REVIEW for The Citi Commonsense Money Guide for Real People

Thank you to Sarah at ECW Press for sending me this very important and topical book!!!







TITLE: The Citi Commonsense Money Guide
for Real People

AUTHORS: Dara Duguay and Bill Knight

GENRE: Personal Finance

RATING: 4 Stars

I like the title of this book "Commensense" which seems to escape many people (including myself) when it comes to anything to do with money. I have become more and more intrigued over the years at the way we spend our money and more speficially "why" we feel a need to spend. Although this book does not look at the in depth psychological reasoning behind the "buy, buy, buy" mentalit (it does not claim to) - this book does take another important look at money i.e. what is the best way to handle our money and, more importantly, what is the best way to ensure that we hold on to our money and make it work for us in the best possible way.

This book was written by Citi - which is a pretty major company in the US - and I like that they created a book for both US and Canadians. I read the Canadian version and loved that all the financial terms and various aspects were aimed at Canadians. Although I have read many financial books, I usually end up skipping entire chapters when they start talking about 401K's etc.... This book is all Canadian and includes a very interesting and detailed look at issues such as the cost of education and a very honest look at how much it really does us to own a home.

This book strips away alot of the "glorified" look at the issues of homeowning for example and tells us honestly that owning a home can/is more expensive than we think and that although it can be the best course of action - we need to look at owning a home from many different points of view before entering into this long term goal.

There is an interesting section on how to get out of debt which I thought was informative (although I tend to read the sections that affect me directly). But here again, I like that the book basically tells you that "yes" you can get out of debt, but you have to work at it. In other words, this book was not written with "pie in the sky" hopes and dreams.

It is a down to earth and realistic look at the world of personal finance today and is aimed at everyone (including those with $1.00 in the bank and those with one million dollars).

A very, very informative look at the state of our personal finances in these difficult times.