*Free e-book ARC provided by the publisher through Edelweiss/Above the Treeline in exchange for an honest review. No money or other goods were exchanged, and all views are my own.*

Get a Financial Life: Personal Finance in Your Twenties and Thirties gets an all-new update for a new generation, with updated links and information on all sorts of financial information, from types of debt to investing to buying a home.

This comprehensive guide is short and easy to read, but I would recommend jumping to the chapters that are relevant rather than reading it from cover to cover. I enjoy personal finance stuff; this one is pretty dry. It's also ridiculously detailed in some ways, including a whole chapter on services available to military (great to have as a reference, but not for everyone) and a table showing you your tax percentage calculation (I've done my own taxes for years and couldn't tell you exactly what percent of my income I pay).

Most of the advice is solid and matches up with what I've read in other financial articles and books: get out of debt, save and invest, get insurance, live within your means. Author Kobliner, a personal finance journalist and author, gives some good details that I didn't know, for example, that you might be able to save on car insurance by taking a defensive driving class. The advice is math-laden with examples and tables that went a bit beyond what I could follow, but I know those kinds of details would be fascinating to other readers. And then there are a couple of head-scratchers, like her insistence that you should only invest in index funds and not have a financial professional at all. That one I disagree with but could overlook because I could kind of see her rationale. Her mortgage discussion, however, confused me greatly. She assumes a 30-year mortgage, which is standard, but spends a fair amount of space discussing adjustable rate mortgages where, though she cautions you to be careful, she suggests that you may be able to use one to your advantage to have a low rate if you're only planning on staying in a house for a couple of years. While that may be true mathematically, I know enough of human nature to wonder how many people get into an ARM thinking they'll only stay a couple of years and then get surprised when the interest rate skyrockets - much like that "free month" required a credit card to sign up and, oops, I forgot to cancel before the 30 days ran out. And I guess I wouldn't have been so surprised by the long discussion of ARM and using points to reduce your interest rate if it weren't for the fact that she barely mentions the possibility of a 15-year mortgage. Rather than discussing the huge decrease in interest over the payment of the loan, she says they're harder to qualify for (true) and says you may be better off investing the difference. Even if it weren't her personal favorite, wouldn't it make sense to give it equal time with ARMs and discuss the potential difference in interest with the same depth rather than writing it off? Or is it really that hard to qualify for in your 20s and 30s? Finally, as any type of finance book, the exact numbers are out of date as soon as it's printed and in this case, the U.S. federal tax standard deduction (and it's definitely U.S.-centric across the board) has changed since it's printing. As a starting point and guide to reference, this book definitely has some good advice, but my caveat would be to read a few others and make some decisions about your financial behavior, rather than purely the math. ( )

This is one of those books that is best read in bits and pieces. It is a great overview of financial literacy and gives you the basics. ( )

This book is highly informative. It's organized and easy to read, with excellent charts. Kobliner doesn't dumb down the ideas, but she doesn't use fancy terms either. With clear prose, she leads the reader through the good and bad of finances, how to set up your money for now and for the future. She also gives many resources, both websites and books, for further research. After reading this book, I am much for confident and prepared to deal with my finances. I highly recommend. ( )

Read per the recommendation of several friends. Somehow missed the existence of a newer version and got the 1996 edition from the library. I doubt the actual advice has changed much, however. The specifics of taxes, interest rates, etc have always been in flux. There would just be websites instead of 800-numbers. I really liked how this covered a wider range of financial advice than a lot of these books do, like a whole chapter on insurance. It wasn't just savings and credit and investing. There were no rants about the evils of taxation (although she still tells you to maximize your deductions) and you're told that sometimes it's actually better to rent. I already know a lot of this, but I'm almost 40. It's solid advice for younger people. Although somehow the book did keep making me drowsy, so it took many sessions to finish. And this subject matter usually doesn't do that to me. Maybe she did need to rant a little more. ( )

reads pretty easily, though some parts are more applicable to some people than others. I really hated that I had a 13-year-old edition of the book, since I couldn't trust most of the information I was taking in.. A current version would've been immensely more helpful. Too bad that the author couldn't think outside the box, suggesting ways of building different kinds of wealth other than material, or even alternative health insurance companies that I know are out there somewhere. Very much a conventional financial management advice book. If that's what you're looking for, and if you got a current edition, then you should be happy. ( )