The 60 Minute Money Workout by Ellie Kay

I've read articles and heard Ellie Kay on the radio before, and she seems to have some rather clear, good, practical financial advice. With these assumptions I began reading this book, The 60 Minute Money Workout. As I began in the introduction I started getting a feeling that I might not like this book so well. I understand that having a positive attitude toward finances/my handling of finances is important, but a forced 5-10 minutes of "self talk" saying positive things about my handling of this. . .didn't sit right with me. Okay, so on with the book.

It's set up chapter by chapter like an exercise type plan--with 5 min warmup, 10 min strength training, 20 min cardio burn, etc. and the suggested plan of use is to go through one 60 minute chapter session every week. I had a bit of difficulty with getting into this style of organizing her information--as a matter of fact it drove me a bit berserk--made me feel like I didn't want to read the book at all. BUT--plowing through. . .as I read on I found that she had some very practical information on many different family financial topics, such as debt, vacationing, vehicles, retirement, and many more. These were found outside of the cutesy exercise plan segments.

So. . .re-reading what I've written so far. . .sounds like I didn't like the book, right? Well, not exactly. I DID get some good ideas from it. I'd suggest that if you read this book, just skip over the "exercise" segments and read the meat of the sections. Another suggestion (to the publisher) would be to re-publish the book in a different format, eliminating all of that workout stuff. (On the other hand, this is just MY opinion. Maybe there are thousands of other people for which this format works beautifully!)

My final word on the review is that I do see helpfulness in this book, maybe just check it out at the library to see if it works for you before purchasing it. You'll be able to tell if it drives you crazy or really reverberates with you, and then you can make up your mind about purchasing it. There's a lot of good content in there, buried deep within the exercise format.

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher for the purposes of this review. I was not required to write a positive review.