Customer Reviews

10,001 Ways to Live Large on a Small Budget

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

I didn't expect much for $10 bucks but was floored by the extensive amount of information covered by this 350 page book. The tips are great in that most of them are easy to execute and applicable to everyone. You can pick up the book, browse through a few sections, and immediately apply the new wisdom in your life.

The sections on finance, travel, and entertainment are exceptional. Tips like how to get the best airfare, lower cell phone bills, reduce your mortgage, etc. can save you money right away. If you like books that get straight to the tips without long intros and boring personal anecdotes, this is the book for you.

I take away a star for the gaudy use of glossy paper for the book. For a book about frugality and being "savvy", wouldn't it be more fitting to print this on recycle paper? There's even a green living section in this book, ironically. Have to admit the colorful design kept my interest, but the tips themselves are good enough for that. No need for the fancy paper.

This is a giant encyclopedia of how to save money. It covers everything you want to know - like the best time to buy airfare, where to hide your money, and how to make organic homemade beauty supplies. It also covers some stuff I rather not know - like how to conserve toilet paper or how to score free food with flirting.

Overall the content is a bit disorganized. I guess that's comes with the territory when you have so many tips. This book is based on a fairly popular consumer blog called Wise Bread. I'm a fan of the blog's folksy approach to finance and enjoy getting to know each blogger's quirks and personal backgrounds. Sadly this edition of the book is mostly focused on tips and doesn't really go too much into each blogger's personal stories and why they are so frugal, which in my opinion is one of the best reasons to follow the blog.

Bottom line: Regular Wise Bread.com readers might be a bit disappointed since this book doesn't reveal additional personal stories of the Wise Bread bloggers. But if you are just looking for lots of great, fun tips to save money this is a great buy.

Frugality has a bad name because people always think it is about cutting corners and pinching pennies, but this book puts a positive spin on getting the most out of the money you do have. The section on "50 Ways to Get the Most Out of Health Care" is by itself worth thousands of dollars in savings. The resource section at the end of the book is excellent too. I found a couple useful sites I'd never heard of before.

with all that has happened with our economoy and many companies that once seem indistructable now filing for chapter 11, there is no better time than now for a book like this. i happened upon this book while reading a blog on bargain hunting. the portion of the book that was being reviewed was with regards to hiding money in your house. this didn't really apply to me, but the rest of the book was fascinating. i am slowing finding ways to reduce what i spend and starting to save more for the future. who wouldn't want to do more of that given the state of the world economy.

This isn't like your regular advice book that's broken down in neat categories with a nice flow. There's over a dozen writers and is really a compilation of lots of articles. They're grouped together into general categories, but finding anything specific is difficult. However, it's the kind of book that if you had a few minutes here or there to spare, it's nice to have around. The tips are sometimes a little outrageous, like using a barn door for a table top (where would I find one of those anyway). But there are actually lots of useful tips that caught me by surprise. Like zipping up clothes before throwing them in the washer to prevent snagging on other clothes.

I got this book from the library and I'm here to buy it for my collection. I don't buy alot of books so the ones that I do buy are keepers. You'll get alot of tips to make your life easier or better or more fulfilling. Frugal living is not a bad thing especially with our economy the way it is. You won't have to haggle the price of day old bread or grab free meals at the homeless shelter in order to get a little more for your money. This book isn't about being cheap or destitute... it's a book about getting more for your money without degrading yourself. You can cut your expenses but you'll learn that you can't have it all. Cut $2 here and $12 there and you've got more money available to reach your financial goals. Don't wait for your ship to come in ... Swim out to meet it!

I am pleasantly surprised at the number of truly helpful and creative tips on saving money. They deliver on their promise that they won't tell us to scrimp and save by simply not spending money. This isn't like the other self-help money management/personal finance books where they try to psychoanalyze you. Sometimes I just want to have some fun, and that involves spending money. This book helps you find ways to have fun, but save money at the same time. It's more of a spend smartly rather than spend less philosophy, which is what I live by. I give it one less star because I don't think the writing is very polished.