Review: Wise Bread’s 10,001 Ways To Live Large on a Small Budget

I received a free copy from Wise Bread who just launched a new book called: 10,001 Ways to live Large on a Small Budget.

Catchy.

Wise Bread is a fantastic site that has a lot of great writers that cover the gamut of articles ranging from money talks to advice, as well as finding coupons and deals.

On to their book!

The Categories

Frugal Living

1. Food & Drink
2. Travel
3. Health & Beauty
4. Fun & Entertainment
5. Shopping & Bargain Hunting
6. Green Living
7. Education & Self Improvement

Personal Finance

1. Financial Planning and Budgeting
2. Credit Cards & Debt
3. Investing Your Money
4. Housing and Home Improvement
5. Career & Money-Making Ideas

As you can see, it really covers what the whole of blogosphere (in personal finance anyway) could talk about.

The tips are easy to read, well laid out, and certainly helpful. There are a couple of things I learned, mostly in the Housing and Home Improvement section (as I don’t own a home yet), but in general, it’s a good refresher read for frugal and fun tips on how to save in all the many small ways.

If you start saving in small ways, it adds up to big amounts because the savings just become GOOD habits for life that are hard to break.

• You turn off the tap when you brush your teeth.
• You turn off lights when you leave a room.
• You are careful about what you spend on your credit cards.

With that said, I had a pretty huge bone to pick with the writers of Wise Bread.

What I hated about this book

I was not too keen on the fact that they left out a lot of other great PF bloggers who I don’t think can be considered big-time, but offer a lot of great tips. It was kind of irksome to see them stick to just the three that they knew – J.D. Roth, Trent and Ramit.

If they are going to link to a couple of PF bloggers, they should have thought about the rest of the awesome blogs out there too. Not just the big names who have quit their full-time jobs to make money off repeating the same old stuff.

I would have liked to have seen them link to a list of their own personal finance bloggers on their site, or suggest the Festivals of Personal Finance or Money.

I think we’re missing out on a lot of great PF writers who aren’t in their cosy, little elitist circle who always link to each other instead of trying to find new writing PF talent who doesn’t repeat the same kind of PF bullsh*t over and over again.

A couple of great PF blogs off the top of my head with solid, consistent content that really helps and makes you think about your finances instead of always telling you how to save on using toilet paper or save by calling to lower your credit card interest rate.

(Sorry, can’t list everyone..! But you’re all on my blogroll).

I mean, it’s bland to have these PF bloggers who pretty much talk about the same thing amongst themselves in their cosy little world, but can we see a little more range in demographic at least?

Specifically WOMEN bloggers or bloggers in general of different backgrounds, lifestyles and ethnicities?

Hmm. That bothered me.

The PF bloggers promoted were all painted with the same brush, in my opinion (not that it’s a bad thing), but they really missed out on some awesome, opinionated bloggers who could have made PF a lot more interesting to digest for common folk who are just starting to dip their toe into the pool.

I think they took the easy way out.

I also didn’t like that they didn’t have pictures. I’m not talking about clip art or cartoons. I’m talking about the wardrobe section where they suggest that women have a basic wardrobe that they can layer with.. well, great but show me some examples!!!

A picture or two of ‘real life’ situations would have helped greatly.

Or even a picture of the wine glaze made from boxed wine on a REAL MEAL. I want to see proof, not just researched tips that came from their articles that are available for free to read online.

With that being said, I still liked the book because it was a good reference with clearly marked sections to refresh your memory in case you wanted to head out and buy a home, or start a ROTH IRA.

This is a FABULOUS beginner book. But not for those of us who have been in the PF world for a while.

There are a couple of things I picked up (like 3 tips out of the 10,001 tips), but most of it was stuff I already knew from reading all the great PF bloggers on my blogroll.

And they really packed each page with text instead of separating it out into the different articles — that may irk some of you, but I liked that they saved paper 🙂