2010 Consumer Action Handbook and Unautomate Your Finances
Published by Manny on Tagged Finance-Investing
Last autumn, I shared a list of essential personal-finance e-books. These books covered a variety of topics, and many of them were free. Today I want to draw your attention to two new e-books that you may want to consider.
Consumer Action Handbook
First up is the 2010 edition of the Consumer Action Handbook. I’ve mentioned this book before, and I’ll mention it in the future. This book is from the Federal Citizen Information Center, that small department of the U.S. government in Pueblo, Colorado, which distributes free and low-cost consumer publications.
The 2010 Consumer Action Handbook is a 172-page guide to becoming a savvy consumer, and includes information on buying a car, purchasing a home, preventing identity theft, shopping from home, creating a will, and handling unsatisfactory transactions. And much, much more.
This book would be a good buy at $10 or $15, but it’s freely available from the U.S. government. (Technically you’ve already paid for it with your tax dollars, of course.)
- You can order your copy here.
- A Spanish-language version is also available.
- You can also view the handbook in PDF format. You can view the entire handbook at once [11.9mb], or simply browse individual sections.
- Nearly all of the book’s content is available via the Consumer Action web site.
This book is a great resource, and I encourage you to order a copy, download the PDF, or bookmark the web site. Though the 2010 Consumer Action Handbook doesn’t go into great depth on any subject, it provides excellent informative overviews, and it usually points to further resources. It’s perfectly at home on the shelf with all of my other personal finance books. (And was, in fact, an excellent source while writing Your Money: The Missing Manual.)
Unautomate Your Finances
Elsewhere, our very own Adam Baker has just released his first e-book, Unautomate Your Finances, which lays out his personal financial philosophy. This e-book is not free. It costs $17, but comes with Baker’s “as long as I have a pulse” guarantee. (If you’re not satisfied, send him an e-mail and he’ll refund your money as long as he’s still alive.)
Baker believes that the more you simplify your financial life, the easier it is to control it. He’s not necessarily opposed to all automation, but believes that for many of us, automation breeds more complexity than simplicity. He argues that in most cases, automating our financial lives magnifies existing problems, and we’d be better off un-automating things: spending consciously, making sustainable choices, and focusing on our goals.
Along the way, Baker shares solid personal-finance advice on saving for emergencies, coping with credit, and creating a realistic budget. Is Unautomate Your Finances right for you? I don’t know. But since it comes with a money-back guarantee, it’s certainly worth a look!
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Related Articles at Get Rich Slowly:
- 2008 Consumer Action Handbook
- Understanding Money
- Essential Personal Finance E-Books
- The 13 Commandments of Savvy Consumers
- 66 Ways to Save Money
View full post on Get Rich Slowly
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March 10th, 2010 at 5:05 am
I’ve read the guide and I loved it! I’m definitely someone who loves automation, but Baker brings out some good points on how we can be missing out on improving our finances by ‘just setting and forgetting’.
Baker explains how automation without consciousness, sustainability, and focus can add stress rather than reduce it.
March 10th, 2010 at 6:00 am
Very interesting books indeed. I’m gonna order the handbook now and see what kind of advices they have. There’ll probably be some hidden stuffs that most people don’t know about, so it’s definitely worth a look (and it’s free +D).
Unautomate your finances seems like an intriguing ebook. I wonder what Baker has to say about unautomation =)
March 10th, 2010 at 6:56 am
I have to admit I’m always a little skeptical when someone from the government tries to tell me how to protect myself…. they don’t exactly have a great track record at anything.
I haven’t read the other ebook, but automating bill payments can be a potentially dangerous thing if the bills aren’t verified and can cause a loss of discipline controlling expenses. On the other hand, automatic investing is a good thing and before you know it you don’t even miss the money anymore.
March 10th, 2010 at 7:01 am
I think, if nothing else, some automation is worth removing, like automatic cable bills and rental services, because you notice price increases and see the money as it goes out each month. Sure, you may want to automate the trash and sewer, a mortgage payment, and savings plans. But do you want to be in the dark… when your electricity bill jumps 30%?
March 10th, 2010 at 7:52 am
Having not read the e-book I don’t know exactly what’s in it, but I can say that for me, automation is fabulous. The only automatically-paid bills are the ones that are exactly the same each month. And I also have money automatically put into different savings accounts each month. If I had to manually put that $1000 somewhere, I might be tempted to spend more each month. In our case, “out of sight, out of mind” is a good philosophy.
March 10th, 2010 at 8:49 am
I’m not sure if I see how that is going to work. We just plain forget to pay bills (and we actually have very very few of them). I found that automating my finances made it much less expensive since we were paying a lot of late fees and had the money to pay the bills all along.
March 10th, 2010 at 9:10 am
“He argues that in most cases, automating our financial lives magnifies existing problems, and we’d be better off un-automating things…”
This is a great point, which is applicable in many areas of life. Automation locks in a system. Automating a good system can save effort, but automating a bad system can lock in problems. Or to put it another way, as Peter Drucker did, “There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.”