Wealth Watchers: A Simple Program to Help You Spend Less and Save More [Hardcover]

Alice Wood (Author), Glenn Rifkin (Contributor)

Book Description

Release date: December 29, 2009

Ten years ago, Alice Wood was living a normal life, balancing her career, family, and finances with con dence. Having grown up with a father who was a bank president from the pre-branch banking era and a mother who was influenced by the Great Depression, Alice learned prudence and financial responsibility at home. She knew instinctively how to handle money, until a brain injury sustained on a commercial airplane changed her life.

After the injury, Alice encountered many new challenges; for the first time in her life she was overweight and in serious debt. Weight Watchers® allowed Alice to lose the weight and keep it off. Inspired by Weight Watchers'® daily discipline of journaling and the principle of group accountability, she decided to create a new and radically simple program to reclaim her financial stability. She called it Wealth Watchers. This simple program enabled her to meet her own financial goals and soon was helping thousands of others to do the same. Today, the Wealth Watchers program is an important part of the rapidly growing movement for financial literacy and empowerment sponsored by school, state, and federal government programs; corporations such as McDonald's and Visa; and several large financial institutions.

Wealth Watchers is the story of Alice's journey from a life of having it all to a life of dealing with frustrating financial setbacks. In this book -- which presents the program and the principles in full for the first time -- you will find all the tools you need to organize your finances, complete your monthly budget, determine your disposable income, and understand which spending patterns are knocking you off-track. At the heart of the program is one simple calculation: your Daily Disposable Income (DDI), the money you can spend each day without going into debt. Amazingly, most people don't know their DDI. In this book Alice explains how it can help you make purchasing decisions, big and small, one day at a time, and build positive habits to last a lifetime. Using the Power of 365, you will learn how to analyze your expenses, stay out of debt, start saving again, and -- regardless of your age or income level -- thrive!

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Wood, founder of the ingenious Wealth Watchers program, shares her accessible plan for financial independence in this highly original, commonsense approach to managing money. Her plan is based on the tenets of Weight Watchers—but rather than counting calories, readers are encouraged to figure out how much money they can spend each day. It's extraordinarily simple: Wood advocates basic action steps that anyone can take, including getting organized, creating a monthly budget, setting goals and journaling. She discusses the best approach to handling fixed expenses (e.g., housing and insurance) and semifixed expenses (e.g., transportation and child care) and includes a daily, monthly, quarterly and yearly journal in the back of the book for the reader to complete. Easy to follow and complemented by the author's well-told personal story, this unassuming book won't intimidate those with little financial knowledge and provides the simple tools everyone can use to take control of their finances. (Jan.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

About the Author

Alice M. Wood grew up in Naperville, Illinois, where she worked as a successful attorney, representing at least 1,000 families in setting up their estate plans. Nine years ago she suffered a brain injury that, among other things, made it difficult for her to make good decisions. In her attempt to manage her weight and her money, she invented Wealth Watchers.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Free Press; First Edition edition (December 29, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1439158193
• ISBN-13: 978-1439158197
• Product Dimensions: 7.1 x 5.1 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #367,418 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Great for someone just beginning to budget... February 15, 2010

By Kim

Format:Hardcover

Having spent the last three months or so really getting serious about developing a budget and tracking my spending, I could really relate to the concepts introduced in this book. I began using [..] so I was already fully aware of my spending and where my money was going without having to track it manually as this book suggests. Otherwise, this book would have been a good place to start.

Having also participated in Weight Watchers, successfully reaching my goal weight and becoming a lifetime member, I can see how the concept of tracking every single expense can really be an effective tool for becoming aware of the areas in which you might be able to cut back on spending and actually save money for important things like retirement and your children's education. I really appreciated the author's willingness to share such a life-changing and devastating experience (her brain injury) and illustrate how such a tragedy ultimately inspired her to create a program that impacts so many lives. Her idea to introduce the program to corporations like McDonald's that employs many low-income individuals was brilliant and insightful. Financial literacy is so important, and it really doesn't matter how much money you make, it is what you decide to do with it that will dictate your level of financial freedom in the long run.

Though I have made many financial blunders in the past, the tools provided in this book and the lessons taught, will allow me to make significant changes now (it's not too late!) and to educate my children so that they won't make the same mistakes. The book is definitely worth reading. It is well-written, the author is transparent - admitting mistakes that you'll find you too have made - even with all of your education, high-income jobs and general knowledge about personal finance. There is always a lesson to be learned.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Grounded guide to managing personal finances May 31, 2010

By Rolf Dobelli HALL OF FAMETOP 1000 REVIEWER

Format:Hardcover

In 2000, estate-planning attorney Alice Wood suffered a serious brain injury. It affected her ability to think clearly and harmed her marriage, her law practice, her weight, her life - her entire ability to function. As she recovered, money became a major issue for her and her husband. When she joined Weight Watchers to try to slim down, she realized that its careful, day-by-day approach was an excellent model for a personal financial control program. That's when she developed Wealth Watchers. In their first year on the program, Wood and her husband cut their expenses by $12,000. She explains her simple, sensible tactics: List each cost, establish a budget and cut back on unnecessary purchases by exercising daily discretion. Her suggestions about saving money, buying insurance, putting aside retirement funds, budgeting for college, and so on, are very practical. getAbstract recommends this excellent book as a useful guide to getting the most out of your budget, husbanding your earnings and managing your money. If you don't yet have wealth to watch, she tells you how to save so you can accumulate some.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A Must Read for Today's Times February 3, 2010

By Debbie Mandel

Format:Hardcover

"Wealth Watchers" has great range: a heartfelt journey to recovery from oxygen deprivation on a commercial airplane to a great financial program to help the reader save money during the worst of times.

Spending money and obesity have a lot in common - hence the title "Wealth Watchers" derived from the successful point system program of Weight Watchers. Because of Alice's brain injury, her skills as an estate planning attorney dissipated. In their place mushroomed financial confusion, ultimately a loss of financial control.

This book will make you aware of where your money goes and teach you how to become financially literate. Structured and guided journaling is an integral part of the program. Also, you will get easy to implement advice like going shopping alone to the supermarket without the kids - something I need to do.

Follow the personal responsibility checklist and you will soon be conscious of your daily disposable income. Maybe you will lose some unnecessary weight in the process!