I love books about personal finance. So, of course You Need a Budget: The Proven System for Breaking the Paycheck-to-Paycheck Cycle, Getting Out of Debt, and Living the Life You Want by Jesse Mecham hit the MUST READ spot for me. I know that reading about personal finance is a little bit of a niche interest. However, I feel like I started out with very little financial education or smarts. So, to me, these books are helping me learn to be so much better with money.
Clearly this book is about budgeting. Basically it kind of lays out what the You Need A Budget software and system is all about. It boils down to — if I am remembering correctly — because it has been a few months, LOL, that every dollar needs a job. I also remember that this book talks about tracking all of your dollars spent. Essentially, the main tenet of this book is that to reach your financial goals and to improve your finances, you need a budget. You need to budget things like fun too, even if you’re struggling between paychecks because otherwise, you’ll break and go on a spending frenzy.
So, mostly, this book is alright. I did find myself very annoyed with the bits on saving for college and student loans. I thought it came across as out of touch with the price of college today. The author goes on about how he isn’t setting aside or budgeting money for his children to go to college. Instead, he expects them to save up the money from jobs worked as teenagers LOL and from scholarships. I guess it is slightly possible?
Anyways, he also says that his kids won’t take out student loans either. I just kind of wonder at exactly how much money he thinks his kids can make at the sort of jobs that will hire inexperienced teenagers? I think of myself and how I qualified for all the grants and for some scholarships and I now make good grown up money but am STILL in the hole $43k to student debt. It just came across as judgmental on that specific subject and completely rubbed me the wrong way.
In all, this is the kind of book you should check out if you are terrible at budgeting and need some real back to basics information. Otherwise, I found that I gelled with The Total Money Makeover by Dave Ramsey much more. There’s a wealth of personal finance books out there that you can certainly find one that hits your needs, but for me, this ultimately was not it.
Other reviews of You Need A Budget by Jesse Mecham:
- Life By Kristen – “it goes in-depth with real life examples”
- Dames In Debt – “The advice is great for a true beginner“
Purchase or Preview You Need A Budget:
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