Most everyone agree that saving money is a good idea and many people include increased savings among their list of New Year's resolutions. Unfortunately, the resolution to save is usually dumped by the wayside, just like most other resolution, in a matter of a couple of months or even a few weeks. One book that intends to set you on the path to save is The Smartest Way to Save: Why You Can't Hang on to Money and What to do About It, a personal finance book by Samuel Freshman and Heidi Clingen.       
 
Basic Contents of This Book:

This 217- page book is divided into three main sections:

Introduction
Part I: Your Money and You
Part II: Your Money and Others
Part III: Your Money and the World
Conclusion

This book opens with a section about your own personal finances. This part of the book talks about the problems associated with debt, credit cards, budgeting, and the necessary discipline to break the dangerous grip that debt holds on our lives.

In Part II, The Smartest Way to Save talks about money and the ways it affects different relationships. In this section, the authors talk about giving money to children, budgeting money with your spouse, and the best ways to give gifts.

In Part III, the book spends considerable time talking about the world around you and attitudes toward spending and saving. In this part of the book, readers are offered tips on ways to save on everything from clothing to medical needs to transportation. The book ends with a motivational conclusion followed by a list of suggested books and magazines for further reading.    

Final Thoughts:
 
Saving more money is at the top of many family and individual "To Do" lists, but few people seem to have the ability to make saving a reality. There are some valid reasons for this, but there are also many typical excuses and this book, The Smartest Way to Save, is intended as a guide to help everyone find ways to save more money than ever before. Changes in spending habits, elimination of debt, and other obstacles that stand in the way of a sound saving strategy are given space in this book and the authors share a genuine concern for the financial well being of the readers.

The Smartest Way to Save is a list book of sorts, with tips listed with their own separate heading with an underline. Starting with the importance of creating a budget, this book guides the reader on a quest toward a more stable financial future. With each piece of advice, the book follows with a brief paragraph or two that discusses the advice, how to implement it, and how doing so will help reach your savings goals. Some of the pieces of advice deal with changes to spending and living habits that will have a definite, defined impact on your finances, such as the advice to avoid ATM machines when accessing cash. If you frequently use ATM, say, ten times per month and there is a $2.00 transaction charge each time, you will save $20 if you quit using these machines. Other pieces of advice are not as clearly defined as far as the precise financial impact goes because they can vary from person to person. An example in the book is the advice to use coupons. Everyone can agree that coupons help to save money, but there is no way to know precisely how much because it will vary with each person and with each shopping excursion.

What I like best about The Smartest Way to Save is its ability to keep matters on a level that most everyone can understand. You won't find complex financial terminology, graphs, amortization tables, or anything else like that. Instead, The Smartest Way to Save focuses its efforts on using easy to understand language that anyone can decipher and relate to. In no time at all, the reader can implement some of the changes mentioned in this book and, hopefully, start a disciplined savings plan that will lead to a more secure future and a more comfortable retirement.

Another aspect of The Smartest Way to Save that I appreciate is the authors' ability to help show ways to save money without going to extremes. I have read many different personal finance books and many of them take the idea of saving money way too far, suggesting, for example, that consumers exchange certain food and drink for other, inferior options in order to save a few dimes or quarters. This and other "penny pinching" strategies are often not only extreme and unnecessary, but the stress that some of these changes would cause is far greater harm then the benefits of the small amount of money saved. Fortunately, The Smartest Way to Save doesn't advocate giving up your favorite soft drink in exchange for the store brand that you don't even like. The advice offered here encourages frugality, but without taking it to the point of neglect.

Most of the advice offered in The Smartest Way to Save is pretty good and not only do I agree with most of it, I am already actively engaged in many of the suggestions the book offers for better personal finance. But I can't say that I like all of the advice in this book. I don't, for example, agree that debit cards are a source of evil that everyone should eliminate. I have actually had much success with debit cards and I think even the authors of this book would agree that they are better than credit cards. I also wish the book would have offered more advice on ways to actually save (invest) money. The savings advice offered in this book is more along the lines of ways to avoid paying more than you should for everyday goods and services. There isn't a whole lot of advice on the different ways to invest and grow your way to financial independence.

Overall, however, The Smartest Way to Save is still a very good book about a very important subject. Our is a very consumer- oriented culture and many of us do, indeed, spend more than we should, often on things we don't need or even want all that badly. This book is quick to show that everyone, even the most cost- conscious among us, can find ways to cut back on unnecessary expenditures, improve net worth, and live a more worry- free life. It's a very practical book that can benefit anyone who reads it and takes its advice to heart.

Recommended: Yes