Your Money or Your Life - Alvin Hall

Advantages: simple, easy to follow advice
Disadvantages: boring in places

...TV series 'Your Money or your life' in which financial adviser Alvin Hall comes to the aid of people in financial trouble, and always enjoyed it, so I was interested to read this, the accompanying book to the series. I expected that this book would be solely advice on getting out (and staying out) of debt, and as I am (luckily) not in any debt myself, I did not think most of it would be relevant to me. I was wrong. Although there is such a chapter, ...
...look at the reasons behind your spending, so that you can learn to control it in the future. The overall feeling I was left with from this introduction, was that I was impressed that it looked as though this would delve deeper than simply saying 'save more, spend less' and work on changing the readers attitude towards their finances. CHAPTER ONE - MONEY AND YOUR MIND Following on from the intro, this chapter deals with taking a full, frank look ... Read review

Advantages: Good advice, balanced
Disadvantages: Sometimes sounds a little patronising; not much regarding pensions

...know exactly how to sort your life out" tone, there is a wealth of valuable information in this book. I found the balance of the book about right in terms of debt management, savings, investments and other financial problems. A lot of books tend to focus on investments, when for a lot of people, this is a long way off being realistic. In terms of practical advice, a major theme is changing your mindset to becoming more financially responsible and ...
...the first chapter "Money and Your Mind". Alvin proceeds to discuss consumer debt and how to get out of it, how to make a start at saving, and how (or whether) to get onto the property ladder. The latter is really useful as it made me realise the various expenses involved in buying a house - there's a few that many people wouldn't think of. The advice about saving a decent deposit is particularly salient in the current credit crunch. There's a 2 ... Read review

Alvin was something of a cult legend, so i decided to to see what nougats of knowledge he could offer and i was impressed. I thought stocks would be hard reading Al made it quite easy!!! would recommend for people new to jargon!!!