Book Review: Finance for the People by Paco De Leon
This is not your usual personal finance book! You will need to be OK with vulgar language, behavior analysis, storytelling, and hand-drawn illustrations of financial concepts if you decide to read this book. The book is not a guide on how to become rich, but more about applying a down-to-earth approach to take care of yourself and build a good relationship with money.
One of my favorite sections in the book is Part 3 which is called “Dealing with Debt”. Paco De Leon provides historical, educational, and very useful information to the reader on all things related to debt. You will enjoy this part of the book if you are:
- just getting started on your own (no matter how old you are)
- in credit card debt and want to get out of it
- thinking about financing something (home, renos, car, education, etc.)
- have student loans
- need to reframe your thinking about debt
- working on your credit score
Finance for the People encourages you to act, by providing a checklist at the end of each of the five parts of the book. Use the checklists to evaluate how you are doing currently in your financial life and plan what you need to improve upon. In addition, there is practical information about how to navigate certain situations. For example, there are detailed steps and ideas on how to negotiate a lower rate on your credit card debt.
I recommend this book! The author does a good job of explaining concepts in easy-to-understand language and the illustrations make it fun.
