Contemporary Authors

• The Financial Diet: A Total Beginner's Guide to Getting Good with Money Henry Holt and Co. (New York, NY), 2018

1. The financial diet : a total beginner's guide to getting good with money LCCN 2017027973 Type of material Book Personal name Fagan, Chelsea, author. Main title The financial diet : a total beginner's guide to getting good with money / Chelsea Fagan ; designed by Lauren Ver Hage. Edition First edition. Published/Produced New York : Henry Holt and Company, [2018] Projected pub date 1801 Description pages cm ISBN 9781250176165 (pbk.) Library of Congress Holdings Information not available. 2. I'm only here for the WiFi : a complete guide to reluctant adulthood LCCN 2013934595 Type of material Book Personal name Fagan, Chelsea, author. Main title I'm only here for the WiFi : a complete guide to reluctant adulthood / Chelsea Fagan. Published/Produced Philadelphia, PA : Running Press, ℗2013. ©2013 Description 192 pages ; 19 cm ISBN 9780762449132 (pbk.) 0762449136 (pbk.) CALL NUMBER Copy 1 Request in Jefferson or Adams Building Reading Rooms

• The Billfold - https://www.thebillfold.com/2015/02/how-chelsea-fagan-founder-of-the-financial-diet-does-money/

  You’re in line at your favorite store, laden with the various items that you promised would be your only purchases during this shopping trip. Except, as the line inches forward at a glacial pace, a shiny, glittering item catches your eye. In that instant, you decide that the item is a must have and you contemplate venturing from the queue to claim it. You, my friend, are about to embark on an impulse purchase. You take one step forward from the line and it’s all over. Soon, you’ll be berating yourself for your spending habits and looking at your bank statement with furrowed brows.

  Chelsea Fagan, writer, author, and content creator extraordinaire has been there before and her site, The Financial Diet, has got you covered.

  Chances are you’ve heard of Chelsea if you frequent the ever popular Thought Catalog, The Huffington Post, or NYmag.com. Plus, Fagan’s guide to twenty-something life, I’m Only Here For The Wi-Fi: A Guide to Reluctant Adulthood, has been heating up North American bookstores since its release from Running Press in 2013.

  With a recent sponsorship from Hank and John Green of The VlogBrothers fame and a site redesign, The Financial Diet is posed to expand even more in 2015.

  I spoke with Chelsea about her career, her website, personal finance, and the pros of embarking on a financial diet.

  How did you get into writing and creating content for the internet?

  I started a Tumblr in 2010 to document my move to France and it started to gain traction. So, I submitted an article to Thought Catalog on a whim in early 2011 and I just kept writing from there!

  How did the idea for your book and the opportunity to write your book I’m Only Here For the Wi-Fi: A Guide to Reluctant Adulthood come about?

  That book was based on my articles on Thought Catalog to that point. (I started the book in early 2012.) I was approached by an agent who loved my stuff on the site. It was at a time when the “millennials figuring out how to be adults” genre was white-hot, I think.

  So, let’s talk about your website. What has been surprisingly hard or surprisingly easy about going on a financial diet?

  Saying “no” to social engagements has been harder than I thought but it gets easier as you get used to it. It was really difficult at first, but I am trying to narrow down my “going out” nights to one or two a week. I really enjoy it now, though.

  Describe the positive changes in your life since you’ve embarked on a “financial diet?”

  I feel more calm, balanced, and healthy. My home is more organized and streamlined and I don’t worry about things as much as I used to. My finances are not perfect yet by any means, but I don’t panic when I open up my checking account.

  You write about starting the site during the summer of 2014. What did life look like for you at that time?

  I was writing for Thought Catalog at the time. I really didn’t have a budget in my daily life and I realized that money was one of the few topics that I never talked about in my writing at Thought Catalog. I decided I wanted to create and maintain a budget. So, I started a personal Tumblr just to have a place to write about money. I intended for it to be mostly for myself, but it quickly started to gain a lot of followers. It gained so many followers that I quit my job at Thought Catalog at the end of last year to do it full-time.

  That’s amazing!

  Yeah! By the way, did you see the redesign? It launched on Friday.

  I did! It looks great! I mean, it looked good, before but I really love it now. Did you have a designer who worked on that for you?

  Yeah, I have a designer. She’s been with me since the beginning. The Financial Diet is really both of ours. She’s an art director.

  That’s awesome! It’s great something that started out as a project turned into a full-fledged career and that you’re working on this with a good friend.

  It’s really been awesome. I actually didn’t know her before I created the site. She reached out to me at the very beginning when it was still a personal Tumblr and said that she’d love to redesign it for me. That’s how we met and we’re really good friends now.

  How have you interacted with money over the years?

  I was always really bad with money. I got a credit card at eighteen. It was right before the crash. They were still giving out credit cards in high schools to people who were heading off college, which, obviously, is a terrible idea. I maxed out my credit card and didn’t pay it off and, as a result, I had terrible credit. Although I didn’t have a lot of debt, I did have a tiny bit due to student loans. I wasn’t someone who was addicted to shopping or addicted to spending. I just was really bad at managing money. I never had a budget, I never knew how much was in my account at any given time, and I didn’t build any credit. But, a couple years ago, I paid off my credit card that had defaulted and it felt like a huge relief. So, I started wanting to do more stuff like that. I’m definitely not perfect now but I’m a lot better than how I interacted with money before starting my financial diet.

  Yeah, I never even had any access to a credit card at all. I always felt like money was a burden. I was kind scared of the idea of money and I let my parents deal with the handling of our money.

  Right.

  So, what advice would you give to someone who wants to be smarter about their money and who wants to embark on a financial diet?

  Start with small changes. Don’t sit down and say, “Okay I’m going to completely change my finances.”

  I think the most important thing to know is that it is easier if you start with small changes. Don’t sit down and say, “Okay, I’m going to completely change my finances.” You can start by looking at your spending and finding the first couple of items that you could do without or that you could spend money on in a more intelligent way. Start with one of the simple budget apps that can help you break down where your money is going and what you can do to improve your spending habits. I think you can start by saving ten percent of what you earn. It becomes a snowball effect. Whereas if you start off by saying, “Okay, I’m going to save this amount of money or I’m going to stop doing this entirely,” it becomes really hard. It’s a diet. If you start it at an extreme, then you’ll give up after a week and gain it all back.

  Yeah that’s definitely true. I feel like I would approach a financial diet, initially, by doing it the “wrong way.” I would approach it with extremes, thinking “Oh, I’m going to immediately be perfect.”

  Right.

  You also write about your desire to invest. What tips would you give to someone who wants to begin investing in companies?

  My biggest tip is that you should find someone in your life who can advise you. You can read about all of the basics of investing online or in textbooks. I did, but I don’t think that I got a clear understanding of investing. And so, I reached out to people in my network who knew about it. That way, I was able to ask questions and get practical advice that was tailored to my life and from someone who knows me. So, I would suggest asking your family members, asking friends who are knowledgeable about investing, and asking people that you trust in your professional life. Unfortunately, a lot of people don’t even know things like, “What is an RNA? What is a 401K? What is a stock?” So, I think before you make any decisions, you should go to someone who can introduce you to that world. If that makes any sense.

  That makes perfect sense! So, it’s time to get a little more personal. You write about how you are an extrovert but that you want to be more self-assured in saying “no” to the option of spending a lot of money on a social outing. For someone else who is like that and maybe is looking to take a step back, how would you suggest having that conversation with a friend?

  That’s really tough. Money is one of those few topics that is treated like a taboo, especially amongst friends. It can make you feel very insecure to say to someone, “I really can’t do this because I’m trying to save money.” But, I think that if you frame it in a way that is about wanting to be proactive instead of making it sound negative, then, that’s the best way to frame that conversation. Always make it a positive because if you frame it with, “I can’t keep doing this,” or, “I spent too much money the last time,” it makes the other person feel guilty. That’s, I think, what can cause a lot of tension.

  Definitely. I’m more, I would say, of an introvert. However, I do have a friend who has better finances than I do and is considered upper-middle class. Going out with her always seems to be a situation where I’m spending to the last dollar or having to borrow money from her, which, I know can be embarrassing for me and annoying for her. I really appreciated you writing so openly about this topic. That was one of my favorite pieces on the site.

  Thank you! It was tough for me because in a big city like New York where there’s always so much to do and so much to see. If you don’t pay attention, you can spend hundreds of dollars just on going out to restaurants and bars.

  It’s so ridiculous.

  It really is.

  Speaking of New York City, how do you deal with the pressure of being a professional in a city where there seems to be a competitive “Keep up with the Joneses” atmosphere?

  I do things that are personally enriching and that have nothing to do with other people or how they perceive me. I take classes by myself, I cook a lot at home, I spend time with my boyfriend, and I work on projects that I enjoy. The more I do to make myself happy outside the perception of others, the better I feel. I also shop less and I never spend time with someone who makes me feel competitive. That’s how you end up buying a 300 dollar purse to look like someone you’re not.

  Let’s expand on that. On your site, you write about the importance of defining what success means to you. What is your definition of success or has your definition of it changed?

  Success to me means three things: a good work/life balance, the ability to work on things that I truly love and feel passionately about, and financial stability.

  Let’s get back to New York City for a minute. What are some of your favorite thrift stores or places that you frequent that are better for frugal spending?

  I have been trying to purchase more investment pieces, such as items that take a long time to find but that I want to keep for a long time. I really love places like Nordstrom rack, TJ Max, and other places that have high quality items at great better prices. Outlets are another great example of that. I try to stay away from fast-fashion stores except to buy items like t-shirts and tank tops because I feel like I never find myself liking the clothes that are offered. I feel that it’s better to have one high-quality item than ten poorly made pieces of clothing. You end up throwing them away because you don’t wear them. So, I try to go to wholesale stores.

  That’s really great advice. I feel like it’s embarrassing, in a way, to admit that you are spending frugally, especially in a city like New York. It’s a place that is all about labels. I think that’s pretty ridiculous, too.

  Right. I think for a lot of people, when they think about spending, they think it’s better to go to fast-fashion places and buy something for twelve dollars. On the surface, that seems like you’re really not spending too much. But, when those dresses aren’t high quality, they don’t last for a long time and you just end up buying way more of them later. In the long run, with fast-fashion, you don’t save that much money.

  Exactly. That took me a really long time to learn.

  For me, if I’m going to spend money on a fun dress for going out, I’d rather spend money at a thrift store than go to a fast-fashion store. You’re going to find more original items for the same price as at a fast fashion place and it’ll be a higher quality.

  Right. So, this question pertains women and the topic of money. Why would you say that money seems to be a polarizing topic for women?

  The topic of money is a man’s concern. Women are taught to think about our family life or dating.

  I think it’s because we’re not raised to think about it. I would say, for the majority of women growing up, their parents did not give them a very thorough financial education. Plus, you certainly don’t learn about it in school. I feel like we still live in a society where women are taught to think about other topics besides money and that the topic of money is a man’s concern. Women are taught to think about our family life or dating. Even now, when we are more likely to think about our professional life, there’s still not a lot of empowerment for women in that arena. So, I think a lot of women feel very insecure when talking about money because they feel like they don’t know anything regarding the topic. They’re afraid of sounding ignorant or they’re afraid that it’s just not something that any of their friends want to talk about. But, there’s nothing inherent to women that says we can’t talk about money or be financially literate. It’s a cultural thing.

  I agree. Do you think the cultural taboo has anything to do with the sexist notion that men might find us not sexually appealing if we are talking about money?

  I think that in the workplace you can definitely experience sexism. For instance, when it comes to negotiating your salary or when it comes to how your boss perceives you. In terms of your income, it can definitely be affected by sexism, for sure. However, personal finance is one of those things where you have the power to handle it yourself. You don’t need anyone’s permission to save money. So, I feel like personal finance is probably one of the most important areas that women can use to empower themselves.

  That’s really powerful. I never thought about personal finance in that context. Speaking of personal finance, you write about wanting to be able to hold your own when speaking with a lawyer or an accountant. What are some things you’ve learned when it comes to advocating for yourself while discussing financial matters with professionals?

  I’ve learned that for whatever I’m going into their office to accomplish, I should have a beginner’s knowledge of the topic myself. Everything from “what exactly is an LLC and an operating agreement” to “what can I claim on my taxes and how do I file them as both the owner of a company and a freelancer?” are things that I should know before going to a meeting. I trust the professionals that I work with, but it makes the experience easier and more nuanced if you have a fundamental understanding of how these things work.

  What are your personal finance goals and your future goals for expanding thefinancaldiet.com?

  Two of my personal finance goals are having total control over my budget (i.e., how much I am able to save/invest on a monthly basis) and having stellar credit. As far as expanding the site, my goal is to maintain creative control over it and not to become a manager of some kind. I personally love the scope I have now: being able to wake up, do creative work, and watch it grow. I would like to see the full range of financial experiences, from getting out of debt, to buying real estate, to shopping smart. Also, I would like the design of the site to become aesthetically pleasing and interactive. The Financial Diet’s designer, Lauren Ver Hage, is wonderful and I want her to be able to spread her wings.

  What steps are you taking, if any, to monetize The Financial Diet?

  We have our media kit available on the site for partners and we are working on the back end to include ads in the visual layout of the site. It’s very important for us that the monetized aspects of the site are tasteful and smart, so we’ve taken our time.

  So, what would you personally attribute to the success of the site? Why do you think it has resonated with so many people?

  In pop culture and media and amongst our friends, women talk about everything from dating to work and going out with friends but I feel like money is one of the few topic that we don’t discuss. I didn’t know of any other places that I could go to in order learn about money in a relatable way. Sometimes, I would see articles in women’s magazines about spending here and there but I didn’t feel like I had a destination. When I looked at my Instagram, there were so many lifestyle bloggers and people showing you how to make things look beautiful or showcasing their beautiful outfits. To me, it seemed really unrealistic. I wanted to do a lifestyle blog that would be about money and that didn’t feel fake and aspirational. I think people resonate with something that feels real and relatable to their own life instead of what they wish their life could be.

  The site definitely feels genuine. One of the aspects I love about it is the Financial Confession section. Okay, so, I want to give you a little humblebrag moment. Could you share how the opportunity to have your website sponsored by John and Hank Green came about?

  I wrote an article about how fashion-blogging is bullshit. Fashion articles show you content like, “here’s an outfit that you can recreate at home,” but every component of that outfit is worth hundreds of dollars and was given to the blogger for free by a clothing company. I wrote that article in frustration and didn’t think too much of it. Someone sent it to Hank Green and he emailed me and said that he really loved the article. We exchanged a couple of emails and then I didn’t hear from him for a couple weeks.

  John Green actually crashed the site.

  Right around Christmas, his assistant wrote to me and said that John and Hank love the project and that they wanted to sponsor me. They didn’t say what they wanted me to do with the site, nor did they tell me how they wanted me to use the money. They just sort of said, “Here’s the money, go prosper.” So, when I launched the redesign, I sent the updated site to them and then they shared it on twitter. John Green actually crashed the site.

  I love that he’s so involved with so many community-oriented projects. Obviously he’s an amazing writer, but I like that he’s committed to affecting positive change, too.

  Yeah, he’s really wonderful, I love him.

  Wow, you’ve really made so many leaps and bounds in a few short years. When it can be difficult to begin making money in creative fields like writing or creating a website, how do you merge your creative goals with your goals to be financially independent and smart about your money? Does the allure of “Keeping up with the Jonses” ever dictate what sort of projects or career endeavors you take on?

  Personally, I spent most of my career doing work that is very high-value (financially) for the companies I worked and wrote for. In my spare time, I wrote more personal articles that weren’t necessarily profitable. But, in my regular work, I did at least 70 percent “popular listicle”-type content, or copywriting. I don’t dislike either of those things. I just always understood that listicle-type content are how media companies pay a lot of their bills.

  Four years of that enabled me to have enough of a platform to start my own site and to do more of the freelance projects that I really enjoyed. But, I have always cared about making money at writing because financial independence and the ability to do things like travel or live in a nice apartment were, (and are), important to me. For people who are less driven by the idea of money, they can be pickier about the kind of projects you take on from the get-go.

• RateHub Blog - https://www.ratehub.ca/blog/money-hungry-a-qa-with-author-chelsea-fagan-on-the-financial-diet-book/

  In 2014, Chelsea Fagan decided to go on a diet. What started as a personal Tumblr to track her budget and hold herself accountable grew into The Financial Diet, a popular blog and YouTube channel with a millennial bent and confessional approach to discussing money.

  The eponymous book The Financial Diet: A Total Beginner’s Guide to Getting Good with Money (Holt Paperbacks, $25) makes dense financial concepts palatable and delves into how your relationship with money intertwines with career, diet, friendships, and love. Designed by TFD co-founder Lauren Ver Hage, the book is an attractively illustrated crash course in sticking to a budget, dealing with debt, and charting a financial future.

  Interspersed with stories of Fagan’s own redemption from being a financial hot mess are interviews with experts (mostly women) on everything from investing and renting vs. buying a home to side hustles and creating a professional wardrobe. The book acts as a financial lifestyle guide, with sections on budgeting and investing (“be your money’s asshole boss”), career (negotiating the raise you deserve), cooking (how to be your own Italian grandmother), home (creating a grown-up living space) and relationships (broaching awkward money talks).

  Writing for a generation saddled with student debt, underemployment, and rising living costs, Fagan’s tone is reassuring and practical: “Money doesn’t buy you happiness, it buys you the Lego kit for happiness. It buys you comfort, security, and options.” Rateub.ca spoke with Fagan by phone from New York.

  The book jacket calls it “the personal finance book for people who don’t care about personal finance.” Why do some people actively reject dealing with money?

  Particularly for the millennial generation, because a huge overwhelming number of them are in debt. The average is about $40,000 in America. Every graduating class since 2008 currently has a negative net worth on average. I think a lot of the advice out there feels actively hostile to someone who is struggling to that extent financially. Also, the same generation who has all this debt also has unemployment, underemployment, and extremely bleak prospects when it comes to long-term financial decisions. The advice that’s out there is often still catered to the previous generation, who had a lot more discretionary income and a lot less debt.

  It’s so easy to covet the carefully curated lifestyles of celebrities, influencers, and random bloggers. Has social media skewed what financial success looks like?

  Yes, because a lot of it is about very short-term purchases — clothes, food, furniture, things like that. Unfortunately, the truth about financial health is often that if you’re really taking care of yourself financially, it doesn’t look that impressive. There’s nothing to show. You’re obviously not going to take a picture of your bank statement and post it on Instagram.

  Why include a section on cooking? It’s a little unusual for a personal finance book.

  For the vast majority of people, the money that they spend on food and dining is the second biggest category in their budget after rent. It’s enormous for most people. Also, millennials eat out more than any other generation, which I think is indicative of the fact that a lot of them did not get a really good home-cooking education growing up. If you’re the kind of person who eats out or orders in a lot or buys prepackaged foods, which is true of a lot of millennials, making the switch to cooking at home most nights of the week can literally save you thousands and thousands of dollars a year.

  “The advice that’s out there is often still catered to the previous generation,
  who had a lot more discretionary income and a lot less debt.”

  You’ve held a couple of Q&As while on book tour. Were there any questions or comments from attendees that stuck with you?

  We’ve only done three of our 10 stops so far, so we’ll see if this changes, but something that’s pretty interesting is the women who tend to come to our events tend to be better with money than our average reader. To be a fan of a finance site to that extent probably requires that you be actively interested in money. We get a lot of questions at our Q&As for what can you do if you’re already doing everything really well, or if you’re already very Type A and your tendency is to save too much. Ultimately, while I think we do have some answers for those people, I don’t think that will ever be the majority of our conversation. There’s almost unlimited information out there to hone your skills further once you get started, but for most people the most difficult part of money is to take those first steps and start putting the practices into play.

  Personal finance tends to be a small, gated community of “experts.” What’s the reaction been to your openness, casual tone, and being a platform for sometimes unpopular opinions?

  Not good. We’re not financial experts, and we don’t aspire to be. We consult with them, and we consulted with them for the book, but we don’t aspire to be Suze Orman or a CNBC anchor, and that’s the reason people enjoy reading us and watching our [YouTube] channel. Because it feels very accessible, and it’s put in language they can understand, and it’s free of judgement. But that’s not something the general finance community likes.

  One of the things that’s important to remember about the finance community, particularly in America … a huge number of these people giving out financial advice are not really certified. So the community has a really vested interest in trying to gatekeep itself in deciding who gets to be an authority. Obviously, as we saw in 2008 and continue to see today, there are a lot of really sketchy people out there who will advise you against your own interest to earn a quick commission or fee off of you.

  But when it comes to just day-to-day advice, I think this desire to protect the industry to a certain extent extends into making it so that average people can’t even talk about it, which I think is silly because most people are not interested in reading a straight-up dry advice book. Most people are interested in reading something that really speaks to them on their level.

  Talking about money is a huge issue in relationships. What do you think is missing from discussions on money?

  One thing that’s very important to consider is that men still control the vast majority of long-term financial planning in relationships, even if the woman earns as much or money. But I think part of the issue is that both sides are not going into relationships expecting to be very lucid, aware, and thoughtful about money. A lot of women are still raised in this mindset that a man is going to take care of it for them. That sets up a lot of problems, notably that eventually one partner is disproportionately controlling the money and controlling the money decisions they’re going to become the one who feels more entitled to make those decisions and feels more entitled to have the power in the relationship.

  An expert we consulted with in the book recommended that every woman should have her own separate emergency fund, even in marriages. Not just because it’s good for protecting yourself if something were to happen, but it’s also very important to have an independent sense of self and also to do the independent individual work in order to save it, because does in and of itself teach you a lot. I do think there’s just a general sense of imbalance.

  When we talk in the chapter about relationships, that doesn’t mean just romantic relationships. When it comes to friendships, I think friends are really, really uncomfortable with being honest with one another if they have limits on their money. We hear all the time on the site about people putting themselves into credit card debt to keep up with their friends’ social lives, and that’s incredibly dangerous and unhealthy.

  “A lot of women are still raised in this mindset that a man is going to take care of it for them. That sets up a lot of problems, notably that eventually one partner is disproportionately controlling the money and controlling the money decisions. They’re going to become
  the one who feels more entitled to make those decisions.”

  The Financial Diet started as a personal blog. Now, it’s a community. What’s next for keeping the conversation on money going?

  We have our book tour, we’re doing the west coast, leaving tomorrow. In March we do the middle of the country. It’s very exciting to hang out with our audience in real life. Starting later this week, we’re launching a second weekly video every Thursday, hosted by a friend of ours in the industry, Erin of Broke Millennial. They’re going to be little bite-sized three-minute videos that explain financial concepts to people. We’re really just moving into doing things that are even more accessible to people. Explaining things in a shorter, clearer format, because our Tuesday videos are usually much longer and more involved. But also really listening to our audience as we go on this book tour and seeing where we’re maybe not explaining something clearly enough. One thing that we’d really love to do later in the year is to package up easy little guides on various topics. The biggest thing for us is that we want to make sure that there’s no question that we don’t answer for people to be able to be part of the conversation.

  Are there any personal finance or investing books, writers, blogs, websites that you’re into right now?

  Obviously we love Broke Millennial, we’re doing a video with her every week. She has a book that came out last year called Broke Millennial as well. I would like to tell people if they’re interested in reading our book that hers is a great second step because it’s more detailed and more advanced. Desirae Odjick of Half Banked is wonderful, Mixed Up Money is another great one, and so is The Dumpster Dog. There’s a ton of wonderful women, and I only read women in the genre — I don’t read any men.

  One more that I would like to shoutout that I love is a YouTube channel called One Big Happy Life, and it’s wonderful. It’s a couple who talks about the ins and outs of money, but from the perspective of they have an enormous amount of debt, and they’re both attorneys. It’s an interesting combination of both making money, but having a ton of debt. They’re both really personable and really nice to watch.

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(Jan. 2018): p15.
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Full Text: 
Got goals for 2018? Yeah, we thought so. For gentle motivation, practical guidance and fresh ideas on how
to make this the best year yet, check out the inspiring books below.
FIX YOUR FINANCES
January is the ideal time to size up your fiscal situation. If the prospect of looking at your checking account
puts you in a panic, then pick up a copy of Chelsea Fagan's The Financial Diet: A Total Beginner's Guide to
Getting Good with Money (Holt, $19, 208 pages, ISBN 9781250176165). This handy manual is packed
with concise, clear advice on fundamentals like maintaining a personal budget and building credit. Fagan, a
journalist and successful blogger, strikes a breezy, cordial tone on the page. Untangling knotty topics such as
investing and retirement planning, she delivers a crash course in economics that's informative and--yes!--
enjoyable.
Featuring invaluable insights from a wide range of financial experts, The Financial Diet also includes
economical recipes, tips for getting more mileage out of your wardrobe and smart suggestions for stretching
that paycheck. "Saving money isn't about depriving yourself," Fagan says. "It's about deciding you love
Future You as much as you love Today You." With a nifty layout by designer Lauren Ver Hage, this
appealing book can help you make 2018 the year of spending--and saving--wisely.
BE YOUR BEST SELF
Does your 2018 todo list include learning to love yourself? If the answer is yes, then here's your next needto-read
title: Sarah Knight's inspiring You Do You: How to Be Who You Are and Use What You've Got to
Get What You Want (Little, Brown, $19.99, 320 pages, ISBN 9780316445122). An author with attitude (her
2015 book was titled The Life-Changing Magic of Not Giving a F*ck), Knight uses humor and a bold, cuttothe-chase
style to lay out strategies for avoiding what she calls Lowest Common Denominator Living--a
follow-the-crowd mindset that smothers individuality.
Knight instead champions learning to identify--and successfully express--your needs and letting go of the
expectations of others. And the concept of perfection that permeates our culture? Knight can show you how
to tune it out and turn your weaknesses into assets. A self-esteem essential, You Do You will empower you
to take risks and take charge of every aspect of your life. Self-love (not to mention like) can't be achieved
overnight, but Knight's book will get you started.
REFINE YOUR CHARM
French femmes--self-possessed and effortlessly elegant--are the envy of women around the world. What
gives them that extra edge? According to bestselling author Jamie Cat Callan, it's charm, a quality the
French appear to have perfected. In Parisian Charm School (TarcherPerigee, $19, 224 pages, ISBN
9780143130963), Callan shows you how to cultivate the trait through a transformative take on life that
includes practical steps for nurturing your own unique appeal.
In chapters enlivened by warm personal anecdotes and inspiring quotes, Callan provides assignments that
will nudge you out of your routine and get you engaged with others. She offers instruction in charm-related
undertakings, like how to plan a world-class dinner party (and command attention at said fete) and how to
flirt effectively (yes, it's possible to do this without sacrificing your dignity). She also recommends easy
wardrobe adjustments with advice on wearing the bold colors you've always loved but may have been too
much of a wallflower to try. Stepping out of your comfort zone will put you on the path to attaining Parisian
allure. "Trust your heart," Callan counsels. "Say yes. And bring the flowers." Tres charmant!
PICK UP A HABIT
Meditation: It's one of those polarizing practices that seems to have as many detractors as devotees. ABC
News anchor Dan Harris was a longtime doubter of the discipline--until he experienced a panic attack on
live TV. In an effort to manage his anxiety, he turned to meditation, and it was a choice that transformed his
life. Harris chronicled his conversion experience in his bestselling 2014 memoir, 10% Happier. In his new
book, Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics (Spiegel & Grau, $26, 304 pages, ISBN 9780399588945), coauthored
with meditation teacher Jeff Warren and journalist Carlye Adler, Harris aims to find out why so
many folks are resistant to the ritual. Hopping aboard the 10% Happier tour bus with the free-spirited
Warren as his sidekick, Harris tours 18 states and talks to people from all walks of life about what keeps
them from taking the meditation plunge. The reasons range from lack of time to boredom with the routine.
Harris counters these and other impediments with practical advice on starting--and sticking with--a
meditation regimen, and he offers easy techniques for neophytes. Harris' book will revise your ideas about
the ancient exercise and help you feel more focused in the months to come.
CHEAT ON YOUR DIET
Taking a more mindful approach to nutrition is a post-holiday objective many of us set for ourselves.
Whether you're trying to break a serial snacking habit or focus on long-term weight loss, you should take a
look at Aaron Carroll's The Bad Food Bible: How and Why to Eat Sinfully (HMH, $25, 272 pages, ISBN
9780544952560). In this informative, accessible book, Carroll, a doctor and healthcare expert, sifts through
the research, advice and straight-up hype surrounding diets to reveal that some of the foods we view as offlimits
aren't as awful as we think.
According to Carroll, we can once again make room on our plates for red meat, eggs, dairy and bread. He
discusses these and other controversial culinary categories in the book, stressing the significance of
moderation along the way. "More important than what you're eating is how you're eating it--especially how
often and how much," he says. The book has plenty of sensible tips for maintaining a healthy diet, such as
cooking nutritious dishes at home and making each meal a communal affair. After all, Carroll says, food is
meant to be enjoyed. Here's to a delicious new year!
BY JULIE HALE
Source Citation   (MLA 8th
Edition)
Hale, Julie. "Warning: Work in progress." BookPage, Jan. 2018, p. 15. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A520055891/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=42ec1154.
Accessed 5 Mar. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A520055891
The Financial Diet: A Total Beginner's
Guide to Getting Good with Money
Courtney Jones
Booklist.
114.7 (Dec. 1, 2017): p10.
COPYRIGHT 2017 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist_publications/booklist/booklist.cfm
Full Text: 
The Financial Diet: A Total Beginner's Guide to Getting Good with Money.
By Chelsea Fagan.
Jan. 2018. 208p. illus. Holt, paper, $19 (9781250176165). 332.024.
Based on Fagan's popular blog, The Financial Diet--TFD for short--this book dispenses practical, nononsense
financial advice, with balance as a key ingredient for success. Fagan shoots straight about her own
experiences as an "irresponsible" teen with a credit card. Luckily, she avoided some common hang-ups for
most millennial, including student loans. In time, Fagan and her team eventually decided to "get good with
money" and work toward healthier relationships with it. Hence, the diet. Bringing together experts from
varying fields, including career planners, mortgage experts, financial bloggers, and money and relationship
writers is par for the course. The mix of savvy, open, and mostly female perspectives on personal finance are
what make this a winner. Additionally, Fagan excels at encouraging conversations about money, which she
emphasizes as crucial for young women in their careers and relationships, and in caring for their future
selves. Whip-smart, collaborative, and mindful, The Financial Diet dispenses timeless advice that goes
above and beyond asking readers to give up their avocado toast.--Courtney Jones
YA: Fagan details her own experiences as a teen with a credit card and offers guidance that will benefit
students beaded toward high-school graduation. CJ.
Source Citation   (MLA 8th
Edition)
Jones, Courtney. "The Financial Diet: A Total Beginner's Guide to Getting Good with Money." Booklist, 1
Dec. 2017, p. 10. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A519036112/ITOF?
u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=c3f3abeb. Accessed 5 Mar. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A519036112
The Financial Diet: A Total Beginner's
Guide to Getting Good with Money
Publishers Weekly.
264.47 (Nov. 20, 2017): p83.
COPYRIGHT 2017 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text: 
The Financial Diet: A Total Beginner's Guide to Getting Good with Money
Chelsea Fagan. Holt, $17 trade paper (208p) ISBN 978-1-250-17616-5
Introducing financial concepts with a light touch, Fagan, cofounder of the Financial Diet website, begins
with her own story of bad financial behavior and its costs both financially and to her peace of mind. Fagan
leads millennials and Generation Zers--the tone and content of the book are clearly aimed at the generations
born after 1980--through building a solid understanding of finances and how money affects all areas of life,
from one's career to one's romantic life. Offering the expected topics of credit, investing, and retirement
savings and a sparse glossary of financial terms, this slender book succeeds best as a life guide. Fagan
elevates her book above other beginner guides by showing how finances and aspects of lifestyle such as diet
and your relationship with money intertwine. In short interviews, experts give out sound advice in their
areas of expertise, including on saving, deciding when buying a home makes sense, and knowing when to
spend money. In a section useful to those just starting out on their own, after discussing renting versus
owning and the cost savings of being able to do basic repairs, a list of tools and their uses is given, and why
you'll need them. The breezy lifestyle-magazine-like writing style and easy-to-digest layout make this guide
a useful and readable resource. (Jan.)
Source Citation   (MLA 8th
Edition)
"The Financial Diet: A Total Beginner's Guide to Getting Good with Money." Publishers Weekly, 20 Nov.
2017, p. 83. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A517262124/ITOF?
u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=7b58b169. Accessed 5 Mar. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A517262124

Hale, Julie. "Warning: Work in progress." BookPage, Jan. 2018, p. 15. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A520055891/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF. Accessed 5 Mar. 2018. Jones, Courtney. "The Financial Diet: A Total Beginner's Guide to Getting Good with Money." Booklist, 1 Dec. 2017, p. 10. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A519036112/ITOF? u=schlager&sid=ITOF. Accessed 5 Mar. 2018. "The Financial Diet: A Total Beginner's Guide to Getting Good with Money." Publishers Weekly, 20 Nov. 2017, p. 83. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A517262124/ITOF? u=schlager&sid=ITOF. Accessed 5 Mar. 2018.

• Bassocantor Reviews
  https://www.bassocantor.com/blog/financial-diet
  Word count: 460

  In THE FINANCIAL DIET, author Chelsea Fagan provides a ton of practical ways to manage your money, as well as ideas on furthering your career. In the beginning pages, the author admits to her many foolish decisions as a kid. In particular, she laments this big mistake:

  “The day I turned eighteen, I acquired my little card full of free money, and maxed it out within a month and a half of delirious spending.”
  I bet a lot of readers can identify with the foolhardy decisions we all made when young.

  The book especially focuses on suggestions for readers who are just beginning the journey on sound money management. Thus, Chelsea includes valuable tips such as, “#4. Automate What You Can Card payments, bill payments, and savings transfers should all be automatically made from your checking account. This way, you won’t tempt yourself to not save.”

  Here is a tip that I especially liked:

  “Even if you just dedicate a few hours a month to a side job, even one additional stream of income has a huge impact.”
  I’ve never really thought seriously about doing that—now I will!

  Here’s another gem: Don’t slide into a “CEO lifestyle” where you tell yourself how much you deserve all the money-wasting things you buy.

  There is one feature of this book that is especially commendable: Chelsea doesn’t just rely on her OWN ideas—she consults experts whom she respects for their business wisdom. So instead of just getting the perspective from the author, the reader gets advice from lots of different folks. I don’t think I’ve seen that particular format in any other personal finance book.

  For example, the author consults with Bridget Casey, Award-Winning Entrepreneur, and asks her, “What are the three most important financial strategies you live by?” The author repeats this “Q&A” approach many times throughout the book. I thought this was a really wise idea.

  So all I all, I found THE FINANCIAL DIET to be a surprisingly fun read—as well as a practical book. The author is a witty and funny writer. She turns a pretty dull subject into something a lot more interesting. The illustrations by Eve Mobley also add a nice touch. There is a glossary of business terms appendix.

  The end of the book has a few closing exhortations to the reader. She wants the reader to figure out “What you really want out of your life— not just the “big” things, but how you want your average day to look and what you want to be doing with it. “

  Good advice!

• LowestRates.ca
  https://www.lowestrates.ca/blog/finance/financial-diet-book-review
  Word count: 1429

  Millennials don’t know how to do money; that’s what we keep hearing. The spending patterns that are associated with our cohort — living beyond our means, prioritizing short-term pleasures over long-term planning — are usually framed as proof that we’re irresponsible, or that we carry an inflated sense of entitlement to things we can’t afford. But, with little effort, you could also use those same statistics to tell a different story not entirely unrelated to the first. The aggressive aspirationalism might still be there, as would the reluctance to take the long view. But present, also, would be the deep-seated pessimism that drives those tendencies to begin with.

  This second story — the one with the bad feelings — is the one that Chelsea Fagan runs with in her new self-help book The Financial Diet: A Total Beginner’s Guide to Getting Good with Money (Jan. 2, Holt Paperbacks). Based on the popular website of the same name that Fagan founded in 2014 with collaborator Lauren Ver Hage, The Financial Diet is a long-read take on the millennial-facing, personal finance and lifestyle content that its online counterpart serves in snack-sized blog posts. (A big chunk of the content on The Financial Diet, the website, is composed of listicles.) Both website and book are easy to digest and aspire to be relatable in the service of a bigger goal: to outline a clear path to financial health for a generation that often has trouble envisioning a future.

  Money touches everything. It allows access to basic needs, like food, water, and shelter, as well as resources — higher education, unpaid or underpaid apprenticeships, social connections — that can equip you to meet the costs of being alive. How much money you have dictates whether you live in one place or another, and the types of relationships you can pursue and maintain. It determines whether you can live in safety, how long you’re likely to live at all, and, increasingly, whether the air you breathe is even clean.

  Both website and book are easy to digest and aspire to be relatable in the service of a bigger goal: to outline a clear path to financial health for a generation that often has trouble envisioning a future
  The all-encompassing role of money reverberates through The Financial Diet, though the stakes of the book are not always so high: its chapters cover relationships, food habits, and home maintenance and decorating in addition to advice on how to budget and invest. Despite its significance, though, money and the ways it weaves through our day-to-day lives — how much we spend, how much we make, how much we have, and where it all comes from — remains a perplexing subject for millennials to broach, both with each other and with ourselves.

  This difficulty is not necessarily unique to millennials — older generations, for example, tend to have more qualms about discussing their salaries with friends, family members, and coworkers. But basic financial literacy among millennials, though steadily climbing (a 2015 study by the George Washington Global Financial Literacy Excellence Center reported that only 24% of surveyed millennials in the US carried basic financial knowledge, while a 2017 study saw the number rise to 57%), is still less pervasive than it is among other generations. If millennials, as studies and media outlets like to keep reciting, have been better educated than any other age cohort, why is this the case? Is it because nobody bothered to teach us about money, or because the rules that we had been taught no longer apply? Are we less proficient at grasping this particular kind of knowledge? Or is it simply that we don’t care?

  Of course, all statistics point to the blunt conclusion that we should care, even more than our parents did. By now, the panoply of bad things that are chipping away at our financial health has received as much media air time — and registers with the same vacant frenzy — as your average bad pop song: crushing student debt; record-high rental rates; high unemployment rates relative to the rest of the working population; rising costs of living; the shift to precarious, contract-based work as the standard. If the most basic rule of responsible financial management is to not spend money on things you don’t need, it might be worth asking whether the average millennial can even find any fat to trim. But, given the poor prospects that many millennials face for reaching financial health in the near future — the average American student in the class of 2016 owes $37,172 USD in student debt — it makes sense that we’re hesitant to look at the numbers straight-on: what’s the point of sussing out the intricacies of what you already know to be fucking bleak?

  Is it because nobody bothered to teach us about money, or because the rules that we had been taught no longer apply?
  While I was going through The Financial Diet, I read another book that lent insight into the market for both Fagan’s book and her blog — which includes me (I’m 28). Malcolm Harris’ Kids These Days: Human Capital and the Making of Millennials (Nov. 7, 2017, Little, Brown, and Company) draws on a range of studies to counter depictions of the generic millennial as white (millennials in the US are, proportionally speaking, much more diverse than boomers), spoiled (they work harder for less), and reckless (they are more risk-averse). What Harris sees instead is a hyper-educated, over-supervised (and, in many racialized cases, over-policed) generation that has been primed from grade school onwards to compete for a part in a global workforce that doesn’t need — much less want — them all.

  Faced with the reality of the market, the cohort became depressed (Harris notes that depression has increased by 1,000% in the past century, with about half of that growth occurring since the late 1980s) and even more competitive, leading to a strange reversal: practices that workers from previous generations had believed to be exploitative — like extreme flexibility in the workplace — became covetable, even necessary, skills. It’s the brand of logic that frames the business models of companies like Uber and Lyft as innovative, even though they’re literally based on breaking laws designed to protect the rights of cab drivers. In this milieu, the good of the collective — or even your own well-being — doesn’t matter as much as your competitive edge.

  Read against Harris’ book, The Financial Diet moved me in a way that I did not expect, if only because what I expected was the individualistic, winner-take-all tone that Harris talks about, and that suffuses so much self-help media claiming to help millennials navigate today’s market. Beyond dispensing basic personal finance advice — don’t buy what you can’t afford, build an emergency savings fund, focus on debt reduction — what Fagan really advocates for is an attitude adjustment that gently counters what millennials have always been told about the world, and how to live within it.

  Fagan’s ideal pace, in other words, is slower: allow yourself room to fail; be patient; and understand money as a means to a life — not just a thing to be accumulated

  Fagan’s ideal pace, in other words, is slower: allow yourself room to fail; be patient; and understand money as a means to a life — not just a thing to be accumulated. “For many of us, the life we might imagine for ourselves is simply out of reach or leaves us with no clear road map to get there,” she writes. “Saving, living below your means, and diversifying your income often make the difference between being stuck in a job you can’t stand and having the freedom to move on to something better.”

  Keep trying, says Fagan, but know that the risks are different for everyone, depending on when and where they come from; “lean in sometimes, but also lean the hell out other times, because you’re a human and humans should be defined by way more than their job title.” (It’s notable that even when Fagan uses terms created to fuel capitalist ambition — “agile,” formerly a Silicon Valley favourite, appears several times in the book — they are usually joined by a reminder to her readers to also just, relax.) The Financial Diet isn’t a guidebook on how to radically upend a bad system. But its advice is refreshingly scaled for humans — by which I mean that it puts people, not money, first.

• New York Times
  https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/12/business/personal-finance-dont-have-a-clue.html
  Word count: 1203

  Chelsea Fagan sets herself a high bar in writing “The Financial Diet” (Henry Holt, $19): She wants to prove to people who know little about personal finance that investing is both vital and not all that difficult.

  Does she deliver?

  Yes, and surprisingly well. If you had to give her a grade, it would be a solid “B” because of both her supportive tone and her ability to reduce what can be fairly complicated concepts — such as how you put together a comprehensive investment plan — to easily understood bite-size pieces.

  The biggest advantage Ms. Fagan, who runs a website with the same name as her book, has going for is her approach. She is a millennial writing, in colloquial language that is occasionally profane, for other millennials.

  For example, in explaining why not enough of her generation understands money, she writes: “It doesn’t help that the information available about personal finance oscillates between a less fun version of your dad yelling at you about stocks and tone-deaf articles about how millennials are not buying homes. (It’s because we have billions in dollars of student debt.)” There is actually another word after the word “debt,” but it is a noun that this paper won’t publish unless it is spoken by a prominent politician.

  Continue reading the main story
  Off the Shelf
  A collection of “Off the Shelf” columns published in The New York Times.
  The High Cost of Not Talking About Money
  OCT 12
  Summer Beach Reading: The Personal Finance Edition
  JUL 14
  Two Books Offer Unconventional and Divergent Approaches to Investing
  APR 15
  Making Your Family Better at Personal Finance
  Three Excellent Books on Long-Term Investing
  See More »

  The design by Lauren Ver Hage, who gets billing on the cover, also helps make the book appealing by making important ideas and intriguing thoughts jump out. For example, this sentence gets its own page: “The scariest thing about buying a home, in a lot of ways, is that it requires you do a not-insignificant amount of math.”

  Widespread Appeal
  So many finance books are relentlessly masculine in tone and focus that it’s worth mentioning that this one skews female: Most of the experts quoted are women, and many references, to television shows like “Sex and the City,” appear to be oriented toward women, too. But her advice is universal.

  For example, she suggests saving a combined 20 percent of your income for both short and long-term goals. And, she notes, “Saving, living below your means, and diversifying your income often make the difference between being stuck in a job you can’t stand and having the freedom to move on to something better.” These ideas apply to just about everyone.

  So why does she not get a higher grade? For two interrelated reasons that boil down to this: She seems to advocate putting too much money into investments that are too conservative for younger investors.

  The good news is Ms. Fagan is terrific about emphasizing the need to save. Early on, she creates “A Bank Account Pyramid,” explaining where to put the money and when, and she also makes saving money a significant part of a five-point plan that she describes as “The Total Idiot’s Guide to Investing.”

  But if you look at both, it is easy to see the two problems.

  A Few Flaws
  The pyramid starts out with a strong base: Have a basic savings account to house your emergency fund.

  But it gets shakier from there. In the next layer up, she calls for putting money in certificates of deposit, which are “good for things like saving to buy a house in the next few years and other medium-term savings.”

  Certainly, you don’t want your down payment to disappear in a market crash the day before the money is due. But having all your money tied up in low-yielding C.D.s for more than three years before you buy a home will make it hard for your money to grow. As I write this, a three-year C.D. yields about just 2.2 percent and a five-year one isn’t much better, 2.6 percent. (Three to five years would seem to fit within Ms. Fagan’s definition of medium-term savings.)

  So her argument about where to put money for medium-term objectives is debatable — my position would be to hold some stock, shifting the money to more conservative investments as your goal draws nigh. For example, have 100 percent of the money in equities when the goal is five years out; 60 percent in equities and 40 percent in short-term bond funds and C.D.s if you will need the money in 36 months, and only move all the money into short-term C.D.s a year before you have to write the check.

  Ms. Fagan goes on to say that after putting cash into an emergency fund and buying C.D.s for short and intermediate goals, the rest of your savings should be in “longer term investments.” Like what? She doesn’t say. A 30-year bond would qualify, but it’s an awfully conservative place for a millennial investor saving for the long-term.

  The same flaw exists in her investment guide. Her first two points are great. Again, it starts with the emergency fund, followed by working hard to pay off nondeductible debt. That is sound advice. But after that, things get squishy.

  Her third point about opening a retirement account is fine as far as it goes, but where do you put that money? Ms. Fagan doesn’t tell us.

  And her last point is confusing. After taking the first three steps, she writes, “Explore other low-risk options such as mutual funds and index funds.” Now on the surface that’s just wrong. Mutual funds and index funds that invest in equities, and bonds for that matter, have risk. As the prospectus of each always points out, you can lose money.

  Giving Ms. Fagan the benefit of the doubt, I think she was trying to say that index funds and other mutual funds carry less risk to your portfolio than investing in individual stocks.

  However, there are fixed- income mutual funds that offer low yields. Simply saying invest in mutual funds is not helpful.

  But to be fair, Ms. Fagan did not set out to write the definitive investment book, and she emphasizes throughout that if you are confused, “It’s worth it to pay professionals” to help you with things “you don’t know how to do and will put off until it’s too late.” These quibbles aside, for the most part her advice and conclusions are solid.

  “We live in a world that encourages us to spend wastefully, accumulate more than we need, and put off things like retirement saving until … we are basically retired,” she says. ”

  Anything that can help improve matters is a good thing.

• Financial Success Book
  https://financialsuccessbook.com/the-financial-diet-by-chelsea-fagan
  Word count: 926

  While I’m sure everyone advocates a different approach to learning about money, I think Chelsea Fagan does an excellent job at presenting a well-rounded explanation and approach to money in general.

  If you are looking for a great foundation for financial literacy, or are simply looking to gain a fresh and easy to understand perspective on your life, this book will not disappoint!

  This book was recently published in January of this year and it has already gained prominence as a superb resource that is sure to make you “hungry” for more.

  The Premise
  Let me be frank here, this is a “Beginner’s book (guide)”, and most will attest to this. It is a guidebook on several subjects, all based around the idea that our money and success financially is tied with how we do other things. (E.g. What food we buy, what we wear, etc.)

  An interesting concept to be sure, but not unappreciated in this day and age. I for one completely agree with the statement that success financially is very much tied to our other habits in life.

  Being less of a centered study, Chelsea hopes to begin widening the mind of the reader, and help them begin seeing how everything in their lives as important and directly influencing their success, especially when bad eating and spending habits are involved.

  What most people don’t realize is that financial success is a practice, just like everything, and most everything I am doing influences my present and future.

  A generalized approach to financial stability, especially for those in debt, or stuck in bad money habits.

  How This Book Will Help You
  I believe this book will help people on several levels, and it will be most helpful to people who really haven’t done anything to better themselves financially at all.

  That being said, this book is not one to pass up even if you are experienced managing money or making money for that matter; we all need to improve one way or another.

  I think this book will open your eyes to the reality of why you may be failing financially or struggling to achieve the success you want.

  Being more of a broad overview or introduction into this arena, I think this book will give people a strong foundation to go on and start improving themselves one area at a time.

  I’d like to say that this book is “necessary” for your financial success, but that just isn’t true. No book in existence is absolutely necessary to succeed in life.

  Reviews
  Amazon has this book at a good rating, and most people found the information helpful. Some even went as far as to give it to entire groups who were learning about financial literacy.

  People obviously didn’t read the description on this book before buying and complained about this very thing, not realizing how basic the information was, and obviously not taking the principles to heart, hence the negative ratings.

  Some have criticized the author for her inexperience on some topics, but it is clear that Chelsea is well versed in solid financial principles and life goals; able to present a good book all around.

  Here are some reviews:

  Chelsea Fagan
  Writer, blogger, and speaker, Chelsea Fagan is certainly an interesting author.

  Chelsea is less off a role model compared to teachers like Robert Kiyosaki or T. Harv Eker, and more of a writer with a heart for learning and helping people.

  She gives easy to understand ideas and instruction, with a very lax way of communicating. It is for this reason that I think that this book is perfect for the beginner. I can think of few books that would suite a newcomer to the financial game like this one.

  My Conclusion
  I think most of you can tell where I stand on a book like this, but I hope my opinion doesn’t come across as too “salesman” like if you know what I mean. I really and sincerely think that this book will make a lasting impact on your life.

  I believe you should buy this book, mostly because I think it presents a perspective and knowledge that is very uncommon today. Seriously, this is one of the first times I have ever heard of someone presenting information like this in such an understandable way.

  I have reviewed many books, most of which relate to the intermediate to the advanced learner, usually because only the experienced learner is really interested about money and personal development in general.

  However, there are those times I will read a book, and while the information may not be necessarily new or original, the perspective or the presentation gives me new ideas on how to use said information, and that is what counts!

  I don’t advocate bad buys and I wouldn’t promote something that I didn’t believe was worth your time and money. This book is an excellent addition to any library, and I know it’s value will surprise you! Get it now!

  As always, leave a comment below and feel free to ask any questions! I will do my best to get back to you asap!

• Jocelynne Flor
  https://jocelynneflor.com/2018/01/29/the-financial-diet/
  Word count: 992

  If you’ve ever felt embarrassed or just flat out clueless about anything that relates to money, you’re not alone. I hated seeing the teller at the bank because I was scared they were judging me based on my transactions and account balance. I would google things about investments and loans then end up closing the browser, even more confused than I was to begin with. Living paycheck to paycheck with a HUGE student loan and a maxed out credit card over my head stressed me out every. single. day.

  Enter: The Financial Diet (TFD). I guess google could tell I needed help by all the things I was searching because this channel pretty much just fell into my lap while I was browsing YouTube one day. After binge watching all their videos, I felt empowered to take control of my finances once and for all. I started with a no spend month challenge in August and since then have been taking baby steps toward financial wellness and being stress-free about it.

  Earlier this month, Chelsea and Lauren released a book by the same name. I instantly bought my copy a few days later and it was the best investment I’ve made so far in 2018.

  SMALL CHANGES I MADE TO GET MY FINANCIAL SH*T TOGETHER (before reading TFD)
  Switched to a no-fee bank account & cancelled unnecessary monthly payments (this took about a month to actually complete because I was just SO LAZY to make calls/go to the bank)
  Started taking my side hustle more seriously
  *Attempted* to start an emergency fund and pay off credit debt ASAP (and failed)
  Keep track of my monthly credit score for FREE on the Mogo App
  Switched from a Metropass (monthly transit pass) to a Presto card (pay as you go transit pass) and I walk to places when I can = cut transit expense from $146.50 a month to about $80 a month!
  Got a library card to save $$$ on books (except The Financial Diet haha)

  IN REVIEW — THE FINANCIAL DIET: A Total Beginner’s Guide to Getting Good with Money
  Written by Chelsea Fagan / Designed by Lauren ver Hage

  What I love most of all about The Financial Diet is that I never feel bored or confused while watching their videos, and the same goes for the book. It’s relatable, educational, comical, and empowering all at the same time.

  REAL AND RELATABLE
  The author, Chelsea, has gone through her fair share of money mishaps. Reading about her hilariously horrifying experiences definitely made me feel less like a loser and more like “if she can get it together…so can I!” I feel like I’m more receptive to her advice because she’s gone through exactly what I and so many other millennials are going through.

  BEAUTIFULLY DESIGNED + VISUAL LEARNING
  At first flip-through, you’ll notice TFD isn’t your typical financial guidebook. Forget boring white pages full of words you don’t understand and say hello to colourful pages with diagrams, checklists, and even downloadable resources.

  The beautiful design and illustrations are just the cherry on top of all this valuable information, and it makes tackling your finances not so scary and stressful.

  SOLID ALL-AROUND ADVICE
  The book is separated into 7 different chapters: Budget, Investing, Career, Food, Home, Love, and Action.

  TFD touches on the basics like how to build a budget, credit scores, types of bank accounts, and WTF investing is, but it also goes above and beyond that. It dishes advice on everything from what to look out for when renting your first place so you don’t get screwed, why you should learn how to cook, building a professional work wardrobe, and getting real about achieving your dreams.

  For every piece of advice given, there’s some sort of “how-to” so you can put that advice into action almost immediately.

  Plus, there’s a glossary at the end if you’re ever stuck on what a certain financial term means.

  *Note: since I’m Canadian, the bit on retirement savings (401k’s and IRA’s) weren’t exactly useful for me, but it did remind me to seek out more applicable information on this. If you’re Canadian or from another country, don’t let this deter you from picking this book up because the information in here is still super valuable!

  DIFFERENT POINTS OF VIEW
  Throughout each chapter you’ll find small sections with interviews and advice from a variety of financial experts, side hustlers, and other industry professionals. Of course not everyone’s advice will mesh with each other’s, but I think having multiple points of view is so important because there really isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach to financial wellness. Plus, it opened up my eyes to even more great financial advice resources.

  —
  Some books should just be borrowed, some bought. TFD is a book I know I will keep on my shelf and refer back to for years, and I already have a few people asking to borrow it. It’s a true guide for beginners but would be useful for anyone who wants a fresh point of view on their personal finance. For less than 25 bucks, you can’t go wrong.

  Since reading TFD I’ve began tracking my spending, automated my savings and am finally building an emergency fund, and am well on my way to tackling my debt. Although I’m still struggling with creating a budget and cutting down excessive spending in certain areas, I feel confident that I’m on the right track to slowly building a healthier mindset when it comes to money. I haven’t stressed over it in weeks!

• Carol Early Cooney
  https://cecooney.com/2018/01/31/the-financial-diet-by-chelsea-fagan/
  Word count: 279

  Dear Fellow Reader,

  Today’s book is a departure from my usual type of book. The Financial Diet is subtitled A Total Beginner’s Guide to Getting Good with Money. This book was made available to me by the publisher, Henry Holt and Company. ( In other words, it was a freebie for my unbiased review.)

  This is not your typical financial guide. Not anywhere near your typical financial guide. And that makes it a tad bit better. It is an interesting take on a finance book. This is a book for a young woman – probably great for a fresh college grad or someone just starting out. There are seven chapters – Budget, Investing, Career, Food, Home, Love, Action. Yes, you read that right – Food and Home are in there. There are even recipes included along with kitchen equipment that you should have to start a kitchen. The chapter on love includes the following quote:

  “There is nothing more cringeworthy than having a relationship be your financial plan.”

  It is written in a light and breezy style. My feeling is that the idea behind the book is to send you to join the website. Despite that, it is worthwhile for someone just starting off. It is very easy to read and understand. The author provides lots of personal history and “what not to do” moments. Also included in the book are sections from experts on finance and work.

  So, if you are looking for a gift for a college grad or high school grad starting out, this might be a helpful gift for them.

  Thanks for reading!

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