Title: Ultimate Money Management Guide for Kids (I have specifically NOT included the link here, because I am not promoting the purchase of this “book.”)
Author: Gregory O.
*TAKE NOTE* Length: 17 pages
It’s my fault, really. I never noticed the page length section on the Amazon.com site. I especially didn’t notice that ebooks state a page length equivalent in that section. In fact, I’m so blind, I had to LOOK for it after someone told me it was there. Somehow my eyes have always skipped over it. Amazon places it there, clear as day. I just never saw it.
I will never miss it again. I will always look now.
Ultimate Money Management Guide for Kids is little more than a pamphlet, and is far from “ultimate” or a “guide.” After all, it is only SEVENTEEN pages long.
It takes about ten to twenty minutes to read (depending on your reading rate – took me roughly 8 minutes total, a good 2 minutes of that was spent trying to figure out where the rest of the book was), and though there are five chapters, they are each short enough to be included in a brochure. The kind you see at seminars or conventions. Instead of being an ultimate guide, I’d consider it a solid introduction to themes you would like to teach.
There are few steps or how-to lists, mostly just conjecture and opinion. Good opinions, mind you, but I wouldn’t feel comfortable promoting this as a personal finance or parenting guide of any kind. Instead it’s a nice conversation starter.
Free ebooks of this title were being passed around several homeschool sites a few weeks back. I consider this an appropriate way to acquire this book. But the kindle format sells on Amazon for $2.99 and I can’t help but wonder how many people have been disappointed by the lack of substance and length for their money. Not many because the reviews on Amazon are mostly positive. This surprises me.
In addition to it’s lack of length, there were a few editing hiccups that I urge the author to review. As a writer, I understand all too well the frequency of errant typos (my own first edition has many of them), but in a document that could be considered little more than a lengthy blog post, I’m surprised the errors slipped through. I’m sure typos appear in my blog as well. There might be some in this very post because I rarely go through an edit – I’m not an editor. But I’m also not charging you to read this, so I feel in that regard I have a right to be a little lazy about punctuation placement and grammar choices. When I start charging $2.99 for you to read my blog, I promise to edit better. Then again, I’d never do that.
Early in the introduction of the title, the author writes, “Empowering children with good financial education will ensure that they are better prepared for life and all matter finance. It is the responsibility of parents to teach their children about money.” Indeed. But he spent little time explaining how one should do so.
Gregory O. has some great ideas and on many points I agree with him. The book as a whole would make a marvelous opening speech for a seminar on teaching parents to teach their children about money matters, but it doesn’t stand well alone. I wish O. would have developed the topic more before releasing it as a “book” for sale at $2.99. (I know, I keep repeating this information, but it just hasn’t stopped baffling me. $2.99 for 17 pages! What?) Lower the price to 99 cents or keep it free and I have little to fuss about, because it serves as a positive starting point for parents to encourage economic intelligence in their children. It simply falls short of what else is being produced in the industry on the same topic.
I’ll take my 8 minutes back, please.
