Brief Description
The hardest part of personal finance for most people is living within their means. In "The Ms.Spent Money Guide", readers are introduced to an innovative approach that focuses spending habits to allow for everyday costs and future expenses while finding money for things you really enjoy.
Learn More about the Book
Change your spending habits to achieve your personal and financial goals
The hardest part of personal finance for most people is living within their means. Spreadsheets, budgets, and tables make money management seem like hard work. In The MsSpent Money Guide, readers are introduced to an innovative approach that focuses spending habits to allow for everyday costs and future expenses while finding money for things you really enjoy.
MsSpent's bottom line is to help people have a more fulfilling life by helping them clarify their financial goals as well as develop systems and habits that manage their spending. We are all unique and there is no single way to manage money. The MsSpent Money Guide helps each individual discover a way that will work for them. Readers of all ages will benefit from MsSpent's message-if you are clear about your values, you will get more of the life you want with the money you have.
On the Back Cover
Praise For The MsSpent Money Guide
"An inspiring, sensible money guide that helps people learn how to spend without feeling guilty, deprived, or unhappy, and feel good about saving for their future. A wonderful book for anyone wanting to take charge and make the most of their financial life."- John Gray, author, How to Get What You Want and Want What You Have and Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus
"Deborah Knuckey shows us that spending and investing aren't just about money. It's about realizing our dreams, and being true to ourselves."- Carrie Schwab Pomerantz, Vice President, Consumer Education, Charles Schwab & Co., Inc.
"The Ms. Spent Money Guide is innovative and offers exercises that can really help readers learn about themselves and money. The Conscious Spending model is an especially innovative planning approach that reflects how people feel about money."- Dr. Gwen Reichbach, Director, National Institute for Consumer Education
"As a divorce planner and financial advisor specializing in women's issues, I found Deborah Knuckey's book both informative and interesting. Her Conscious Spending approach can help every woman, in every financial situation, to be more aware of her money habits."- Ginita Wall, CPA, CFP, Director, Women's Institute for Financial Education (WIFE.org)
"One of the best books to apply coaching principles to managing your money."- Henry Kimsey-House, coauthor, Co-Active Coaching Cofounder, The Coaches Training Institute
Front Cover Glimpse
"Over the course of your life, you will probably earn more than a million dollars. . . . How will you spend it? Will you consciously use it to live out some of your dreams, or will you unconsciously spend it just living? Will you consciously choose your lifestyle, or will you unconsciously drift into it?"-Deborah Knuckey, from The Ms. Spent(TM) Money Guide
Despite the many necessary expenses and unplanned events that impact spending, you have control over most of the money that goes-and too often slips-through your hands. You may not be an over-spender, an irrational spender, or a compulsive spender. You may even be great at saving money. But if you are not actively making choices based on what you want your money to do for you, you are most likely not getting as much of what you want as you could-which makes you an unconscious spender. "Conscious Spending," on the other hand, minimizes the money you spend on things you enjoy less, to free up money for what you enjoy more. That is what this book is all about-getting the most out of the money you work so hard for.
Using a coaching approach, The Ms. Spent Money Guide introduces you to an innovative way to change your spending habits without feeling deprived. Knuckey operates from a perspective of defining your goals and using your money to move toward them right away. The true money masters are those who align their resources, large or small, with what they really want out of life. In effect, they become masters of their destiny as well. The key lies in knowing what it is that you actually do want.
Conscious Spending motivates you to take charge because it starts with what you want. Whether it's buying a high-fashion wardrobe or making charitable donations, The Ms. Spent Money Guide's no-judgments bottom line is to supply you with the tools to illuminate your goals, get on track-and stay there. Among the many life-changing things you will learn here are how to:
* Manage your money so that you have enough left after everyday spending to pursue your dreams
* Keep sight of the big goals when you are mired in the smaller daily tasks
* Develop habits that make it easy-and painless-to stay on track
* Recognize the emotional costs of maintaining a lifestyle that does not bring you deep happiness-such as anxiety, unfulfilled dreams, and forever buried talents
Including fascinating case studies that will both inspire and instruct you, this indispensable book will equip you to uncover your priorities and values and live a more fulfilling life.
Review Quotes
1. "Knuckey's program is bascially sensible and unthreatening, low on 'shoulds' and sprinkled with humor...Knuckey's down-to-earth tone should appeal to 20-somethings..."
--Publisher's Weekly
2. Security is the foundation of the pyramid, which includes insurance, retirement planning, emergency expense funds and debt management. A strong security base means you're less vulnerable to unexpected circumstances, such as illness, divorce, unemployment or business failure. Of course there is a hitch. Under this plan, you have to fulfill the security foundation before you can float to the top - and then buy the fun stuff.— Juliette Fairley, Special for "USA TODAY," April 23, 2001
3. There's no "right" way to spend, says Knuckey, a personal finance consultant who calls her system "coaching" not "counseling," since "you may never understand the details" of your feelings about money, but "you can still change your behavior." Happily, her behavior modification plan involves no penny-pinching, few rules and not much of that "b-word"(budgeting), which is about as much fun as dieting. The bottom line to Knuckey's system is her focus on "Conscious Spending," which means only buying what really makes you happy. While there are the obligatory passages on the trap of escalating wants and the ball-and-chain of debt, her main message is positive: focus on satisfying yourself, and you'll never lack motivation. Apart from such truisms, there are occasional mentions of more radical notions, like the idea that having enough is a very real concept for people who have come to the end of their "journey of self-expression." Knuckey's program is basically sensible and unthreatening, low on "shoulds" and sprinkled with humor. Her own persona] lifetime spending program, for instance, assumes "that I will die broke" - why support lazy heirs? And, she advises, don't play the lottery: "if you want to buy hope, buy a drink at a singles bar!" By the end of the book, a complex budgeting plan sneaks in anyway, but readers who've gotten that tar won't mind.
Forecast: While there's no dearth of personal finance self-help books on the market, Knuckey's down-to-earth tone should appeal to 20-somethings, especially considering her online presence, detailed in the book's final pages.
--Publisher's Weekly
In The Ms. Spent Money Guide, Deborah Knuckey wants everyone to be a conscious spender.
You know, someone who never buys things spontaneously and never purchases things they never use. (The kind of sensible person, in short, who is the opposite of the heroine in the funny best-selling novel, Confessions of a Shopaholic.)
No one makes you spend money, but experts spend a lot of time and money making it hard to resist. "Advertiser' and marketers' success depends on their ability to link their products with your wants, and increase the volume until you can make a purchase. Think you can pit your self-will against their sophisticated marketing? It's tough," she writes.
The way around this pressure: Be aware of what triggers you to spend so freely. That, of course, is a lot easier said than done. But she does have exercises to put you into a less lavish frame of mind. One exercise: Take 5 minutes to write down all the influences that put you into a shopping mode - when did you first hear of the product? Did friends or colleagues egg you on? Do you know someone who has something similar - are you keeping up with the Joneses? The problem with conscious spending is that it requires a delicate balance of today's wants and tomorrow's needs. Knuckey says it can be painless by following her spending model. This hierarchy places the soul at the top of the pyramid. The soul category encompasses travel, vacation home, cable, books, music, hobbies, sports, massages, manicures and jewelry, among other things. After that come expenses for things like food, shelter.
Security is the foundation of the pyramid, which includes insurance, retirement planning, emergency expense funds and debt management. A strong security base means you're less vulnerable to unexpected circumstances, such as illness, divorce, unemployment or business failure. Of course there is a hitch. Under this plan, you have to fulfill the security foundation before you can float to the top - and then buy the fun stuff.--Juliette Fairley, Special for USA TODAY, April 23, 2001
