Flirting with Finance:

Fairfax Books (2009)

Written by Anneli Knight and Virginia Graham

Australia

Review 4 Stars – Excellent Book

How the blurb describes the book:

“Flirting with Finance is an engaging and humorous take on what can be a dry, but important topic. I’m sure it will provide readers with the knowledge and tools to approach investing with confidence.”  Alan Kohler: Editor in chief of Eureka Report and finance presenter ABC News and Inside Business.

“What sets Anneli and Virginia’s book apart is its radiant language and uniquely entertaining approach to simplifying the intricate world of finance and investing.” Larke Riemer: Chair, Global Banking Alliance for Women.

“Flirting with Finance can help women make informed decisions about how to spend and how to save – increasing their financial security and independence.” Tanya Plibersek: Federal Minister for the Status of Women.

Flirting with Finance is the modern woman’s guide to achieving financial freedom through smart investing.

Find out how investments are like relationships, what the economy has in common with the fashion industry, and how to build up your little black book. Discover whether you are an Adventure Girl or a Vanity Girl, and if your financial zodiac makes you a gambling Sagittarian or a Taurus in a bull market.

This is your step by step guide to investing with confidence.

Mr Home Budget’s Review: While you can probably guess, this book is aimed at women. However, as much as it was aimed at women, while reading it, I found myself quite enjoying the book. Even if most of the fashion references went over my head!

The authors (Anneli Knight and Virginia Graham) wanted to write this book to start the open discussion with fellow women on financial matters. As in their own words, “We’ve noticed that many of our girlfriends switch off when talk turns to finance; their eyes glaze over, they shift uncomfortably in their seats and they quickly change the topic. They just seem to find finance boring”.

Perhaps these ladies whose eyes glaze over have never had it explained previously in an interesting way. This book provides that interesting way right from page one. It holds the readers’ attention and gives them information critical to getting your head around money issues. And while it’s aimed at women; men also would learn from it. The girls use a number of different analogies to make their case and get their point across. But instead of targeting these analogies to a unisex reader, they target it directly towards women. One which made me smile was, “Interest rates are just like hemlines; they’re always changing – up or down. The mercurial length of a fashionable hemline has a reverberating influence across the fashion industry. If micro-minis are in, then singlet tops and shirts can’t be too long in the body, because your skirt might disappear under them. It is also likely that tops will become slightly conservative, so as not to upstage the dramatic impact of the micro.” Now while this makes little sense to me, I’m sure there are women reading this right now nodding their heads in approval. This is probably where this book differs from other books written for women about money. They really make the book feel like a chat over coffee, rather than a hard-core maths or budgeting book.

One of the other paragraphs which caught my eye, “Spendthrift, shopaholic, credit card junkie – they all sound kind of fun, don’t they? And retail therapy by its very definition is therapy, isn’t it? How about spending money like there is no tomorrow – isn’t that all about being a spontaneous, fun loving person? Not any more! That attitude is so pre-2009”.

Things take an interesting turn when they talk about the zodiac signs. They break down all 12 signs into how you handle money. Then give you advice specific to your sign. While some people might not believe in the zodiac, the advice for all 12 signs is extremely good and worth a read, regardless of when you were born.

However, this is not to say the book was 100 percent to my liking. Their chapter on budgeting felt somewhat half-cooked and underdone. It certainly got you thinking about budgeting, and pointed you in the right direction, but it could have been a little meatier and given you more of the nuts and bolts of the budgeting process.

This being said, the book is an all round great book which all women should consider reading. If you can only pick up a few bits of information to add to your money knowledge, you would be better for reading it.

Pros

An extremely well written book which hits the nail on the head with its target audience (women).

You need very little knowledge about money, if any at all, prior to starting this book. It will take you from the ground up.

Cons

The chapter on budgeting feels a little small and lacking in some of the finer details.