.

Book Review: The Fred Factor by Mark Sanborn

In preparation for my extended holiday weekend, I stopped by my local bookstore to pick up some fireside reading material. While I was grabbing a few copies of The 4-Hour Workweek as last-minute holiday gifts for friends, I spotted the slender edition and decided to add it to my pile.

A mere 112 pages, The Fred Factor tells the story of Fred Shea, a local postman who goes above and beyond to make others as happy as he is. Fred bundles the mail and places it under the mat so it won’t get wet or stolen. He takes the time to talk to the people on his route so that he can learn about the names on the envelopes he delivers. To Sanborn, Fred is a symbol of all who are able to find meaning and satisfaction in caring out the most menial of tasks.

Sanborn claims that “Freds” are not born but made. His solution is simple:

If you want to be happy at work, you need to figure out how your work produces value.

For an investment banker, this is simple. If s/he does their job well, the investments make money and clients are happy. If a computer programmer invents new software, the company makes money, people are helped by the product and the programmer gets recognition and a promotion.

But what if your job isn’t exciting or meaningful? What if you sell tickets or sweep floors for a living? The Fred Factor, offers up example after example of ordinary people with ordinary jobs (waitress, cab driver, flight attendant) who regularly go the extra mile to make people happy. And that is the core motivation that Sanborn suggests will help you find happiness at work:

Helping others will help you be happy.

Finding meaning in your job can be as simple as recognizing that any interaction you have with other people affects them. Making copies at a copy center may seem like boring and pointless work, but to the student buying their course pack or the new executive who is presenting to the board for the first time, you are a very important person with the power to change their day from a positive to a negative one.

The power to be happy is within.

Sanborn also emphasizes one of the most important obstacles people face in their quest to be happy at work: themselves. I admit that environmental factors can have a significant impact on personal stress and happiness, I also believe that how you perceive your surroundings can also have a significant impact on personal stress and happiness. It’s all a matter of figuring out what works for you. Don’t like your commute? Try asking for flexible hours or telecommuting. Want more responsibility and interesting assignments? Ask for a project or just work on stuff on your own. Tried all these and still can’t make it work? Then it’s time to start looking for a new job. Life is too short to waste away at something that clearly isn’t working for you.

In summary, The Fred Factor is an excellent (if brief) tome to the benefits of a positive attitude. By recognizing the effects of your work on others, you can unlock the secret to your inner value and re-discover happiness at work.

Book Review: The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich by Timothy Ferriss

After seeing mentions of this book all over the blogosphere, I finally decided to go to my local bookstore and pick-up a copy to see what all the fuss was about. I ended up tearing through the book in 2 days flat and plan on buying copies as holiday gifts for friends.

Timothy Ferriss, entrepreneur/millionaire/wunderkind, shares his secrets of success on how to cut down your daily grind to (you guessed it) four hours a week so that you can free yourself to pursue your passions and live a life of leisure normally reserved only for the filthy rich.

The book can be divided into roughly three sections:

• Work Smarter, Not Harder

Ferriss offers tips on how to increase productivity at your current job and negotiate flexible work hours so that you can spend less time in your cubicle and more time enjoying life. He suggests approaching work from an objective angle—if I only had 2 hours to work, what would I make sure to get done? Cut down your personal workload to the bare essentials and off-load the rest.

Ferriss recommends this approach not only to professional life, but to personal as well. He dedicates an entire chapter extolling the benefits of virtual personal assistants. I finished the chapter fantasizing about emailing a woman in India and having her doing all my Christmas shopping online while I slept.

• Create Hassle-Free Income

Ferriss concedes that in order to emulate the life of the rich and famous, you must be rich yourself. However, his solution is not to work more hours for more money, but to set-up an automated stream of income so that you have the requisite financial resources and also the time to enjoy them.

He advocates e-businesses, speaking from personal experience, and outlines a relatively simple business plan (including a plug-and-play diagram) with explanatory business cases. Once you set up your e-business and the money starts rolling in, Ferriss claims you can outsource most of the personal inter-facing with clients and vendors and only have to check your email a few hours a week to pay the bills and keep the business running.

• Travel The World In Your Free Time

The last section is dedicated to helping you figure out what to do with all this newfound free time. Ferriss provides practical advice on when, where and how to travel on the cheap. He also has a chapter or two of philosophical questions to help you prepare for the inevitable identity-crisis you’ll experience as part of the “new rich.”

While this book offered some very useful advice on productivity, starting a simple online business and inexpensive travel, Ferriss’ overriding theme of pushing off work to the little guy rubbed me wrong. Maybe I’m being overly sensitive, but something about sloughing my work onto others while I go out and play contradicts my naturally hard-working nature and makes me feel a little guilty and hesitant to try the strategies laid out in the book.