Get Financially Naked!

The bloggers at LYJ are big fans of Manisha Thakor and her first book, On My Own Two Feet. Manisha is a personal finance expert on women and money, and when she asked us to review her new book, Get Financially Naked: How to Talk Money with your Honey, for Amazon we jumped at the chance to get advance copies and develop our finance and relationship muscles.
 
Suzanne Grossman:
I was so pleased to read Manisha Thakor and Sharon Kedar’s latest book. It’s chock full of concrete tools for walking into a relationship from a position of financial strength rather than fear. Let’s face it – so many of us do NOT know how to have these conversations, myself included. After reading this book, I feel so much more prepared to face head on issues related to money that I would normally run away from. I’m excited about the possibilities this opens up.

One of my favorite aspects of Get Financially Naked is how much Manisha and Sharon share of their personal journeys with money before their relationships (their money stories) as well as during them. They show that it’s not about striving for perfectionism but more about open communication with your partner. I felt like if they could do it, I could too! This book is a MUST HAVE for anyone looking to successfully navigate relationships and money.

Nicole Lisa:
I wish I had read Get Financially Naked before I got married! A lot of us are married to our financial opposites, and Thakor and Kedar’s compatibility quiz is a great place to start conversations about finances on neutral ground. Plus they provide answers to the major questions couples face and often don’t know how to tackle. It’s a quick, chatty read with lots of steps you can take right away as well as more long-term suggestions. The questions in the last chapter for staying on track are especially helpful. This book is on the must-read list for everyone seriously involved or thinking about it.

Check out Manisha’s website and blog at http://manishathakor.com/.

What I’m Reading Now

Ever since I renewed my Brooklyn library card I’ve been ordering tons of books delivered straight to my local library branch. It means I’m reading 5 books at once!

Here’s the latest:

Time Management from the Inside Out by Julie Morgenstern – This book is helping me to see all of the areas I can improve upon the way I organize my day and is getting me excited about purchasing a new daily planner.  She has another book which I have out from the library called Never Check E-mail in the Morning though so far I prefer the other.

Live It, Love It, Earn It by Marianna Olszewski – A friend of mine gave this to me as a gift and I’ve started the beginning and am very excited to read it all the way through. LYJ friend Manisha Thakor did a wonderful interview with the author this week on the Huffington Post.

Today I am picking up from the library Martha Beck’s Steering by Starlight: Find Your Right Life, No Matter What! which I remembered I wanted to read after seeing it on the Obligation Nation Essential Reading list and Womenomics: Write Your Own Rules for Success by Claire Shipman and Katty Kay.

I recently read The Big Leap by Gay Hendricks about the limits we have on our own capacity to take in success and how to get around this, and Get Financially Naked: How to Talk Money with Your Honey by Manisha Thakor and Sharon Kedar which has inspired me to see how important finances are to relationships. More to come on this book.

What books are you reading?

If You Never Hear No, You’re Not Asking Enough

This is the title of the conclusion of Ask For It: How Women Can Use the Power of Negotiation to Get What They Really Want, by Linda Babcock and Sara Laschever.

Many women, myself included, experience hearing “no” as negative. It resonated deeply with me that they flipped that upside down and made me look at “no” in a whole new way. In essence, the lack of “no” is now the negative experience, a signal of how women limit themselves by not even asking for the things they want. But they don’t just give you this information and expect it to change your life; no, in the section they call “Negotiation Gym” they set out exercises to stretch your negotiation muscles, including a whole week of getting yourself accustomed to hearing no—without charging it with a negative emotional weight.

The book is filled with information that incites these light bulb moments and has already inspired me to think bigger about asking, negotiating and imagining what I want. There’s also many persuasive statistics and illustrative anecdotes that got my mad up.

Stay tuned for further conversation about this book with the bloggers on LYJ.

My Favorite Networking Resource

One of the gals in my book club asked about resources for creating her introduction (also called a pitch, an elevator speech, etc.) so I took a look at my bookshelf and pulled out Make Your Contacts Count: Networking Know-How for Cash, Clients and Career Success by Anne Baber and Lynne Waymon.

I had to open it up to see if I was remembering correctly that it had a section on this topic. It sure does, as well as sections on what networking really is (with reminders that “A single conversation can change your life” Yes! and “Networkers are made not born”), the skills you need, key moments and what to do with them, thinking big, making it rain clients and networking into your next job.

This is my hands-down all time favorite book for all things networking.

Check out the 2007 version Make Your Contacts Count: Networking Know-how for Business And Career Success  and their blog FireProof Your Career, which I just found.

It’s Not Who You Are, It’s What You Do

An interesting op-ed in the New York Times, “Genius: A Modern View“, by David Brooks maintains that genius isn’t born, it’s made.

Referencing recent books, “The Talent Code” by Daniel Coyle and “Talent Is Overrated” by Geoff Colvin, Mr. Brooks points out that the key factor separating geniuses (ranging from Mozart to Tiger Woods) from the rest is not I.Q., but instead “deliberate practice.”

“Top performers”, ranging from Mozart to Tiger Woods, he writes, “spend more hours (many more hours) rigorously practicing their craft.” 10,000 hours is the number he mentions (if you practiced 24/7, that’s a little over a year).

What does this mean?

It’s never too late to turn yourself into a genius. As Coyle observes, “It’s not who you are, it’s what you do.”

Freelancing Life: Book Recommendation

Check out My So-Called Freelance Life: How to Survive and Thrive as a Creative Professional for Hire and The Anti 9-To-5 Guide: Practical Career Advice for Women Who Think Outside the Cube by Michelle Goodman.

Anyone who is thinking about working freelance or shaking up the normal paradigm of work in this country, or has already launched a new business endeavor, will benefit from reading these two books. I have only read The Anti 9-To-5 Guide (not just for women despite its title) and it was chock full of useful information and reminders about being your own boss, creating your own career path and surviving as an entrepeneur. It was also easy to read and full of humor – unlike many of the boring books in the how to start your own business genre. I’m sure her latest is just as great.

Check out her books and web site at http://www.anti9to5guide.com/.

Idealist.org Offers Career Guides on Social Change Work

The non-profit job bank and career resource center, Idealist.org (where I found my last two jobs), recently published a book that is part career guide, part activist’s handbook:

“The Idealist.org Handbook to Building a Better World provides tools and inspiration for anyone who wants to make a difference but doesn’t know where to start. Inspired by Idealist.org’s 600,000-member online community and their ongoing search for work that gives back to the world, this practical reference walks readers through the different ways they can get involved and the range of possibilities for applying one’s interests and skills to meet their community’s needs.”

Idealist.org also features two free, online books providing non-profit career guidance for first-time job seekers and sector switchers. Chapters from both books can be found on their website.

Refuse to Choose!

If you’re the sort of person who has many different interests and feels like you’ll never find one satisfying career path, I recently read a book called “Refuse to Choose!” by Barbara Sher [1] that says you might be what she calls a “Scanner”, someone who has “[i]ntense curiousity about numerous unrelated subjects … [is] endlessly inquisitive … [and] doesn’t want to specialize in any of the things she loves, because that means giving up all the rest.”

If this definition sounds like you, the author explains, you’re not alone or wrong, and that rather than trying to fit yourself into one perfect career box, you’d be much better off (and happier!) if you let yourself follow all of your interests and find a “Good Enough Job” to support them.

Whether you’re an actual “Scanner” or just someone with a lot of interests, there were a  lot of great tips in this book about how to pursue as many of your interests as possible while having fun and holding down a job.   Here is a list of a few that struck me:

1. Start a “Scanner Daybook” i.e., a blank book devoted to what you do each day. This is a great way to capture your best ideas, your own version (according to the author) of the Leonardo da Vinci notebooks.

2.  Stay in a job, or follow an interest, until you feel you’ve gotten what you came for (even if the job or project is not technically “finished”).   The author references a great Buddhist riddle to illustrate her point and to help you figure out when you’re done with a particular job or activity.

Koan n: a Zen Buddhist riddle used to focus the mind during meditation and to develop intuitive thinking

Q: How long should you stay at something?

A: However long it takes to get what you came for.

Q: How do you decide what you came for?

A: You don’t, you discover it.

Q: How do you discover it?

A: You notice what isn’t there anymore when you feel like leaving. [2]

3.  For everything you’re interested in, start a three-ring binder and put all of your ideas related to that topic into the binder.  This will help you (a) keep track of your ideas (b) give you a sense of accomplishment and (c) allow you to put an idea off to the side and pursue other interests, but make it easy to come back to.

4.  If you’re the type of person who sometimes feels overwhelmed by so many interests that you can’t get started on any one particular interest and end up doing nothing, the author recommends that you set a daily, weekly or monthly schedule for yourself and goes on to describe several specific types of schedules.  [3]

5.  According to the author the “best friend” of almost every Scanner is the “Good Enough Job.”   “It isn’t your dream job; it’s the one that funds your dreams,” she writes.   I think there’s a lot to this idea and, if you’re someone who doesn’t want to give up on your search for your dream job, the Good Enough Job might help you get there by allowing you to pursue your interests along the way and figure out what really works for you.

There are a lot of other great ideas in this book (including tips to help you identify what type of “Scanner” you might be) and I highly recommend it for anyone who wonders why they haven’t found “the one” right job.

________

1. Thank you to Victoria Moran who mentioned this book in her weekly newsletter, The Charmed Monday Minute, and who posts a blog at Beliefnet.com.

2. She also recommends that you try to figure out what your particular “rewards” are in any endeavors you choose and suggests that once you identify your rewards, it will be much easier to figure out when you’re finished with a particular interest or job (i.e., the moment you receive your reward is the moment you’re done with the activity). Possible rewards are endless and vary with each individual, but a few that the author cites include: learning something new, having impact, creating something that didn’t exist before, and helping others.

3. One schedule that appeals to me is called the “School Day Life Design Model” where you set aside an hour or two each day to work on a particular activity or interest. With this schedule the author suggests that by my making daily appointments for yourself, you’re more likely to get things done, and by doing a little bit each day you make tons of progress in the long run.