Dear David,

I had the opportunity to read your book “Smart Women Finish Rich” and have been telling everyone I know about it. I have always had a good relationship with money. My grandmother always told me about the importance of saving for the future. She enjoyed a very comfortable lifestyle as her husband was a pharmacist. One day he became very ill and could no longer work and continued to deteriorate and eventually died. She had not worked for many years and all of the sudden she had no income and a daughter to support. Luckily she had planned for a potential emergency and had savings to get them through. She went back to work and was able to manage. My Mom learned from my Grandmother the importance of saving and I learned from my Mom. Three generations of “smart women”.

The thing I enjoyed the most about this book is the relationship you defined between money and your personal values. How can we begin to set goals for ourselves concerning money if we do not make the connection between our personal finances and our dreams, aspirations and philosophies? I spent a great deal of time thinking about the exercises you recommended and came up with clear, concrete answers. This made so much sense to me! It makes financial decisions so much easier. When you’re about to make a small, medium or large purchase, you just ask yourself the simple question, does this purchase fit in with my values and life goals? All of the sudden, the expensive make-up and designer jeans don’t seem quite as important. It is all about putting things into perspective. It is so easy to make that impulse purchase to fulfill an emptiness we may be feeling at that time. Instead of buying something to make ourselves better for the short-term, we should invest the time to think about what is really important to us and look at the big picture. Do I want to buy a coffee and muffin every day, magazines, expensive meals and trendy jewelry or would I rather be sitting in a café in Paris watching many interesting people walk by. I can answer that question very quickly!

Thanks for making such an obvious, yet easily missed correlation. I understood how to save money and make good investments. I just never sat down and thought about the relationship that exists between by life goals, values and money.

Kristen Pasz
Milton, Ontario, Canada