Financial Planning in Steps

BOOK REVIEW BY CAROL LOEWEN

How to Eat an Elephant is a step-by-step guide to financial planning for Canadians. The book is divided into four parts, with twelve chapters. The suggested approach is to work on and complete one chapter a month. Spending four hours one day a month gives the reader the optimum time to read, study and use the book’s suggested website to fully understand and work through the material presented.

This guide is presented in small, easy-to-follow steps, as the reader completes one chapter a month. Each chapter also has a number of additional points entitled One Frank Thought through which the author explains or presents additional points about how the process of planning works or can be approached.

Each chapter presents examples of how people have approached their financial challenges and have worked with the author to reach their financial goals. Some people started working with the author, then continued their financial planning, using materials presented in the website tools available.

This book is well presented and easy to read and the directions are easy to follow. It is accompanied with its own website that gives readers the opportunity to work on their personal, financial long-range plans.

The last chapter, “Finding the Right Advisers,” offers descriptions and ideas about the different types of financial advisers that are available in Canada. Having read the book and worked through the exercises, readers would now have the resources required to ask the questions that will give them the information they need to find a financial adviser to help them become financially successful. This chapter also includes questions to ask a future adviser.

The final One Frank Thought is, “Remember the difference between wants and needs, don’t forget the guide to shopping discipline, and make your important goals the priority!”

How to Eat an Elephant: Achieving Financial Success One Bite at a Time
By Frank Wiginton
John Wiley & Sons Canada, Ltd, 2013
Paperback, 274 pages
Available as an ebook
Available at the ATA library, Barnett House