Because Financial Intimacy: How to Create a Healthy Relationship with Your Money and Your Mate by Jacquette Timmons was written while the 2008 financial crisis was unfolding, its lessons feel particularly relevant in what has been, with a few exceptions, a terrible, no good, awful 2020. 

As Timmons says in the introduction, bad news forces us to pay attention to things that are easy to ignore when life is going well. If you have the capacity to use this period of:

• Instability

• Uncertainty

• Fear to pay attention to yourself

• Your relationship to money

• (If you have one) your relationship with your partner

digging out from the debris of this year might feel healthier and more purposeful.

Like any relationship, yours with your money takes intentional work. A central tenet of this book is that your relationship with your partner requires financial intimacy to be healthy. The structure brilliantly supports this by opening on a series of honest and diverse money stories that range from heart-breaking to hope-giving. Seeing parts of your own experience reflected in the first third of the book is liberating. This will help you to begin the hard work of recognizing and reflecting on the impact of your own experience before sharing it with your partner. Then you can intentionally be building something new together.

Who should read Financial Intimacy?

Although built around the concept of creating financial intimacy with someone else, the first two-thirds of this book are designed to nurture financial intimacy with yourself. Timmons' book is a worthwhile read whether you’re currently in a relationship or plan to be single forever. 

Financial Intimacy belongs alongside Shannon Lee Simmons and Bonnie Foley-Wong’s In as a foundational personal finance book everyone should read. All three books insist that you have a relationship with your money (whether you acknowledge it or not). They demand that you examine and strengthen this relationship even before standard personal finance stuff like budgets, investing, or retirement. 

If you only have time to read one chapter:

Read Chapter Two: Your Story, You, Your Money, and a Little Bit About Your Mate...and don’t just read it - pour a drink, pull out a journal, and actually answer the questions Timmons poses. At the beginning of this chapter, she writes “I believe people talk about money all the time. They are just having the wrong conversations, rarely going beyond the superficial to the substantial and significant.” 

Chapter 2 will prompt you to have a substantive and significant discussion with yourself about your own beliefs, goals, and desires for a healthy relationship with money. If you never have a partner, going through these exercises is vital. If you have or want to have a partner, going through these exercises is...you guessed it...vital. 

If you only have time to read one paragraph:

“Money is akin to having a third party in your relationship that showed up on the first date, never went away, and is constant and absolutely necessary. Money supports your lifestyle. It also amplifies what is working in your relationship as well as what needs to be worked on. It unmasks how comfortable you and your mate really are talking about money and the emotions you associate with it.”

(Chapter 3: You and Your Mate, A Framework for Financial Intimacy)

If you only have time to read one sentence:

“Questions are what got you this far, wherever that may be, and they are what will take you to the next level, whatever you want that to be”

I’ve been waiting for Eugenié George’s Our Money Stories to come out since she talked about writing it on Nerd’s Eye View (a financial planning industry blog written by Michael Kitces). What drew me to Eugenié, and got me excited about her book, was her insistence that history - and in particular the historical and present day experience of structural racism - are as relevant to financial wellness as spending patterns are.

What she writes is true: 

“Most money books are still how a man sees the money game. And the strategies ignore all historical context with how women view money or create value systems… of course we will use actionable steps that use math to help us look at our money, but we must start thinking about our cash flow as an individualized process.”

This book is designed as a holistic financial wellness resource, specifically for women of colour who have been methodically excluded from pathways to mainstream financial success. In 40 interviews with women from the African-American, Asian-American, Latinx-American, and Native American communities, Eugenié dives deep into how personal experience, family history, and racism entwine to create each woman’s unique money story, and how recognition of this story is the necessary first step towards financial wellness specific to that woman. 

Part two is about explaining what it means to be financially well, and emphatically refuses to isolate financial wellness as a singular aim. Successive chapters examine how any money story is affected by physical, nutritional, emotional, social, spiritual, intellectual, financial, and environmental wellness. 

In part three, Eugenié outlines the six No B.S. Week Financial Wellness Plan, a series of weekly projects that include Money Date 101 (my favourite), Your Money Story, Financial Wellness Plan, The Money Plan, Your Net Worth, and Money Brain Dumps and Money Goals. 

The last section of the book is a guide to finding your financial BFFS: the people and resources who can help you implement the financial wellness plan you’ve spent six weeks crafting. Although some of the roles are specific to the U.S., the insistence on finding community, support, and mentors is universally good advice. 

Who should read Our Money Stories?

This is worth reading for anyone - either because it speaks to your own desire for financial wellness in a way that traditional books have not. Or because traditional books are designed for you and you can grow from learning exactly how much you’ve benefited from this at the expense of everyone else. 

If you only have time to read one chapter:

Definitely read Chapter 26: Week 1: Money Dates. This is a master class on intentionally examining and building on your relationship with money, and is the antidote to the kind of perfectionism too many budgeting systems instill (I’m looking at you, Ramsey). 

The best thing about this chapter is that Eugenié describes four different kinds of Money Dates: 

1. Planning Dates, for looking at your numbers

2. Guidance Dates, for examining your blind spots

3. Inspiration Dates, for dreaming about what you want 

4. Education Dates, for - you guessed it - educating yourself

If you only have time to read one paragraph:

“It is essential that you organize your money environment. I have to put on my momma bear hat and tell you that you have to put in some work. You have to learn about all aspects of your money because if you don’t, someone will be in ownership of it without you even knowing.”

(Chapter 29: Week 4: The Money Plan, no page numbers because I read it on my Kindle!)

If you only have time to read one sentence:

“By looking at our past, establishing awareness with our ancestry, and building a new money story, we will be able to break barriers in our lives.”

(Chapter 1: Introduction)

I had the pleasure of sitting in on a talk by Bonnie Foley-Wong of Pique Ventures on the concept of Integrated Investing for a small group of other advice-only planners. I now have a huge crush on her because of her passion for making a difference in the world through investing, without playing the tired old game of measuring impact exclusively with dollars. 

So there’s that kind of awkward bias acknowledgement out of the way :D.

Her book, Integrated Investing: Impact Investing With Head, Heart, Body, and Soul was just as pleasurable. As a financial planner who reads...um...excessively, I end up seeing an inordinate amount of investing books, and get frustrated with the default thinking implicit in all of them, which is that he (it’s almost always a he) who makes the most money wins the game, period. 

To avoid that kind of limited perspective, Foley-Wong starts by taking us right back to first principles, like “what are the essential resources humans need to thrive” and “why, precisely, do we invest” before articulating her principles for integrated investing: linking, coordinating, and combining inputs and information from multiple sources to choose a course of action, including analysis, emotions, physical cues, and intuition. 

Bonus: my copy included a wallet sized tool she calls the Cost/Benefit Analysis for All Stakeholders that prompts a reflection on the positive or negative impact a venture has on essential resources for customers, partners, suppliers, employees, communities, and the planet. I, of course, don’t carry a wallet most of the time, so I took a picture of it instead! 

Who should read Integrated Investing?

Anyone who wants to invest with purpose beyond “earning a good return”, “funding retirement”, or “leaving an estate for my children” - all good reasons, by the way - but fundamentally dissatisfying to someone who sees themselves as part of a reciprocal community with responsibilities beyond personal or family security.

If you only have time to read one chapter:

Read Impact Investing: Taking Care of the Village. This is an invigorating chapter that acts as the heart of the rest of the book. It expands the concept of investing away from the out-dated Keynesian model that many of us have been trained to see as the default: the sky is blue and therefore we invest to maximize profit and the only kind of profit we measure is the return shareholders receive.

Instead, Foley-Wong articulates the many ways we can use our resources (which may or may not be our money) “to create long-term future benefits, outcomes, or returns to increase and improve access to essential resources for us, our families, our neighbors, our communities, and future generations.”

If you only have time to read one paragraph:

“Our current economic and financial system rewards people who play the game. Investment industry professionals place too much emphasis on metrics that reward game players--people constantly looking for rational reasons and measurable evidence to support the investment decisions being made. The rules and predominant culture of investing lean in favor of this approach. People who have earned high incomes or have significant financial wealth can more easily plan in the investment game. Smart, entrepreneurial, creative people who have not played the game and lack the same kind of scorecard are left out, despite the fact that they have experience, expertise, and insights to contribute.”

(Chapter 3: Impact Investing: Taking Care of the Village, page 49)

If you only have time to read one sentence:

“The first thing people ask me when they are thinking about investing is, ‘What should I invest in?’ But the first question they should be asking is, ‘Why am I investing?’”.

(Chapter 4: Investing With Your Values, page 58)

Until I read Living Your Dream by Larry Wilson, I hadn’t found an all-purpose personal finance 101 book that delivers practical information in enough depth and breadth that I could responsibly recommend it. I’m happy to say that this streak has ended, and would recommend this book to almost everyone (with a few caveats, because do you even know me?)

Almost anyone with a passing interest in personal finance has a story about that one book that opened their eyes or changed their behaviour and will enthusiastically recommend it as the best one for everyone else to start with. Mine’s The Wealthy Barber Returns, in case you were curious. But once you’ve read one or two (or 24) of these books you realize that - similar to other experiences - the book is important to you because it was your first, and might not be as universally relevant as it used to seem. 

Many of my clients come to us after doing their best to figure out what they should do on their own, and their first stop has almost always been one of these books. Sometimes that’s great, other times the book they stumbled upon or that was pressed into their hands by an over-eager relative has done material damage that we have to undo before they can move forward with a realistic financial plan. 

The books that do damage are ones where the author has  clearly never advised an actual human being about finance before, equates wealth exclusively with success, worth, and intelligence, assumes that their own white, middle-class experience is universal, or advertises itself as “a practical guide to personal finance” or some such but leaves out whole sections of relevant information without bothering to explain why. 

The few truly great books I’ve found have zeroed in on handling one particular aspect of personal finance really well without pretending that it’s the only thing you need to master for a successful, fulfilled life. These include: 

• The Value of Simple, by John Robertson, which focuses on choosing and executing a self-directed investment portfolio that suits your circumstances and plan, and prioritizes good enough simplicity over perfectly optimized complexity. 

• Living Debt Free, by Shannon Lee Simmons, which focuses on getting and staying out of debt without any of the usual finger-wagging and shame

• Retirement Income for Life, by Fred Vettese, which focuses on enhancing the amount, safety and tax-efficiency of retirement income (but only for people who aren’t or can’t be eligible for the Guaranteed Income Supplement)

• Your Digital Undertaker, by Sharon Hartung, which focuses on managing your own estate planning as well as your executor’s job in administering it as two separate but related projects, complete with project management checklists

• Worry-Free Money, also by Shannon Lee Simmons, which focuses on the fact that how we spend our money can be shaped by our unconscious defaults or our conscious values, and how to structure our spending to avoid the former in favour of the latter.

In Living Your Dream, Wilson does a great job addressing every key area of personal financial planning, starting with the choices you make throughout your life and moving into the details of spending, debt, investing, taxes, retirement, insurance, Wills, trusts, and substitute decision makers. With a few notable exceptions (below), Wilson goes as deep into each topic as is necessary to help readers understand not only that the right answer for them depends, but what it actually depends on. 

You won’t walk away from this book with a fully articulated financial and estate plan, but - provided you pay attention and keep your learning hat on - you’ll have zeroed in on the key topics that matter for you and be ready to take the next crucial steps of developing your own financial plan, evaluating what help, if any, you need from professionals, and a basic understanding of what said professionals should be able to do for you to be worth engaging.

Who should read it?

This is a solid book that manages to address almost every area of personal finance (even the ones that often get ignored), digs deep enough to be useful, points out other resources to dig deeper, and consistently repeats the message that rules change and you have to be actively engaged in your own planning, even when you’re working with professionals. There’s no other real contender with this breadth and depth, and almost everyone will benefit from not just reading it but taking the time to absorb it. 

It does, however suffer from two key weaknesses that take some of the shine off of it for me. 

First is the problem of tone, in which the author valiantly tries to downplay his privileged position in society as a white, able-bodied man of a certain generation by using the word “modest” about himself, his choices, and the choices he thinks are right for you to make, while presenting the inevitable calculation of how much you could have earned in the stock market if only you didn’t buy fast food, “fancy coffee”, or smokes and invested the money instead (dear lord in heaven can someone please use golf games and trips to the cottage to make this point some day?) and offering advice like “pick the field of study that resulted in the highest earnings for graduates in the past.” OK boomer.

The second weakness is that Wilson, like so many people in the financial advice profession, seems to think that personal finance isn’t a topic that people who are disabled or have a low income are interested in. 

Wilson himself articulates the difficulty in writing a universally relevant book about personal finance in Canada in his introduction like so: 

“Much of what I have included in this text is based on my opinion, which in turn is based on my education and experience. I don’t know about you, but I have been known to make the odd mistake, and it could well be proven that some of what I am presenting here turns out to be suboptimal in one way, shape or form. Ths book covers topic areas that, if discussed in a fully comprehensive manner, would require several volumes. Clearly, this book is too succinct to offer fulsome coverage of all the topics touched upon. I will, within these pages, point you to the right direction to obtain further information where I feel it is important to do so.” (Emphasis mine)

Whereas there’s not even a single mention of Registered Disability Savings Plans, and only a brief slide by the Guaranteed Income Supplement with no additional resources offered (like John Stapleton’s guide for Low Income Retirement Planning), Wilson spends a whole page on avoiding the Old Age Security clawback and even offers eight tips for arranging your other sources of retirement income to do so. 

According to the 2019 Report of Federal Expenditures 1.2 million individuals claimed the Disability Tax Credit in 2015 (some of those claims are doubled up since this credit can be shared between the eligible person and a spouse or parent). That same year, 2.1 million people receive the Guaranteed Income Supplement. 

In 2017 only 600,000 people over the age of 65 had their Old Age Security benefits clawed back. (Source: Statistics Canada.  Table  11-10-0239-01   Income of individuals by age group, sex and income source, Canada, provinces and selected census metropolitan areas)

Author friends: Your feelings about what’s important to include don’t enter into it. Stop spilling ink on helping 600,000 people keep benefits they aren’t entitled to at the expense of the 3.3 million people who need more help than they’re getting right now.

If you only have time to read one chapter:

You’re going to roll your eyes at this further evidence of my bias as an advice-only financial planner but I’m going to recommend Part IX - Professional Advice. This is an outstanding overview of the advice landscape in Canada, and the value of assembling a professional team who will uphold your best interests over theirs.

If that answer doesn’t satisfy, Wilson has done a remarkable job summarizing the takeaways for each chapter, so a quick flip through the book should result in at least one chapter that really speaks to you.

If you only have time to read one paragraph:

"You need to be an active participant in this exercise if you want to get the end result you desire for those people and organizations that are important in your life. You don’t need to be intimidated going through this process - lawyers rely on clients to make a living and are likely to need your business more than you need any particular one of them. You are the boss. You decide who you want to work with."

(You can read this paragraph specifically about the Will planning process; however, I think it’s relevant to any exercise in obtaining professional advice. You need to be engaged in the process in order to get anything actually useful out of it, and you need to choose a professional that recognizes and welcomes that fact or find another one)

(Chapter 35: The Will, page 783 iBooks version)

If you only have time to read one sentence:

“One certainty is that your financial life will happen; it is entirely your decision if it happens on purpose or by default.”

(Chapter 1: The Limitations of this Text, page 32 iBooks version)

I thought when I picked up Your Digital Undertaker: Exploring Death in the Digital Age in Canada, that I’d learn more about how digital assets are treated after death, how to plan properly for my own digital assets and to guide clients in planning for theirs, and trends to watch for as the legal landscape changes. 

Lest you think I’m about to complain about this book, I did learn all of that. But I was delighted to learn much more, and in such a practical, applicable way. Organizing your own affairs, preparing your executor, and even preparing to be an executor are enormous, complicated topics, made more so by the fact that each province and territory has its own laws. Sharon Hartung has done a remarkable job of articulating the complexity while still delivering a universally useful guide that covers much more than just the digital aspects of death.

In addition to her simple and personal writing style, Hartung’s particular strength is in applying her project management lens to each part of the process, from what an executor is dealing with in the first few days after death, to pre-planning and pre-paying your own funeral, preparing an asset and account inventory for the benefit of your future executor, final and estate taxes, and winding up the estate and making distributions to beneficiaries. The framework for each step follows this simple structure: 

1. Scope: Why are you doing this? 

2. Options and Trade-Offs: What are the pros and cons?

3. Preferences and Costs: What do you need and what’s it going to cost you? 

4. Procurement of Professional Services: Your body can’t bury itself!

5. Risks: What are the risks? What are the backup plans? 

6. Communication: It’s on a need-to-know basis and someone needs to know!

Even better, Hartung includes multiple checklists designed to either guide you through the decision-making structure, or - my personal favourite - measure your progress against a benchmark for success that you set for yourself!

Who should read it?

Everyone. Every single person old enough to own assets and execute a Will should read this book with a pencil in hand and a running list of to-dos beside them.

If you only have time to read one chapter:

Of course, read Chapter 7: Death with a Side of Digital. This is where Hartung outlines the many ways our ever-expanding digital lives are already making estate planning and administration so much more complex, and where most readers will come away a little surprised and a lot galvanized to get organizing.

If you only have time to read one paragraph:

“Although you may not know much about funerals, wills and filing taxes at death, there are plenty of qualified estate professionals who can explain what you need to know in simple terms, provide you with options, and communicate the issues and risks involved. That said, you’ll need to be actively involved throughout and be able to engage effectively with the estate professionals you hire. This means asking plenty of questions and taking lots of notes because, while you will be dealing with many professionals, you will be the project manager, not them. You may, as many people do, expect a legal advisor to draft a suitable will, with you playing a passive role in developing it. This is not desirable. You might have checked the box, and have a piece of paper called a will, but if you are deeply engaged in the process with the legal advisor, by asking questions, researching, and doing homework, it can result in estate planning documents that better align with your ultimate wishes, intentions and objectives.”

(Chapter 2: Getting Your Affairs in Order - Building Your Death Project in the Digital Age, page 32, emphasis mine)

If you only have time to read one sentence:

“A will, after all, is just a piece of paper until you die; how it survives your death is what really matters.”

(Chapter 4: Your Digital Life Needs a Will, Too, page 63)