Book Review: This Personal Finance Book Legit Made Me Cry With Happiness
It’s a little…different
You’re not supposed to cry at personal finance books.
Like…dude. That’s so ungodly obvious that it shouldn’t even need to be said. Unless you’re very upset over the state of your finances. But they’re not supposed to tug on your heartstrings.
But a gentleman named David Bach apparently said, “challenge accepted.”
And this sucker took personal finance and it make it play on my fricking heartstrings like a lute.
Rude.
But also…respect.
Cause, you know. That’s not supposed to happen.
I respect the game.
Introducing: The Latte Factor
David Bach is the bestselling author of multiple personal finance books, including The Automatic Millionaire, Smart Couple Finish Rich, Smart Women Finish Rich, Start Late Finish Rich, and suchlike.
Most of his books, which are very good and include a great deal of useful information, are normal personal finance books. They go Subject-Idea-Why-How, in the usual way of educating people and addressing money and how you deal with it.
But then he decided to write a different type of book. He decided to give personal finance advice via the medium (heh) of a story.
Result: The Latte Factor.
Why This Book Makes Me Cry
I’m not going to go into all the nitty-gritty of the advice given in this book. It’s summarizable, yes (is that a word? It’s a word now). But it’s the feeling of the book that quietly wraps its hands around your heart and squeezes it like an orange.
The Latte Factor is a story about a young woman in New York City who starts the book having no idea where she’s going in her life. She has a good job, but doesn’t have goals, you know? She’s treading water.
She then strikes up a friendship with a gentleman at her favorite coffee shop, who has shit figured. out. He’s her Yoda, pretty much. And over the course of the book, we see her struggle to understand the things that he’s saying and fit them into her conception of the world.
There are great, colorful characters, family issues addressed, and the main character goes through an entire Hero’s Journey to reach her end (spoiler alert below).
The end of the book is where I cry. Because the ultimate goal that she reaches isn’t a mansion, or a Ferrari, or eighty billion dollars magically appearing.
No. The resolution of her hero’s journey is that she’s happy.
She loves her life. She’s pursuing things that matter to her, has wonderful relationships with people, and took control of her future and made it someone infinitely worth having.
Our Final Goal Is Always Happiness
I’ve been reading a lot about money and goals and life, that’s what I read on Saturday mornings (I’m a little weird).
And something that comes up over and over is that the end goal of our other goals, the final boss of life (video game reference) is…happiness.
We just want to be happy. We want to enjoy our lives. We want to share those lives with people around us who we care for.
We want the mansion and Ferrari and eighty billion dollars because we think we’ll be happy when we have them. And this book makes me cry because at the end, it glows with her happiness. It’s golden and beautiful and you’ve watched her go from unhappy and lost to happy and grounded, and seeing that happen legit makes me weep.
I’m not going to be opining on the book’s financial recommendations. Frankly, they aren’t the point for me. I don’t read it for that.
I read it to experience sheer, tear-wrenching joy.
