Morgen B. Rochard

This book is an in-depth guide into all things personal finance. It is approachable and filled with detailed examples and illustrations to help readers envision their own financial situations. The content is straightforward, and it is easy to follow along. The progression of the book makes sense as well, delving into more specific scenarios near the end. Though some of the retirement and specific US investment account information is not applicable to Canadians, there is still much value in show more the rest of the content in thinking through how to handle various financial issues from income generation to investing to how to teach children about money. The QuickStart Guide is a great compendium of a number of personal finance books out there if time is limited to reading just a handful of books. show less

Honestly, from the moment I downloaded this book I was rubbed the wrong way. I am not a big fan of "gotcha" moments. The first thing I was confronted with when starting to read Personal Finance QuickStart Guide was the words "Free Digital Assets" followed by "must be a first time Audible user; $15/mo. easy cancel anytime." I read that to mean there was free content available to the reader, but said reader had to sign up for Audible (new subscribers only!) and a credit card would show more automatically be charged $15 every month unless one remembered to cancel the subscription in time. And! And. And, when they have to say "easy" cancel anytime, I'm thinking maybe it's not all that easy. So. There's that. Back to the review: Rochard organized Personal Finance into two parts: Part 1 is an attempt to jump start personal finance improvement and learn how to navigate the financial world so that investment options become easier to understand. Part 2 is to confront financial problems and overcome them with confidence.
To fully review this book I had wanted to put into practice all of the advice and suggestions Rochard put out there - just to say what worked and what didn't. I didn't have time. For the most part, it all seemed like common sense. For example, take the very first scenario in the book: if you are going to drop down to one income and not change your expenses, you most definitely are headed for disaster. I did take note of the resources Rochard cited and do plan to read them for further information. I really should write a better review once I put into practice some of the exercises suggested. show less

Although not its intended audience, this would be a great gift for the recent grad or for someone who has yet to dip their toes into investing in themselves for retirement. My advice is to talk to a live person who does this for a living, but if you want to prepare for that conversation, this makes a great workbook to get your thoughts in line for those discussions. As a rule, Americans are great about avoiding financial conversations - use this book to break down that barrier.

I found myself nodding to many of the examples in the beginning of the book. I love the vocabulary in the back of the book because I plan to use this book with my homeschooled daughters. I really enjoyed the section on student loan debt and understanding taxes. The formatting made it a little hard to read and I wish I had a hard copy to mark up.