A Review of ‘The Financial Diet’: A Must-Read for Beginners in Finance

By: Bahynah Hughes

The Financial Diet is a popular lifestyle blog that publishes content dedicated to all things personal finance. Eventually, the brand published the book The Financial Diet: A Total Beginner’s Guide to Getting Good with Money, written by Chelsea Fagan, as an extension of the key takeaways from the blog. The book serves as a finance and lifestyle guide that includes tips on budgeting, investing, career, grocery shopping, and more.

The Financial Diet uses casual language that is relatable and contains a glossary that is useful for novices of the financial world. Overall the book is easy to digest and is not filled with complicated jargon. Fagan uses a tone that is friendly and specifically helpful for people in their 20s that are unsure of how to manage their money properly.

The author draws from her life experiences, calling upon thought leaders in the finance world for more authoritative advice. Some highlights of the book are the “9 Step Process to Getting Good with Money in a Year” section and the budgeting advice.

Fagan’s “9-Step Process” consists of creating a budget, building an emergency fund, doing a credit card checkup, adding another source of extra income, etc.

The book covers the importance of having a budget tracker to track all sources of income, expenses, and the amount of money that you have leftover. There’s also an additional resource within The Financial Diet that includes budgeting questions that readers can use to reflect on their purchases and look back on how and why they spent their money.

Because The Financial Diet touches on both finance and lifestyle matters, the book may seem surface-level for a reader with more financial experience. While Fagan gives readers a great overview, it does not walk readers through some subjects in enough detail.

The debt and investing sections could be expanded a bit more, to give properly fleshed-out actionable items and some of the lifestyle content surrounding career choices and clothes shopping could be scaled back a bit.

Ultimately, The Financial Diet is a holistic and well-rounded guide suited for beginners and college post-grads. If you are starting your financial journey with little to no background, I recommend grabbing a copy of this book to serve as a foundation. For the more advanced financial buffs, I recommend giving The Millionaire Next Door a read.