I’ve been a devoted subscriber to The Financial Diet (TFD) on YouTube for some time, so I thought I would give the book a try. I’ve been listening to it on audiobook on my commute to and from work. The book is relatively short and incorporates many of the messages and topics covered by the videos, many of them in interview format featuring guest ‘speakers’ who are experts in their field and contribute advice per topic. I admit that as much as I enjoy listening to Chelsea Fagan, I should have gotten the print copy because often she often refers to charts, diagrams, or “the PDF” which comes with the audiobook and the PDF is 84 pages long, and I unfortunately did not have it on hand most of the time. So if you are thinking of picking this up, I would recommend the eBook, or physical copy.
The two authors and co-founders of “The Financial Diet” brand, Chelsea Fagan and Lauren Ver Hage, are two young, self-made, organized, and intelligent, business-women. Chelsea went to community college, got her funds in a mess, slowly recovered and gained economic literacy and decided to share her experiences with others who might find themselves in similar situations, particularly young adults in, or freshly out of University, (perhaps even slightly before entering University/College/Certificate Programs). My understanding of “The Financial Diet” as an outside observer is that it is geared at young people (and by young I mean 16-24ish) who have zero understanding of financial matters, and who have been crippled with anxieties and pressures from all angles of social media, and live in the West, particularly USA, Canada, UK. They also address repeatedly that the idea that old white men often appear in mainstream media as being the only secret-holders to the world of “finance.” Both Fagan and Ver Hage relate experiences in this book, as do all the other professional women invited to speak/write. This book, to me, is meant to let you know that you are not alone, that everyone makes mistakes, and to relate experiences and stories that may put things into focus. I also appreciated that most people involved at TFD and the interviewees are women, and the way they approach financial information is in an accessible, non-exclusive, non-intimidating way for young adults who have a hard time even approaching the topic of finance, budgeting, and saving.
After finishing the book and wondering how I feel about it, I came across two Goodreads reviews (on the negative side) stating the following:
“This is not a book that would help a 20- or 30-something gain financial literacy. It’s a lifestyle book, focused on how to get the lifestyle you aspire to on a budget, how to cope with the fact that some aspirational lifestyles will remain out of reach, and how to feel as though you’re doing a good job with your finances…this book is written specifically for Millennials…At its best, the book offers a critique of Instagram and Pinterest-lifestyle aspirations, or why we shouldn’t all be working 80-hours a week…this book that lives in the layer of fixing up thrift store furniture so that it’s Pinterest-worthy, rather than really digging into the nuts and bolts of how to negotiate the confusing experience of being a first-time homebuyer, or by explaining the mechanics of compound interest rather than just mentioning it in passing.”
Another reviewer states:
“how difficult it is to find content that’s geared towards women without being infantilizing…often provides financial advice that probably works for the Carrie Bradshaws of the world (like buying expensive designer bags for your first job) but not for the average millennial on a budget…this book is less about personal finance for young women and more about how to become the sort of young woman I imagine Chelsea and her social circle generally are– largely white, largely affluent, largely living in expensive cities, and taking pride in the fact that they have a “budget” but with no desire to actually take charge of their finances”
I took a step back and thought about a few things: how this book was marketed, what its title is, who is the target audience, and what I have personally gotten from this experience. After synthesizing it all, I am behind TFD.
From the whole TFD experience mixing together all the different media I have consumed their information, I have found both Chelsea and Lauren to be very useful. I also remembered that Chelsea lived in complete poverty for the early stages of her life, and went to community college. She mentions some of this in her video emphasizing the difference between being Broke and being Poor, and how linguistically one ought not to use the two interchangeably. I don’t know if her background is a ‘privileged’ one, though she currently lives in New York after starting and thriving on the TFD business that she has been working on for years. She is, as I mentioned before: self-made. I appreciated anecdotes of failure, and trial/error. I appreciated advice on minimal things like: budgeting apps, and even money-saving cooking tips, or DIY pet food. I don’t know how we’ve become convinced over time that absolutely everything can and must be bought. I also feel inspired seeing so many women together working and collaborating on a project that is really quite successful and has picked up a significant following on online forums. It makes me happy to see them succeed. I don’t know if that is a weird thing to say, but it does! I learned a lot over the last two years from them, and I know I am approaching this book from a privileged position, but I needed someone to tell me that it’s okay not to aim for the ‘Instagrammable’ wedding, lifestyle, house, daily meal etc. It is no more exclusive, elitist, or upper-middle class than the same target audience towards whom other writers like Zadie Smith and Jonathan Franzen direct their essays–which you may recall from my long post regarding the anxieties raised by Facebook. I know this ties in to what ‘negative reviewer #2’ has stated, and granted, this book is very much speaking to people in a privileged position, but this is the TFD audience. If you have the time and technology to consume videos on YouTube from TFD then you are in the demographic of their target audience. Social media pressures and insecurities created by social media are actually very costly (both mentally and financially). Monthly we make so many purchases (impulsive ones) that stem simply out of our insecurities created by the immediate technological environment around us. The fact that one reviewer mentioned the ‘Carrie Bradshaws’ is just an example, but we often see characters, or people in CEO positions and in various lifestyles and associate the Starbucks Latte, or the designer handbag with the kind of person we’d like to be, and in moments of weakness splurge as an excuse to ‘treat ourselves’ while feeding our insecurities trying to create a bridge between who we are, and who we would like to be. Buying a gym membership doesn’t automatically transform you into a person who goes to the gym. See Chelsea’s video on How Much Your Insecurity Actually Cost You.
The reason TFD mentions how to cook, what utensils you need, etc. is because good budgeting, minimalism, minimal-waste lifestyle, and living ethically are very interconnected. I approached these topics individually and most of the time they bounce off each other. The bottom line is that one should invest in good quality, ethical things, that are good long term for us, and the environment and to stop treating everything in our life as disposable. The Financial Diet approaches this topic from the financial angle, and it is not simply a finance book (nor pretending to be one), but it is a cultural examination, a social critique of the middle class Western lifestyle, and a starting point for the TOTAL beginner.
This book is also available through your public library (Toronto here), and Overdrive for an electronic copy.
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