Small Change review

Pub. Date: March 2010
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Format: Paperback, 352pp, e-book, Hardcover

Rating:

Synopsis (from Barnes and Noble):

"At their weekly craft group meeting, Rachel, Jessica and Tiffany admit they share a difficult secret: they're all struggling with major financial problems. A sudden divorce has turned Rachel from a stay-at-home mom to a strapped-for-cash divorcee about to enter the workforce for the first time. Tiffany admits that her spending has been out of control for years, and as her credit card bills have gone through the roof, her marriage has become increasingly rocky. And Jessica just had the rug pulled out from under her. After struggling her entire life to make ends meet, she's just gotten engaged to a man with a big bank account...and now he's asked her to sign a pre-nup.

As the women struggle to bring balance back to their checkbooks--and their lives--they learn some important lessons: that making a series small changes in one's spending habits can make a big difference—and that some things in life, like good friends, are truly priceless.

Review:

I was blog hopping over on my other blogger account (True Confessions of a Frugal Wanna Be) when I came across a post by one of my new followers about recieving this book for review. After reading the synopsis of it on her blog I decided that I should read this book too. I might learn something that I could use in REAL LIFE. I decided that I didn't want to waste the gas to drive 20 miles to pick up one book so I looked on my Nook to see if it was available in ebook format and it was!

This book is about three friends/neighbors, Rachel, Tiffany and Jessica (Jess) who are all, like so many of us these days, experiencing finanical hardships as a result of life taking a different road than they wanted. Rachel is a mother of two and divorced. She's being laid off from her teaching job and must figure out a way to make ends meet on a substitute teacher's salary. Since she is having a very hard time finding a permenant teaching position. It doesn't help that her daughter also needs to get braces put on and her ex is a borderline jerk. But there is a silver lining for Rachel....a Steamy McHotty love interest. Tiffany is a young woman about my age who has seriously bad spending habits, all of which she has learned from her mother, which has put a serious strain on her marriage. Jess is in her mid-forties and has to learn a whole new set of spending habits because her husband is being laid off from his job, at a bank, due to tough economic times. To make matters worse (in her eyes anyway), she never finished college and is now realizing that after being a stay at home mom for so many years, she really doesn't have very many job related skills. At one of their once a month craft meeting with one another, they decide that they are all going to become financially fit. That they were going to meet once a week to figure out how to maintain their new ways of life.

The tips in this book are all VERY useful as well. There are even recipes for all the yummy goodies that are mentioned. Heck even BLOGGING makes it into this book. Overall, this is a great story and it really helped to open my eyes to new ways to save money.