Wealth Watchers: A Simple Program to Help You Spend Less and Save More

by Alice Wood

Book Overview

Ten years ago, Alice Wood was living a normal life, balancing her career, family, and finances with con dence. Having grown up with a father who was a bank president from the pre-branch banking era... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1439158193
• ISBN13: 9781439158197
• Release Date: December 2009
• Publisher: Free Press
• Length: 289 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 5.1" x 7.1"

Customer Reviews

Grounded guide to managing personal finances

In 2000, estate-planning attorney Alice Wood suffered a serious brain injury. It affected her ability to think clearly and harmed her marriage, her law practice, her weight, her life - her entire ability to function. As she recovered, money became a major issue for her and her husband. When she joined Weight Watchers to try to slim down, she realized that its careful, day-by-day approach was an excellent model for a personal financial control program. That's when she developed Wealth Watchers. In their first year on the program, Wood and her husband cut their expenses by $12,000. She explains her simple, sensible tactics: List each cost, establish a budget and cut back on unnecessary purchases by exercising daily discretion. Her suggestions about saving money, buying insurance, putting aside retirement funds, budgeting for college, and so on, are very practical. getAbstract recommends this excellent book as a useful guide to getting the most out of your budget, husbanding your earnings and managing your money. If you don't yet have wealth to watch, she tells you how to save so you can accumulate some.

How to balance quality of life with the need to conserve one's money

Wealth Watchers: A Simple Program to Help You Spend Less and Save More is a financial self-discipline program inspired to help people gain control of their monetary expenditures in much the same way that the Weight Watcher program helps people control their diet in order to lose weight and keep it off. Two-thirds of Wealth Watchers is the author's story of learning how to balance quality of life with the need to conserve one's money; the remaining third is a consumable daily journal that the reader can use to try out the program on their own. "Wealth Watchers is never meant to be judgmental. We're just here to help you think before you spend." To being aware of the expenses of eating out (which can be 50% more than cooking at home - though one can save money by simply drinking water at restaurants instead of alcohol or soft drinks) to the rigors of finding affordable insurance, Wealth Watchers is an invaluable resource for maintaining financial independence, especially in today's challenging economic times. "...if you are self-employed... join a local business organization - most states have them - which will make you eligible for health insurance at a group rate rather than at an individual rate. You must pay an annual membership fee but this will be small potatoes compared to your monthly savings. In fact your monthly dues are tax deductible."

Wealth Watchers

This was a special purchase through my church as a donation to a library. I am quite pleased with the process.

Simple but Ingenious!

Alice Wood's book, Wealth Watchers, should be required reading for every child once he or she starts self-managing money. For those of us who didn't benefit from that early education, the book offers simple yet ingenious processes and tools to help us spend wisely and save more. Going a step further than a typical monthly budget, the Wealth Watchers method leads you to discover how much you can spend on a DAILY basis and encourages tracking your spending as it happens, helping to prevent that end-of-the-month "OH NO!" moment when you realize you don't have the funds to pay your bills. Ms. Wood's personal story that lead her to create "Wealth Watchers" makes for interesting reading. Her life-changing experiences made her realize she needed help managing her money. But it doesn't take a catastrophic event to make us realize we too need help reaching our financial goals...today's economic climate is life-changing for us all. The process and tools Ms. Wood shares in "Wealth Watchers" make the book invaluable reading for everyone who manages money.

A Must Read for Today's Times

"Wealth Watchers" has great range: a heartfelt journey to recovery from oxygen deprivation on a commercial airplane to a great financial program to help the reader save money during the worst of times. Spending money and obesity have a lot in common - hence the title "Wealth Watchers" derived from the successful point system program of Weight Watchers. Because of Alice's brain injury, her skills as an estate planning attorney dissipated. In their place mushroomed financial confusion, ultimately a loss of financial control. This book will make you aware of where your money goes and teach you how to become financially literate. Structured and guided journaling is an integral part of the program. Also, you will get easy to implement advice like going shopping alone to the supermarket without the kids - something I need to do. Follow the personal responsibility checklist and you will soon be conscious of your daily disposable income. Maybe you will lose some unnecessary weight in the process!