By Nicole

My most recent Booksneeze book was Money Secrets of the Amish by Lorilee Craker.  I chose this book because I am always working on doing a better job with our family's money.  We never save enough, we always get sucked into debt of some kind, and we often feel like we can't catch up.  The subtitle of the book is Finding True Abundance in Simplicity, Sharing and Saving.   Sooooo, PERFECT!  Just what I needed!  If the Amish can do it, I can too. Anyway, back to my review.  The book didn't tell me anything that I didn't actually already know about the basic principles of being smart with your money... I know to avoid debt by not giving into instant gratification gimmicks (same as cash, zero interest, etc.), and I already shop second hand.  I also know that saving is important.  However, Lorilee Craker tells us things we already know in a hilarious way.  I seriously laughed out loud more than once.  Her writing is quirky, funny ...

So, about two and a half years ago, a dear friend of mine, who also happens to be a financial guru in my opinion, got me onto the envelope budget and accompanying debt repayment calculation Excel spreadsheet. Jason and I had been essentially living from paycheck to paycheck with good intentions of getting everything paid off, but we still spent every two weeks looking at each other and wondering where all our "extra" money went. Yeah - he would work his butt off doing all the overtime possible... just to hear me say that we didn't have any money. Somehow we were throwing it all away... We jumped into a new life of budgeting... every pay period I would faithfully enter in our payments, check credit card balances, and fill our hand labeled envelopes with the cash we were allowed to spend on groceries and miscellaneous. Let me tell you - the envelopes didn't have to be very big. We faithfully put money into savings every paycheck. I even began to tithe like I was suppose...