I’ve been on a personal finance reading binge recently and have just finished reading Unf*ck Your Finances by Melissa Browne. Here are some of my thoughts on the book.

Firstly, let’s get past the title. It’s deliberately provocative, yet in a few words, it gets across the main theme of the book – how to unfork your finances (shoutout to all The Good Place fans who read this!). She acknowledges upfront that the book is intended for the “Gen X/Y who saw the title and connected with it immediately.” Melissa says she wrote the book because most people weren’t taught the basics of how to manage their finances and find themselves in a situation where their finances need to be unforked. That’s the simple premise of the book.

Over 26 chapters Melissa is very honest about her life experiences and mistakes and explains the things that she did to become financially secure. Whilst this book is written from a female’s perspective and is aimed at females; if you’re a male (like me), you’ll still get something out of it.

Melissa spends the first few chapters talking about why we find it difficult to be open and honest about our finances. She rightly points out that money is one of those things that people rarely talk about to their friends. We all pretend we’ve got it together when the reality is very different. To break this money relationship, she suggests breaking up with money and starting again with a new relationship and new rules. This time you’re in control of your money, not the other way around.

It begins with a financial detox, where you strip back your spending for 30-days and buy nothing new or non-essential.

The next few chapters talk about understanding how you think and feel about money and understanding your money values. These are very important concepts and not a lot of people talk about them. I believe that a large contributor to financial success is your mental approach. It’s less about what you earn and know, and more about managing your financial behaviour and having the right frame of mind.

Money values are so important. And they’re unique to you.

I’ll admit, there were some areas of this book that didn’t appeal to me. But that’s because my values are different from Melissa’s. It doesn’t make mine any more right and hers any more wrong – we’re just different. And that’s okay. In the book, Melissa talks about this and talks about defining money values that are unique to you.

Once you understand your values, you move on to working out your goals. This is an area that often gets overlooked but is so important. Without goals, you’ll lack motivation. And without a plan to achieve your goals, they’re just dreams.

Melissa talks about the importance of understanding how you’re spending. She, like me, recommends using one of many cloud-based apps to track your spending. These things don’t lie! They provide an accurate representation of where your money is going and it can be a very sobering experience to look back over six-months of spending and realise you’ve wasted a whole lot of money.

Coupled with the concept of tracking your spending is the idea of a regular weigh-in. If you’re trying to lose weight, you weigh yourself regularly to see how you’re going. It’s the same with your finances. Melissa talks about a series of weigh-ins to keep yourself on track to achieve your goals. This may seem really basic to some people, but few actually do this. Again, it’s not about having the knowledge of how to do something – it’s about putting in place processes so you actually do something and make progress.

Future chapters look at how to reduce debt and repay your mortgage. Nothing too earth-shattering here, but it’s good practical advice. Another chapter looks at the pros and cons of home ownership. Melissa sets out the cases for owning your own home, and the case against owning a home. I was pleased to see a chapter like this in the book because it challenges the conventional wisdom that you must own a home. At the end of the chapter, Melissa explains that there is no right or wrong answer – it depends on your money values.

Overall, this is a good book. Melissa is honest about her past mistakes and lessons she has learnt along the way. She’s found a way to build wealth that works for her and many of her clients. She still has money for shoes (her guilty pleasure) and that’s okay because you need to enjoy the journey. I’m probably not the target market for this book, but I still enjoyed it and can see that if I were a female gen Y or gen X, this book would be very appealing to me. And that’s the point about your money journey – find authors and methods that suit your values and life circumstances.

You can find out more about how to UnF*ck Your Finances over at the unfckyourfinances website or at themoneybarre.

Have you read the book? What did you think? Do you have questions about the book? Leave a comment below.