The Courage to be Rich: Creating a Life of Spiritual and Material Abundance (Hardcover)

On the other hand, if you have lots of money and feel good about what you are doing, you will hate this book. This is a self-help guide more along the lines of Unleash the Power Within than it is a financial guide. If you want to add to your perspectives about how to make more money, I suggest that you shift to Rich Dad, Poor Dad instead. For you, The Courage to Be Rich is a one star book.

I appreciate the care and consideration Ms. Orman shows to her readers who may be suffering from emotional overwhelm (such as often occurs during and after a divorce, after a loved one dies, or while buying a first home). Her lists will probably help these anguished souls.

Although money has a lot to do with math, Ms. Orman correctly perceives that it is all about emotion as well. Emotion and math do not mix well, and she provides many useful insights into how to make them work better together.

An experienced and credentialed psychological counselor she is not, however. I suspect this book would have been better with two co-authors, one who is an expert on emotions about money and the other who is an expert on money to supplement Ms. Orman's skill as a communicator.

Ms. Orman is neither, so th is book's treatment is pretty lightweight in both areas. But if it gets you started in dealing with your issues, all the better for you.

The only part that seemed totally inadequate was her writing off of tax issues: You will spend a lot of money on taxes in your life and your choices do have a large impact on how much you will spend. Her advice is to feel good about paying more taxes because your income is higher. By contrast, someone who really wants to be rich needs to compound as much money tax-free or tax-deferred as possible. This book does not begin to address that subject.

The Courage to Be Rich is a better book for dealing with specific life traumas such as divorce, death, and so forth. This book would be a good gift to a friend who has such an event in his or her life.

Her stories are good, because they bring home the message of how crippling too much emotion can be, so we take this problem more seriously.

I think the biggest misconception people have about money is that they do not need to address their feelings about money. In that sense, Ms. Orman is doing a lot for us by reminding us that we have deeply held beliefs and attitudes that deserve being reexamined from time to time. I enjoyed reading the book, although it only added to stockpile of stories, rather than my knowledge.

Maybe the book's obvious appeal for general audiences can best be understood by thinking about the experience of watching a tear-jerker of a movie or television show -- you get a great feeling from knowing that the cataclysm is not happening to you.

If you have heard Ms. Orman speak at length on television (which she does a lot), you can probably safely skip this book.

To get a good return on your time with this review, I suggest that you pick one belief about money that you have where strong emotion comes into play. If that emotion does not serve you well, rephrase what you believe until it does serve you in the right way. Then, you'll have mastered a skill for having more!

Live with rich thoughts and warm emotions!