41 of 45 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Practical and Fun, May 15, 2009
This review is from: 10,001 Ways to Live Large on a Small Budget (Paperback)
I was flipping through this book at Barnes yesterday while waiting for my girlfriend to finish buying a gift for her friend's birthday. The book is basically a bunch of individual lists and howtos -- how to buy wine, 23 common interview questions, etc. By the time my girlfriend was ready to go, I was still reading the article on how to shop for wine, so I brought the book home. Couldn't put it down the rest of the night! I read through the entire budget travel section since we're planning for a trip this summer. And the article on how to open a roth IRA is going to come in handy. I've been thinking about opening one for the last few months and I think I'm going to do it next week. This book is full of tips for a wide range of financial topics. I highly recommended for anyone looking to get more out of their money.
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164 of 204 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
What a waste of paper..., January 25, 2010
This review is from: 10,001 Ways to Live Large on a Small Budget (Paperback)
Technically, my one-star rating is incorrect: when a book has no useful content whatsoever, it should be zero stars. Alas, such option is unavailable, so I'll have to make do with this...
I had high hopes for this book - I really did. It's written by a group of personal finance experts and it's got nothing but rave reviews on Amazon (I hope I won't be the sole dissenter) - what could possibly go wrong? Like most other projects put together by a committee, it feels raw and incomplete. To give you a basic idea, this is the kind of book that would have been useful 20 years ago, before the advent of the Internet. Every single tip listed in this book can be found with Google in less than a minute. Because of the space constraint (10,001 tips and only 346 pages), most of the tips get just one brief paragraph.
I'm a dedicated bachelor, I don't plan on getting married or having kids, I don't like to cook (other than the easiest dishes - pasta and boiled eggs), I have neither a car nor a garage, my landlord does all the "home improvement" in my house for free, and I don't buy into this pointless, feel-good "green living" fad. Because of all of the above, none of the tips in this book apply to me. Evidently, "living large" means keeping old rags all over your house instead of using paper towels, and giving your friend a measuring cup or a coloring book with crayons on his or her birthday. (I'm not making this up!) The sections on investing and money managing were marginally interesting, but like I said, one can find the same information (and more of it!) online in less than a minute.
Finally, the book is rather poorly edited. There is an overabundance of typos ("a tore-up baseball cap"), downright ridiculous errors that should have been caught by proofreaders ("$11 dollars"), constantly-changing pronouns (using either "he" or "she" throughout a section when referring to a person who is presumably not a hermaphrodite) and poor editing (references to wrong page numbers, etc.).
To summarize, the book has no original tips, it's over-hyped, can be replaced by Google (it saves time *and* money! haha) and, to be honest, is somewhat of an insult to one's intelligence. I wouldn't recommend it to anybody except for the people who spent their whole lives in coma and don't have access to Google, or those strange individuals who want to know what Linsey Knerl (one of the writers) wears to bed, where she hides her money (spoiler alert: in her tampon box - and no, I am not making this up), and how cold her toilet seat is in the morning. I refuse to believe that people who produced this rubbish got paid for their efforts (and I'm using the word "efforts" very, very loosely). Learn from my mistake and don't buy this book. If you're dead-set on reading it, get it from a library - but don't spend your hard-earned money.
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29 of 35 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Perfect gift for grads, May 8, 2009
This review is from: 10,001 Ways to Live Large on a Small Budget (Paperback)
10,001 Ways is a gateway to frugality. What do I mean by that? It isn't a hardcore frugality book focusing on brown bagging lunch for your entire life. Instead, it is a kinder, gentler, introduction to the idea of living within your means. Some of the other finance books provide outrageous (and depressing) ideas so difficult to follow that you might give up immediately. All the tips here are fun and easy to follow.
If you've missed a couple of mortgage payments and creditors are knocking down your door, this book isn't for you. You need something a lot more drastic.
This book is perfect for young people just starting out in life. The fun and breezy writing is engaging, and the tips are offered without judgment or condescension. The cooking tips will be especially useful for college students living on their own for the first time.
I will be giving this book away as a graduation present for years to come. This is a gift that keeps on giving.
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