The Financial Diet Book Review

I’ve been following The Financial Diet or, TFD ever since they posted their first YouTube video back in 2015. I was going through my own financial journey at the time, and I had never seen any type of content that I actually RELATED TO. I remember thinking ‘wow, they’re talking about finance like how I THINK about finance’. It wasn’t confusing, or boring, it was super helpful and informative, and even a little fun!

Their book, The Financial Diet: A Total Beginners Guide to Getting Good with Money is pretty much an extension of their content. All the best advice they have, summed up in a neat little package.

What I loved about The Financial Diet:

The Visuals:

One of the best things about this book is the visuals. Design and visual elements are an important part of the TFD business, you can evidently see this from anything that TFD does, and this book is no different. The pages are filled with awesome illustrations, bright colours, and easy to read diagrams. It adds a creative layer that I’ve never seen in another financial book. I think that’s personally why I enjoy TFD because it’s something I strive for in my business as well. Finance is boring enough especially if you don’t care about money, and numbers don’t come naturally to you. These visuals are incredibly helpful in understanding things, and just keeping you reading instead of stopping out of boredom!

The Writing:

The second thing I want to mention that TFD does really well is the writing. The first line on the book sleeve is “The Financial Diet is the personal finance book for people who don’t care about personal finance” and I couldn’t agree more.

This book is extremely easy to digest, it’s not filled with complicated jargon, it isn’t talking down to you or treating you like a child. It’s just… chill. It’s written by Chelsea Fagan, and from what I can tell Chelsea’s a pretty down to earth, young woman who just wants to help you with finance. She went through some bad financial choices when she was in her early 20’s (you’ll learn about them in the book!) and it was mostly because no one taught her how to actually treat her money properly. She uses that life experience & ability to relate in her writing and reading this book is really like chatting with a friend.

Book Subjects:

Another thing I love about this book is that it’s not just finance. TFD believes that money affects everything in your life. Your ability to save money depends on you knowing how to meal plan, which means you need great recipes to make or to know which spices are important to have on hand at all times. Your corporate 9-5 depends on you having a good wardrobe but how do you balance clothes shopping with saving for a down payment on a house? This book doesn’t just give financial advice, it gives LIFE advice.

Of the 7 chapters in this book, only 3 of them relate DIRECTLY to money. 4 if you include the career section but I’m not going to because it’s more about how to live the love with what you’re doing in your career and less about how much money you’re making in your job (though there are a few pages on getting paid what you’re worth)

It’s incredibly well-rounded and that can be helpful for people at the beginning of adulthood with no clue where to start.

The Glossary:

Something else that’s super helpful, is that throughout the book, TFD highlights all the words you might not know. Things like broker, credit score, or deductible. At the back of the book, they collect all these terms in a glossary so you can look up what they mean. I’ve actually found myself going back to a few of these on my own! They have an index as well, which helps when you’re trying to look for that specific page that explains emergency funds or whatever that you need to go back to!

What I Wanted to be Better:

Financial Details:

Because this book is so full of ‘lifestyle’ it doesn’t have a lot of financial DETAILS. It’s all a bit surface level which IS good I agree with a lot of the sentiments and principles they have, but there’s not a lot of ‘here, let me walk you through this’. When they talk about creating a budget for example, it’s sort of ‘write out a list of your expenses and check it against your income, which IS technically how you do it, but there’s not a lot of room for understanding how your financial priorities & goals fit in, or how the day to day management of how that budget actually works in practice.

Debt:

The book also doesn’t really talk about debt that much. They seem to assume you have some, because it IS talked about throughout the book, but in terms of concrete strategies, or how to build that into your money plan there’s not really much for us.

Downloadable Content:

Another thing that disappointed me is their downloadable content. I was excited to see sections in the book that referenced a website where resources could be found. Maybe it was my own misunderstanding but I was thinking that there would be something extra, like a spreadsheet, fillable form, or checklist that wouldn’t work within the confines of the book format. But, the downloadable content isn’t additional material. It’s just jpeg images of what’s already on the page formatted to 8 ½ by 11 so you can print it yourself. I GUESS it’s helpful to be able to print? But I would’ve liked to have seen something more dynamic here. Especially since it would've been easy to incorporate. For example one of their first downloads is “Lauren’s Budgeting Tracker” which explains how to make a budget in excel. I wonder why they didn’t make that downloadable excel template instead of just re-sharing the graphic.

(By the way, if you DO want a budget excel template, check out my resources page)

Conclusion:

Overall, I think the Financial Diet is a great book. It’s easy to read, really well-rounded, and helpful for someone graduating post-secondary or maybe just starting to live on their own for the first time. I personally agree with pretty much all the principles mentioned in it, and I think they’re important for people to learn. For that reason, I’ll always recommend this book. However, if you’re looking for something more specific, to give you step by step, detailed instructions on your financial life. There might be better books for you.

Have you been following content from The Financial Diet? Are you interested in picking up their book? Let me know in the comments below!