Review: One Year to an Organized Financial Life

One Year to an Organized Financial Life by Regina Leeds
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Given the title, I was hoping this would provide details in what to save in terms of finances, organization ideas, and record keeping requirements. I have read many magazine articles that offered advice on these same topics, but I figured that, given this was book length, I’d learn more detail. Instead of diving into the details of these topics, the author broadens the coverage to include topics beyond organization and record-keeping to general personal finance, including ideas on how to shop for the holidays, differences between IRA accounts, and the like. As a generic personal finance book, it was mostly OK, hitting most topics but missing a few. As for the organization of a financial life, I was surprised to see the author recommending destroying receipts early on, then mentioning later that some of those receipts might be required for recordkeeping for, say, real estate basis. And I was looking for suggestions on how to handle receipts and recordkeeping for product warranties. Not covered here, to my surprise. I also expected some coverage of information tracking, like tracking of net worth, as well as scanning and data organization. Not here. Overall, in many ways about what you’d expect if it had a broader title, but not quite deep enough for the title it has. If you haven’t read a magazine article on personal financial recordkeeping, this would cover it as a readable but incomplete introduction. If you already have a system or some knowledge, this isn’t necessary.

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