Customer Reviews

Financial Bliss: A Couple's Guide to Merging Money Styles and Building a Rich Life Together

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The author covers the common financial goals facing couples and sets out to provide guidance in the most areas. Holzer shows couples how to work together to have a fruitful financial life, how to organize their dual financial lives, how to work through life stage issues. She provides excellent checklists, exercises, financial statistics, and stories to convey her points. She forcefully suggests that complete financial records, files and legal documents be kept up-to-date and in a secure location. Leave nothing to change is her focus.

According to the author, most couples have different views on budgeting, investing and spending and they don't really spend the time to sit down and develop a joint financial profile and plan. Sometimes one of them manages one of these three areas because the other party does not have the skill or interest. This is not really an optimal situation.

In her chapter titled "Being Prepared for Emergencies," covering the importance of various types of insurance, she inexplicably does not mention the need to determine if long-term care insurance (LTC) should be considered. This is strange in light of the rising cost of this care for the elderly and the importance of preserving assets from being depleted, if LTC is needed and no insurance coverage was previously bought.

The two chapters on investing do not contain sufficient substance to be implementable by couples. When discussing investing, Holzer does not believe that buy-and-hold and asset allocation should be the way to invest all the time. Actually, she says she uses a combination of fundamental and technical analysis (using point-and-figure charts) to select investments, but she does not show readers how to invest successfully using these techniques. Mutual funds are her suggested investment vehicles for those who don't have the time to research their investments. For some reason, Holzer does not mention the use of ETFs as replacement for mutual fund investing. This is unusual in light of the 550 funds available and growing in volume and usage daily. Since ETFs have lower annual expense ratio than active mutual funds, the fact that they were not mentioned is unfortunate.

Overall, Holzer provides a good overview of how couples should work together to develop an action plan to better manage their financial future. Readers will find useful guidance and be able to see importance of working together to maximize their financials, retirement funds, estates, and credit. However, the lack of details on handling investments, the fact that ETFs were not mentioned as possible investment alternatives to mutual funds, as well the non-mention of long-term care insurance results in an incomplete picture for couples.

Finances have always been a very tough topic for my husband and I. We have been married for less than a year and always had difficulties finding the right time and place to discuss them. After reading Financial Bliss together we found that Bambi Holzer's book offered some really straight forward ideas and topics that needed to be addressed. After reading the book my husband and I are finally on the same page. I would highly recomend this book to all couples.

This book has helped have the opening conversation with my husband on what has been a very touchy subject in society. We place so much emphasis

on money but no one really wants to talk about it. This book provides the perfect entry into that conversation with your partner around the subject of money. The work sheets are very helpful. This book made the conversation much easier.

This book really helped me and my husband discuss our financial future. It was a conversation we had avoided for some time, and I found Bambi's advice to be particular helpful in approaching the topic. I highly recommend this book for anyone who wants a little help in getting that conversation started!

Although I am currently not married, I live with a man and this book helped us both sort out the delicate financial issues that couples face. Bambi writes in simple terms and makes a lot of sense.

I've learned so much from this book. I love it. Thank you!