Book Review: What’s Up With Women and Money by Alison Kosik

I decided to write a book review on What’s up with Women and Money: How to do all the Financial Stuff You’ve Been Avoiding by Alison Kosik.

There wasn’t a particular reason why I picked this book. I’m sticking with my trend of newer books written by women.

There aren’t many reviews on the book, but the few that I did find were positive, so I decided to give it a go.

Of course, it’s available on Amazon Kindle and that’s pretty much my only “must have” when purchasing a book off of Amazon.

My Backstory

I manage all of the household finances. I realize this isn’t the case for many women.

Before purchasing What’s Up with Women and Money, I read the summary on Amazon:

“Former CNN/CNN International Anchor and Business Correspondent Alison Kosik —recognised around the globe as the face of Wall Street for the network — found herself trapped in a failing marriage. The savvy mother of two, was terrified to leave her husband. Why? She didn’t have the confidence to take on big financial decisions on her own. Despite spending her working hours explaining financial and business concepts, she had allowed her husband to take charge of all their big money decisions ― from buying a house and how to finance it to their investments and retirement savings ― and had no clue how to do any of it on her own.”

I pondered if the book was for me and my personal situation.

I decided to move forward with the book for a few reasons:

• Am I confident in the financial decisions I am making?
• Am I as educated on making the financial decisions as I could be? Surely there’s always more to learn.
• The author sitting on a pile of cash on the cover looks like she could be my friend.
• I want to review this to potentially help others.

So a couple of clicks and a little less than $20 later, I started reading.

Foreword & Intro

There’s a short foreword in the book written by Emma Grede.

It’s a nice little “pump you up” before you get started with the author.

Emma states in the foreword:

In the pages that follow, you’ll find a wealth of practical advice, from how to create a budget that works for you, to how to start investing with confidence, to how to plan for the future you want. But beyond the tips and tools, you’ll find something even more valuable: a sense of possibility.”

I like that – the sense of possibility part.

So with an open mind, I continued on…

I started to buy into the fact that I may like the book early on by reading comments like

“This book is for every woman – whether you’re having a financial crisis or not” – Preface

Alison Kosik shares her personal story early on. I didn’t know I needed to hear that, but I did. It made me invest that much more brain power into the chapters ahead.

Budgeting

I really liked Alison Kosik’s writing on budgeting.

Chapter 2 “Where The F is My Money Going?”, she shares a “No BS Budget Worksheet” that I kinda love.

She asks the reader to put in the work with pen and paper, not to take the easy way out and use a budgeting app.

I really appreciated the time Kosik spends on explaining the different scenarios as not everyone’s income or expenses are the same.

She also realizes that not everyone has the same personality.

I’ve never seen any book break up budgeting into different options like What’s Up With Women and Money does. Without giving away too much, here’s how it’s broken up:

• Shoe #1: The Sneaker – Put a percentage on it
• Shoe #2: The 3-Inch Heel – The envelope system
• Shoe #3: The Flip-flop – Reverse budgeting

If you think there are some holes in your budgeting and you’re left negative at the end of the month…or perhaps you have no budget at all, this section alone makes picking up the book worth it.

Cutting Expenses

What’s Up With Women and Money dives into helping you understand needs vs wants, where you can cut back in your budget, cheaper alternatives, and more…

The author doesn’t ignore the fact that many people will find out that they are negative at the end of the month when they dive into their monthly expenses.

Kosik goes into serious detail about expenses and ways to reduce costs for a variety of everyday expenses.

Honestly, I had never thought so much about the appliances in my home and how much they could be costing me. I stopped reading to research how to clean my refrigerator coils.

And the dishwasher? I didn’t even know a dishwasher filter was a real thing.

I ended up highlighting the entire section “Do a maintenance run on your appliances“. That section alone made reading the book worth it to me.

I don’t want to go into too much here, but the whole reducing expenses section was gold. I actually felt personally attacked when she talked about expensive make-up…

A woman’s money book that talks about car maintenance? Love it.

Guest Snippets

So there are these little “in her own words” snippets throughout the book that are written by women. Some of the names are quite famous…some are anonymous. It’s a mixture of all different classes.

At first I felt like it was kind of hopping around whenever these sections popped up. I wasn’t into the flow of the guest snippets coming out of no where.

Going from hearing Alison’s voice in my head to someone else I didn’t know felt kind of weird. It felt like I was going from one book to another without wanting to put down the first book.

However, as I kept reading the book, I looked forward to them.

I learned that the “in h er own words” sections were meant to reinforce what the author was already trying to say and they are meant to be written together, as the words compliment each other.

Other Notable Topics

Here’s a list of other topics that What’s Up With Women and Money covers:

• Understanding your credit score, plus tips to increase it
• How to tackle debt
• Purchasing a home (plus maintaining it)
• Refinancing a home
• Purchasing a car (entire chapter on this)
• A comprehensive chapter on insurance
• Estate Planning
• Negotiating specifically for women (Great collection of tips plus a prep checklist)
  • I super love the “red flag phrases” section

Investing

If you’re not investing or you’re looking for a place to start, this book will help you.

“Only a third of women feel confident in their ability to make investment decisions and 56% of millennial women say it’s fear that holds them back from investing” – Chapter 9

The title of the investing chapter is “Baby Steps That Will Get You Investing“. What’s Up With Women and Money truly does baby step you through the process.

Some topics covered:

• Why to invest
• Where to invest
• Choosing investments (mutual funds, index funds, exchange-traded funds, target-date funds)
• How to place a trade
• What dividends are
• Bonds
• Compounding interest

At the end of the chapter there’s a nice list of additional books to pick up if you want to continue learning.

Writing Style

I’ve read books (which I do not review) that have horrible writing styles. Did anyone ever edit their book before publishing?

That’s definitely not the case here with What’s Up With Women and Money.

It was a super easy read. For me, it was like talking to a friend. A fun friend that cusses a little and I like that because I do too.

Alison Kosik would be someone that I would want to sit with, drink wine, laugh with, and just listen to.

Four stars for writing style. Thank you, Alison, for allowing me to not freak out when I saw grammatical mistakes because I saw none.

Side Note: Don’t judge me if you see any errors in this article. I literally edit my own writing and that’s hard.

Final Thoughts on What’s Up With Women and Money

So when I originally picked this up, I wasn’t sure I would get much out of it to be honest.

I thought it was going to be a confidence booster for women who needed it and there was going to be a lot of “you got this, honey” type of talk.

I ended the book with a ton of highlights to go back and read again.

Obviously, what I’ve chosen as my main takeaways won’t be the same as yours. I’ve covered the topics in this article that meant the most to me.

The section on your credit score may mean the most to you. Perhaps you’re thinking about purchasing or refinancing a home and that chapter will mean the most to you.

What I’m saying is that I think we can all find at least one section of this book that will make the purchase worth it.

Worth quoting from the last page of What’s Up With Women and Money by Alison Kosik:

“I hope the most important thing you’ve learned is to trust yourself – to have faith that you can take on new challenges and succeed…knowledge leads to understanding and understanding leads to confidence.”

Great, fun, educational read!

Additional reviews for other books on women and investing:

Book Review: Girls That Invest by Simran Kaur
Rich AF By Vivian Tu