While reviewing my choices of free books to review for BookSneeze.com, I ran across Your Money God’s Way by Amie Streater, an associate pastor for financial stewardship at New Life Church in Colorado Springs, CO. Obviously I jumped at the chance to get a free copy of a book with a personal finance topic.
The subtitle of the book is “Overcoming The 7 Money Myths That Keep Christians Broke”. This book definitely focuses on these myths not on the “how to’s” of personal finance. She starts off with a description of these myths which she refers to as counterfeit convictions. The author then takes a look at seven different counterfeit convictions that she sees in people as she counsels them through their financial difficulties. These counterfeit convictions are each given a chapter and addressed in detail for the majority of the book. The book then takes a quick look at how to develop a budget to pull yourself up out of the situation that your counterfeit conviction has caused in your financial life. This is far from the emphasis of the book however and is only covered in short generalities.
I thought the book did a good job of identifying the financial myths and also explaining why they are false. I believe that anyone struggling with their finances could benefit from reading this book and identifying which issues they are struggling with. The advice given may help them to face up to the myth and therefore overcome them. I do believe though that from that point, other books would much better serve the purpose of moving the person through the process of developing a budget, getting out of debt and planning for the future. This book does not describe itself as a book that does that however, so I do not see it as a shortcoming of the book. Many other authors have done a great job of covering that topic. If you have tried these other books and are still struggling with moving through the process, perhaps you need to start with this book and address the root of your problem before attempting to move through the process to financial freedom.