Women's Guide To Going It Alone (How any woman can protect her money and her future)

Wilkinson Publishing (Published 2008)

Written By Samantha Brown and Libby Koch

Australia

Review 4 Stars – Excellent Book

How the blurb describes the book:
With around half of all marriages ending in divorce it's never been more important for women to take charge of their finances.

In many divorce negotiations the male has the upper hand because he has the knowledge. This guide evens the balance and provides the information you need to negotiate on equal terms.

The Women's Guide To Going it Alone will help you through each stage of the separation and divorce process, from splitting your assets to providing for your children. It will also bring your financial knowledge up to scratch, lay out your options and help you take control of your financial future.

About The Authors:
Samantha Brown followed her father, well-known financial expert David Koch, into the world of finance journalism at a young age.

Samantha began her career as a personal finance writer, co-authoring the Australian bestseller The Teenager's Guide To Money. She followed that up with The Teenager's Guide to Part Time Jobs, Leaving Home: The Ultimate Guide, and Travel and Working Holidays: The Ultimate Guide.

Libby Koch is a nurse by training and currently works as David's PA. Just as important, Libby is the master of the Koch family finances and budget. Apart from allocating David his allowance, she masterminded the financial tightrope of balancing a single income while raising four kids (Samantha, Brianna, Alexander, and Georgie) and meeting the mortgage. For many years, Libby wrote a weekly home budgeting column for News Ltd newspapers.

Libby has also co-authored Your Money and Your Life; I'm not made of Money and Kochie's Guide.

Mr Home Budget's Review:
Having never been through a divorce myself (touch wood), from the outside it can seem like a simple process. All the divorces that I have known about have gone to a similar script. You get told about the marriage breakdown. You normally hear a rumour as to why this happened and one partner generally moves out to find their own home.

But this outsider's view hides a lot of red tape which much be gone through to complete the separation, divide the assets, work out what happens to the superannuation accounts, do a full audit on the family business (If there is one), talk to lawyers, talk to financial planners, talk to the kids and a million and one other things you have to think about. In fact just knowing about all these things you must do, it is truly surprising so many people get divorced at all. Because apart from the emotional side of things, it's equivalent to running a fortune 500 company with all the extra tasks you must take on. My eyes were opened as to how easy it is to get married in Australia, but how teeth grindingly hard it is to get divorced.

As you could read from the blurb, the book is primarily written for women going through divorce. The authors take the view, that in most cases men have the upper hand in this situation. This is because in a lot of families it's the men who know the financial situation inside and out. After digesting the book's contents it should even out the playing field.

The book starts out like getting shot in the face for any newly divorced women. It explains what you must do in the first 24 hours of a separation. Yes you read correctly, in the 24 hours following the couples deciding to separate, you have a to-do list a mile long. So as you can guess, there is absolutely no time to catch your breath on what has just happened, because unfortunately for any divorced couple, there is paper work to fill out in this period. The book only has your best interests at heart, and a stitch in time can save nine. Especially where there might be hurt feelings or the thought of revenge.

The authors give you a real bird's eye view of divorce from five different real women's stories. While the names have been changed, the stories are very real. This talks about their stories and more than that it talks about their emotions. Letting the reader know they are not alone and that many people have walked the path they are about to walk.

Where it excels is the sense of hope it gives readers. This sentence might sum up this hope, "Just because your partnership might be over does not mean your life is." And they will throw tips at you on how to get back into the groove on the financial, romantic, and emotional side of life.

On page 49 a paragraph stood out for me, this is an example story of one of the five girls the book follows: "Jane had been brought up with a father working in the financial industry. He took care of all his family's money and bills. Her mother never had to worry about the family finances, as it seemed natural for her husband to do so. Jane thought this was the norm and left her family's finances to her husband too. She may have paid the odd bill, but found it all a bit hard. She was happy for her husband to handle everything, even though he had wanted her to help a bit more with the finances.

This continued after the break-up until the situation became complex, with money being moved around different accounts as their finances fell into disarray. Money had been a contributing factor in their arguments for a while, as they were often short of cash and credit was running high.

Jane, working as a casual teacher, found her access to their combined funds drying up and had trouble paying for groceries with her credit card, let alone having enough spending money. She had to keep asking her husband for more money and was often denied. It was then that she became pro-active with her finances. She put all her wages into her own account and taught herself, with some help from her dad, to run a budget."

To sum up, this book is perfect if you are on the verge of separation, or just getting underway with the process. And while it is clearly written for women, even men will get something out of reading it.

Pros: Sheds the full light on just what it takes to go through a divorce.

Easily written and completely understandable, despite dealing with a subject that has a lot of legal ramifications.

Cons: On some topics it only skims the surface where a little bit more explaining could be necessary.

Unless you are going through a divorce you will never really get an opportunity to read it.