Exactly how "fat" are your assets?

If you are like most women in America, you've tried at least one diet in your lifetime. We all know the standard dieting patterns... the commitment to lose weight, new food and exercise patterns, tracking and weighing in and finally results.

Well, I just finished reading the book Does This Make My Assets Look Fat? by Susan Hirshman. In this book, Ms. Hirshman makes the likens investing and managing your financial "shape" to dieting. All the same commitment, goal setting, new patterns, and tracking you give to a diet, you can give to getting financial results as well.

As a married thirty-something who already works with a Financial Planner on a regular basis to manage our investment portfolio, I started reading this book as a way to understand more about the conversations that my husband and the financial planner have.

I am a somewhat intelligent woman with an MBA, armed with Finance and Accounting courses from both college and grad school. However, even with that background, I still don't find investment jargon to be particularly easy to understand. I wanted to understand these investment concepts at a more-than-basic level, but I needed it explained to me in a creative way. Susan does such an excellent job making comparisons to everyday scenarios in this book, particularly relating many chapters to the all-to-familiar dieting concepts. Its a really effective way of relating the topics in an easy to understand way.

Thanks to Julie, founder of The Bloggers Book Club, I had the unique opportunity to meet Susan Hirshman for dinner last week with several other area bloggers. The first thing that struck me about Susan is just how approachable and FUNNY she is! So funny. She has so many great stories from her own life to share about how she came to be in the finance industry, how she came to write a book, and how she learned in her 20's to manage her money and credit cards!

I think the part I was most pleased with after talking with Susan (and reading the book) is that it seems like my husband and I are right on track and doing all of the things we should be doing. And, thanks to us having done all of those things for the last few years, when we got word a few weeks ago that my husband was being laid off, we didn't have to go into panic mode (*knocking wood*) because we had a smart investment plan to fall back on. That investment plan included a "rainy day fund" that had X months of salary in it squirreled away. So, now that our "rainy day" has arrived, we can live somewhat comfortably while he looks for a new job for a few months. I feel really grateful that we had the commitment to saving to that fund for all of these years, when spending that "extra" money would have been much more fun!

How about you? Do you feel like your financial life could use some more attention? Do you have a financial plan with goals that you are saving for? Tell us what "rainy day" plan is.

You can also get more information from Susan Hirshman on her Facebook page.

As a member of The Bloggers Book Club, I received a copy of this book.

~Shannon