Book Review: Balance and Beyond

Title: Balance and Beyond

Author: Matt Partrich

Quote: "This chapter..." [explains] "how savings forms the foundation of your financial planning."

This is not a book for leisure reading. It's a workbook, with exercises and quizzes, for a course in recovery from debt. 

Frankly I'm surprised my computer was able to open the e-book. All the full-color pictures and graphics came through looking like copies of real printed pages. Don't count on a computer to open this one. Buy a printed copy. Each participant in the course will want a printed copy on which to write out the exercises, anyway. They involve math as well as writing and multiple-choice review questions. 

I think more religious and community groups need to be helping people get out of debt and off welfare, and this is an excellent resource. Of course, a workbook (or even a course) will be only as good as the student makes it, but this has the potential to help people achieve financial freedom.

For those who want civil liberties and deplore the Loony Left's attacks on their values, but feel a need to keep on voting for those handouts...it's time to put your back where your head is. Get this book, which can be downloaded free and printed for pocket change if it's not supplied by the course leader, and use it. You too can live within your means and know yourself to be a maker, not a taker, the moral equal of everyone you meet. 

For church groups, finances can be a hot potato--doesn't every pastor dream of guiding a flock of rich people who have no financial worries and drop hundred-dollar bills in the plate while they listen to very very "spiritual" talks that never mention anyone's personal choices? If we want to make a difference in our own real world, however, and not just go on throwing money at international projects into which, at best, a lot of waste is built, both religious and civic groups need to dig into the difficult topic of helping people live within their means.

In this book Partrich keeps it real and seems to steer clear of "investment plans" or discussions of when or whether it'll ever be all right to use a credit card. This book is about balancing individual and family budgets. But I think it can do the most good when mixed groups of older/richer and younger/poorer people work through a program like this together. Working through the details of how young working parents stretch every dollar just might motivate neighbors in more comfortable circumstances to pay for things the working parents, or the children, make or sell.