Wealth Watchers: A Simple Program to Help You Spend Less and Save More

by Alice Wood, Glenn Rifkin (Contributor)

Ten years ago, Alice Wood was living a normal life, balancing her career, family, and finances with con dence. Having grown up with a father who was a bank president from the pre-branch banking era and a mother who was influenced by the Great Depression, Alice learned prudence and financial responsibility at home. She knew instinctively how to handle money, until a brain injury sustained on a commercial airplane changed her life.

After the injury, Alice encountered many new challenges; for the first time in her life she was overweight and in serious debt. Weight Watchers® allowed Alice to lose the weight and keep it off. Inspired by Weight Watchers'® daily discipline of journaling and the principle of group accountability, she decided to create a new and radically simple program to reclaim her financial stability. She called it Wealth Watchers. This simple program enabled her to meet her own financial goals and soon was helping thousands of others to do the same. Today, the Wealth Watchers program is an important part of the rapidly growing movement for financial literacy and empowerment sponsored by school, state, and federal government programs; corporations such as McDonald's and Visa; and several large financial institutions.

Wealth Watchers is the story of Alice's journey from a life of having it all to a life of dealing with frustrating financial setbacks. In this book -- which presents the program and the principles in full for the first time -- you will find all the tools you need to organize your finances, complete your monthly budget, determine your disposable income, and understand which spending patterns are knocking you off-track. At the heart of the program is one simple your Daily Disposable Income (DDI) , the money you can spend each day without going into debt. Amazingly, most people don't know their DDI. In this book Alice explains how it can help you make purchasing decisions, big and small, one day at a time, and build positive habits to last a lifetime. Using the Power of 365 , you will learn how to analyze your expenses, stay out of debt, start saving again, and -- regardless of your age or income level -- thrive!

Genres: Nonfiction, Money, Finance, Self Help, Economics

304 pages, Hardcover

First published December 29, 2009

Reviews

[Jerry Smith · Rating 3 out of 5]

3ish

Compelling story but like most other finance books it's full of stats you can get from Googling (are they even accurate?) and half the book is blank worksheets. Took about an hour to read.
Not bad just eh..

[Andrew Mutch · Rating 3 out of 5]

Although the author's personal story was interesting to read, I didn't get a lot out of this book. The first half of the book focuses on the author's personal struggles that led her to create the "Wealth Watchers" program. Although sometimes interesting to read, I often find that I get less out of personal finance books that overly focus on the writer's own personal story as this one does.

The author also explains the "Wealth Watchers" program that she developed to help her in her struggles with her personal finance. She said it's based on some of the same principles as one finds in the "Weight Watchers" program. If you are familiar with that program, you may find this easier to grasp than I did. But despite the author's claim of how easy it was, the explanations provided made it seem more complicated than I would want to deal with on a daily basis. It wasn't helped that the author didn't really provide good examples of how the various components of the system would be implemented. If authors are going to expect readers to go through various math calculations, they should provide readers good examples by walking through those calculations so that the reader can be sure they are following them correctly. The author isn't the first to fall down in this regard but it lessened the usefulness of the book for me.

Finally, almost the entire second half is a series of worksheets that you are to use for tracking your daily spending. This might be useful if you personally purchased the book but since I checked it out of the library, this was just filler. This book would probably be most useful for someone interested in getting a handle on their daily spending and needed a system for tracking that. For those who already have that in hand, they likely won't get a lot out of this book.

[E · Rating 5 out of 5]

Grounded guide to managing personal finances

In 2000, estate-planning attorney Alice Wood suffered a serious brain injury. It affected her ability to think clearly and harmed her marriage, her law practice, her weight, her life – her entire ability to function. As she recovered, money became a major issue for her and her husband. When she joined Weight Watchers to try to slim down, she realized that its careful, day-by-day approach was an excellent model for a personal financial control program. That’s when she developed Wealth Watchers. In their first year on the program, Wood and her husband cut their expenses by $12,000. She explains her simple, sensible tactics: List each cost, establish a budget and cut back on unnecessary purchases by exercising daily discretion. Her suggestions about saving money, buying insurance, putting aside retirement funds, budgeting for college, and so on, are very practical. getAbstract recommends this excellent book as a useful guide to getting the most out of your budget, husbanding your earnings and managing your money. If you don’t yet have wealth to watch, she tells you how to save so you can accumulate some.

[Anne Marsh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Alice Wood's WEALTH WATCHERS was an interesting read. The premise is simple and compelling-- think before you spend and don't spend more money than you have to spend. These are obvious tenets, but they're also easy to forget. For me, there wasn't too much new in this book (which is distressingly slim), other than the idea of breaking down the money I have to spend on a daily basis rather than a monthly one. On the other hand, it was excellent validation to know that, no, I am not a freak because I've decided that instead of spending four dollars on Starbucks on my way to work, I'd rather save the money and use it for plants or books. Apparently, I'm making choices. And that's good. Wood's book is also an excellent reminder to multiply a daily expense by the number of times one does it in a year to see the big picture. Now, I'm wondering if it's time to kick the diet pepsi habit... because spending $260-400 a year on diet coke is... disturbing. And that's precisely where the food for thought is in Wood's book.

[Colleen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have yet to put the program into effect, but the idea seems sound and simple. Basing her system on the Weight Watchers program of adhering to a daily points number, Alice Wood suggests doing the same with ones finances to keep from spending beyond one's means. There's also a great explanation of exactly how one's credit score is calculated and what you can do to make it better.

It is also a quick, easy read as half of the book is actually your daily journal pages, budget summary pages, and a recommended reading and resource list.

I also agree with Wood that financial literacy should be a required course in all schools.

So if you are looking for a practical way to get on top of your finances, Wealth Watchers is a great program to follow.

[Ice · Rating 2 out of 5]

Wood, founder of the ingenious Wealth Watchers program, shares her accessible plan for financial independence in this highly original, commonsense approach to managing money. Her plan is based on the tenets of Weight Watchers—but rather than counting calories, readers are encouraged to figure out how much money they can spend each day.

Wood advocates basic action steps that anyone can take, including getting organized, creating a monthly budget, setting goals and journaling. She discusses the best approach to handling fixed expenses (e.g., housing and insurance) and semifixed expenses (e.g., transportation and child care) and includes a daily, monthly, quarterly and yearly journal in the back of the book for the reader to complete.

[threefishinatank · Rating 4 out of 5]

persuasive on the topic of tracking day to day spending and how to organize and go about it. Extol the virtues of making small sacrifice in daily spending to save for future emergency.
Like pg 38-40.
"Remember you can have almost anything as long as you plan ahead and save for it"
In Poor Richard's Almanac, published 250 years ago, Benjamin Franklin wrote: "Small leaks sink great ships." Such wisdom is as relevant today as it was then. When you start tracking where your money geoes, you'll find those small leaks. If you can avoid small leaks you'll stay above water... and then some. He also wrote: "Industry and frugality are the means of procuring wealth and thereby securing virtue."

[Robyn Brown · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am always reinventing my juggling act ~alias "budget"~ this book was an easy read, easy system, right to the point, covered all the essentials that every standard budget should have and allows the individual juggling room!! Instead of strapping you into a padded cell this approach was much more realistic, I think, especially for those of us who live on the brink everyday. Highly recommend for beginners and those who continuously fail or struggle with other budget systems.

[Marcela · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is excellent as a cautionary tale about what could happen if one chooses not to have the proper insurance coverage and how it affects the entire family and not only the individual directly affected by an accident. I would recommend this book to a person that is just starting to be curious about personal finance because of its basic information, but not to someone that has some or extensive knowledge about personal finance.

[Marleah (marleah_a) · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was ok, but much of it was repetitive and as short as it was (since half of the book is made up of sample pages for your budget journal), it could have been shorter. Much was common sense or duplicated other information that I've read already (sometimes word-for-word).

[Jenny · Rating 5 out of 5]

This applies the same principle as weight watchers, which I am currently using. Half the book are worksheets you can fill out--so it is a very quick read. I am excited to use the free online app called wealth watchers to see where my money is going!

[Jessica]

I thought this was a nicely written, common-sense approach to managing money, with some basic, simple advice. The innovation of tracking saving/spending like Weight Watchers tracks calories/exercise is really great.

[Kelly · Rating 2 out of 5]

5 stars for the concept, but would have been just fine as an article.

[patience · Rating 3 out of 5]

Helpful ideas to keep one on track financially. Since I love Weight Watchers, I also appreciate this program. Behavioral psychology.

[Linda · Rating 3 out of 5]

We could all use some practical financial advice, this is simple but could help. Most of it is just an empty journal.

[Angtburg · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting way to approach doing your budget but I found it to be too restrictive to keep within a certain amount daily.

[Trish · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was okay.

[Jacquelin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very simple, kind of a "duh, that's totally obvious" approach that clearly wasn't totally obvious to me. Good motivator to get us started down a revised savings road toward a major house addition.

[William Batzle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely loved this book. Very insightful and helpful.