I just recently finished reading Money, A Memoir: Women, Emotions, and Cash  by Liz Perle.

This is a great personal finance book because the author discusses my favorite part of personal finance, the personal part. I truly believe that we learn best from each other by being vulnerable and sharing our mistakes as well as our successes. Perle shares her emotional journey with leaning on money as an emotional bandage, falling for the old thinking that a husband with money will provide for her and she doesn’t have to worry about all that sticky money stuff, the constant obsession that there’s never enough money, keeping up with the proverbial Jones’ and using money to buy our perfect home and life, and all the other emotional booby traps that many women will read and nod their head along to.

The book reads like a novel and her personal experiences are interwoven with the experiences of women she interviews, as well as statistical and sociological studies on women and cash that are insightful. As I read the book I found myself nodding along and taking away many of her insights to mull over for later.

Perle urges women to get involved in their own financial life and own up to our emotional money booby traps. Gaining financial independence, financial partnership with our significant others, ownership of our financial life, asking for what we are worth, and bringing money out of the shadows to a more transparent place in our lives are all goals here that I agree with and I have seen the difference that they have made in my life too. I find that talking with my friends about money really is not as much about money as the emotional decisions that we make around it and what it signifies. Perle unwraps those emotions and her book reads like  a conversation with your whip smart best friend that gets down to the nitty gritty of finances while dealing with our emotional baggage surrounding it.

Highly recommended. The book was written in 2006 and I just randomly ran across it at my local library while browsing the business and personal finance section. So glad I read it. Look for it at your library or snag it on Amazon (it’s cool, it’s only $5.60).