Unautomate Your Finances Review
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Today Adam Baker from Man Vs Debt is releasing his first financial guide, Unautomate Your Finances. I've had the pleasure of reading the guide and wanted to share and review some of my thoughts on the book.
Unautomate Your Finances Overview
Unautomate Your Finances is packed with a lot of information. It flows from motivation on getting your finances organized and educating you on having a system to teaching doable actions that can get your finances in line with your values. Here's how it's broken down:
- Theory: Baker introduces the core concepts of his book and gives his personal results.
- Science: Moving from Theory, Baker uses exercises to help you personalize the plan with your ideal life. he also shows you how to figure out what next step to take.
- Application: The last section has tactics for you to get your financial house in order.
Baker's new guide is out!
Automation – Good or Bad?
First off, this a great guide and Baker goes into depth with finances and getting to a point of where you are working towards your goals and ideal life. Many people equate automating finances as a solution, but Baker points out it may be only a quick fix.
As someone who automates much our finances, I found this notion intriguing. After all automation helped me pay off my credit cards, helped us pay off the car loan, and was a big part of having a down payment for our place. I'm couldn't believe Baker was going in that direction, but I trust him and I read the guide with an open mind.
I found that Baker addresses this issue head on in the first section and he explains how automation is merely a tool and not the solution. He gets into the core of his unautomation principles (consciousness, sustainability, and focus) and shows how it's much better than just automating.
Reading through I saw how working through this concepts with specific actions leads to a simplified and effective way of handling your money. I love his action plans and I think many people will be like me and trying out to see what works best.
Unautomate Your Finances Bonus Stuff
Unautomate Your Finances includes more than just the 80+ paged guide. Baker has really put together some great bonuses for those who want the guide.
- A 27 minute interview with Leo Babauta (ZenHabits)
- An audio interview with J.D. Roth (Getrichslowly.org )
- He includes a 2-page printable PDF budgeting template
- Minimalist excel template of same budget
- Baker plans on updating the guide with case studies, more interviews, etc...
Who is This Guide For?
If you are struggling with finances or you want to optimize your system, this guide is a must read. I'm reviewing and using the Application section of the guide to clean our financial system. I think we've automated our finances well, but we could do a better job on being more aware of our miscellaneous spending.
Your Take
If you grabbed a copy of the guide, please share your thoughts on it in the comments!
Okay, this is crazy because just yesterday I listened to the Consumerism Commentary podcast with Gary Belsky about behavioral economics. People who spend a lot of time in this field would usually fall into the automate category because the idea is to fool yourself (if you save automatically each month, you don’t miss it etc.)
Unautomating your finances seems to be about the opposite of fooling yourself. It’s really interesting to me because here we have a classic example of two opposing financial approaches that don’t really compete because they speak to different types of people. I’m just intrigued by things like that.
@Aaron: I feel the same way: I’m a person that automates everything and has seen it work, but after reading baker’s guide, I realize it can still be improved.I think it’s about finding the right balance for your finances because some people will need to be on top of everything and others can set it up once and let it flow.