Living Thin—One Woman’s Journey from Penniless to Prosperous in a Year:

Wrightbooks (Published 2010)

Written by Antonia Magee

Country: Australia

Review: 4 Stars - Excellent Book

How the blurb describes the book:

‘Walk away inspired, with the know-how to start sorting out your finances and de-stress your life. A must-read for any woman who has gasped in horror at her credit card statement’.

Nina Dubecki and Vanessa Rowsthorn, founders of www.moneygirl.com.au

Maggie Rose is 29, single and perpetually broke. With a weakness for this season’s must-haves, good food and good wine, money is something that Maggie spends, not saves.

But with mounting credit card debt, her job at the newspaper failing to support her lifestyle and the man of her dreams in love with someone else, Maggie finds herself desperate to tighten her belt and get a healthy relationship with her finances. With the support of her friends, some professional advice and a little thing called eBay, can Maggie change her ways and live thin?

Living Thin is a funny and light-hearted tale that will help you learn how to budget, pay off debt and save money ... and still have a life!

Things to do – Get out of debt – Get $10,000 in the bank – Get control of my life

Antonia Magee is a Melbourne journalist who has always struggled to save her cents. She is a finance and general news reporter for the Herald Sun.

Mr Home Budget’s Review: We have never reviewed a fiction book. However, to call this a pure fiction book is probably not totally correct. This book teaches you lessons on how to budget and get out of debt. But what is great is that, unlike boring money books, it teaches you in such a covert/entertaining way that you forget you’re learning.

Maggie Rose, the main character, is 29, single and broke. To make matters worse, very quickly in the book she is evicted from her apartment for not paying the rent. Maggie has not only hit rock bottom, she has set up base camp there.

Maggie is truly cosmopolitan: If the writers of Sex and the City ever need a fifth girl, she could fit in without missing a beat. Maggie buys a $300 pair of glasses as casually as most people would buy a pack of gum. She drinks bottles of wine at the drop of a hat and eats $10 sandwiches for lunch each day. Her behaviour might be perfect for Sex and the City, but the salary she earns as a junior reporter at The City newspaper is not great. And she would surely not be able to keep up with the glamourous New York lifestyle for long.

Maggie is 100% ready to turn her money problems around; however, she seems to take two steps forward and three steps back, and all of her failed attempts fling her into another blitz of spending to make the pain go away.

Then Maggie meets Jason, a no-nonsense financial planner who has heard all the bad-luck stories many times before. Jason pulls no punches and gets Maggie to refocus on what she really wants. He helps her set big goals, which involve her selling some of her most prized possessions such as her beloved 10-year-old car. The plain is for Maggie to be debt free just after she turns 30.

Of course, money is not the only problem Maggie has in her life; to say her love life is underdone is an understatement. But when her new boss, Spencer, starts working with her, things start to heat up!

Will Maggie be able to pay off all of her debt and ride into the sunset with the man of her dreams? Or, will she be 30 and still get ‘last notice’ letters from the credit card companies?

This book is extremely well written. Parents should pull their daughters aside and give them a copy. Antonia Magee has done a great job knitting a how-to-budget book with a story that is a fictional, funny, clever and romantic comedy—not an easy thing to do by any stretch.

One of the paragraphs which really applied to me is the following:

‘My extravagances did not stop in the home. On top of eating out several nights a week and buying my breakfast and lunch most days, I also wore nice clothes, had my hair blow dried once a week, had a gym membership I rarely used and always had the latest iPod, iPhone, Apple Laptop and speakers so everything was white and in sync, just as Steve God, I mean Jobs, had intended. It was common practice for me to spend $300 per week on taxis, dinner and drinks, and I would often offer to pay for others, even though I knew I could not afford it.’

This is a great book, and we look forward to a follow-up.

Pros:

This is a funny, great read and teaches about budgeting at the same time.

The book would be great for girls ages 20+ to read to learn about money without all the boring math figures.

There is a follow-up book in the works.

Cons:

Some of the characters seem a bit too alike.

We also interviewed Antonia Magee click here to read.