Customer Reviews

The Motley Fool's Guide to Couples and Cash: How to Handle Money with Your Honey

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This book is for people who need to know things about wills, living wills, insurance benefits, powers of attorney, etc. This is not a book about how to budget groceries, merge checking accounts, or move in with somebody that you will probably not spend your life with. It is the nitty gritty financial stuff you need to know and plan on when you are in a lifelong partnership with another person. I found it very helpful and easy to use, and it offers practical advice for hammering out this often unpleasant business with your significant other.

People never talk about money and when they do it is always with a ton of 1/2 truths. This book gave me the courage to get started and helped my husband and I have productive and painless money conversations. Now we know what is really going on with our lives, what we can afford to spend today and what we need to invest (and where) for tomorrow.

And the best thing is -- it wasn't all bad news. This book helped us realize that we are doing a lot of things the right way and that we shouldn't be scared to talk about our finances with each other. Thanks Motley Fool for helping us get started on the right foot after nearly 10 years of marriage.

Who wants to read financial advice? I often don't, as it can be dreadfully boring. But not this book! It's breezy and funny and yet offers critically important information. It's also full of anecdotes and examples from real-life couples who are addressing the financial issues in their lives. The book clocks in at less than 150 pages, so it shouldn't intimidate anyone, and it includes an extensive section of handy worksheets at the end, too. Relationships should only grow stronger, when the folks involved aren't nervously ignoring their finances, worried about how they'll pay for their kids' educations and their own golden years. I'm glad I got this book.

Even though it took only a few hours to read (very thin book), "The Motley Fool's Guide to Couples and Cash: How to Handle Money with Your Honey" was a waste of time. I would've liked to see more substance, but I didn't find it. I understand that most couples in America don't discuss finances before or even after getting married, but all of the concepts in the book are simple and basic. I think it's good that the book encourages the reader to be honest with you and your spouse as far as finances are concerned, but it is such common sense, that you're better off reading more content rich books from David Bach (Smart Couples Finish Rich) or Susie Orman (9 Steps to Financial Freedom).

I feel a fool to have been misled into purchasing this book.
I'm planning on moving in with my boyfriend for cohabitation, and wanted to know the consequences.
I was hoping for info on how to share our life together financially.

NO WHERE in the book could I find anything about signing rental agreements or mortgage papers,
a pre-nup-type form for living together and tips on sharing expenses, or ways to save together,
what to do if one is working and the other is attending school, etc.

It should mention that different states have varying legal aspects of co-habitation or marriage
(automatic 1/2 salary after split-up after one year living together as man and wife).
Some common-law aspects.

This book only had one small paragraph on buying a home together,
and it is continuously referring you to go to their webpages. That's all it does, is refer you to their webpage.

Now be aware, I haven't read the book entirely: I have tried their table of contents, and index, and slowly flipped thru the pages to see what was in the book. So the TOC was useless, the index didn't show any useful information.

UPDATE: Wow! Like 1 out of 116 people liked my review!
I still stick with what I said.
I don't need to read a whole book word for word to see if it has useful info in it.
One can tell from the table of contents, and the index guide, to see what's in it. I tried to find some of the info mentioned above in the TOC or index, and nothing there about it.
I WANTED to find useful info, spent enough time to find out there wasn't any.
All it did was refer to their webpage.
As I stated, there was nothing in it that was useful to me.