Over the years I have read lots of books about living cheaply, more sustainably and getting better value for money. For a time, at the start, lots of the books were from the USA and did not always cover the things we needed in Europe, but were still very handy. At the beginning, I found Mary Hunt's books about debt-free living very useful. However, then Martin Lewis, the financial journalist started the Moneysaving expert website and a compendium of tips from there became my new 'best friend'. It was called
I still re-read this little gem and always come up with something new to try, recently it was a better window cleaning recipe.
Real hardcore tips about moneysaving living are contained in this book
This is a huge compendium of the 'Tightwad Gazette' newsletter which Amy used to publish. Although some of the ideas are a bit out of date now that technology has moved on, it is still very inspiring and a lovely read when you are feeling that your motivation for 'shoestring' living is fading. It has pictures as well !
My final pick is less of a 'how to' book and more of a 'why'.
I read this one at the start of our frugal journey and actually got rid of my first copy as it did not contain enough moneysaving tips to make it worth keeping I thought. However, now we are further in to our money saving journey this is the one that keeps us going and helps us to decide how we want to spend our 'life energy', so we have got a second copy.
I have a whole shelf of books which I have found useful so do say which your favourites are !
The Vicki Robin book was useful in getting me to examine my relationship to money, my habits and goals and to see how much I was actually earning or not. The Tightwad Gazette was the practical, everyday guide to getting to the financial goals, whether to just make the bills or generate savings, that I wanted and also to see which habits I could adopt that would help in my situation. Funnily enough, most of my help these days comes from bloggers in the EU rather than the US where I live.
ReplyDeleteThat is so great that you have read these too ! Isn't the internet a wonderful resource so we can all help one another ?!
DeleteIt certainly is. Cheers!
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