Saving Savvy, by Kelly Hancock (giveaway)

If you like to save money, raise your hand.

If you aren't a very organized person and/or you'd like to learn a few extra tips on how you might save money in your household, raise your hand.

If you've raised your hand, chances are that you'l find Saving Savvy: Smart and Easy Ways to Cut Your Spending in Half and Raise Your Standard of Living...and Giving a rather interesting read.

Author Kelly Hancock hits on a host of topics in this book, from how to meal plan and stock your freezer to how to coupon. (I'm pretty sure she watches that new show about extreme couponing. I can't even fathom this, not being much of a couponer myself.)

Now, grant it, a lot of things that she suggests, I think, are fairly basic. She talks about the cost of eating out verses planning your meals out so that you can eat at home. She also talks a lot about how you should never pay full price for anything but wait for things to go on sale, or, at the very least, compare prices. When Hancock talks about couponing, she means serious business. She is very much a teacher personality and lays out information for you in an easy-to-comprehend way, helping you to digest her information and make changes in your own home. She is very detailed in her explanations which is a style that I know some people really appreciate and others find to be a bit of an over-kill. She likes lists and labels and writes things down. (I don't.)

That's not to say I didn't learn anything from her because I did. She had some tips for freezing peppers and other vegetables that I found rather helpful. She also gave some helpful tips for purchasing pantry goods in season that I found to be rather helpful. She does have ideas that had just never crossed my mind before and so it was interesting to breeze through this book and glean some new tips and tricks to continue saving money for our family.

I would consider us to be fairly conscientious about how we spend our money. Recently we stuck ourselves on a very tight budget to figure out what we could live on and where our money was actually going. This was a very enlightening experiment and we learned a great deal from it. I think from doing that I had figured out some ways that I was wasting money when grocery shopping. We rarely eat out as I make most of our food - including our bread, yogurt and granola (all of which we consume in rather large quantities around these parts!) Over the course of the past year we've been working on becoming more self-sufficient and money conscious. For that reason, I liked this book and found it helpful, even though she's far more detail oriented than I am. (For example: I have a stand alone freezer for fruits we U-pick in season. However, I do not have an inventory posted on the freezer telling me what's in it and when I put it in. I can see how a list would be helpful because this past summer I discovered some peaches I didn't know I had. But if there's going to be an inventory list I'd have to make it and I hate making lists. I'm not necessarily list driven.)

There are a few things I do not appreciate about this book. For instance, on the front cover there is a quote to help advertise it from Dave Ramsey, stating:

"This book is a gold mine of practical, how-to advice taken straight from God and Grandma's way of handling money."

There you have it. God and Grandma. I'm also very annoyed because some of the scriptures that are listed in this book are taken completely out of context which really drove me nuts as I was reading along. While there are plenty of scriptures that talk about how to spend and care for money wisely, I think she took certain verses a bit too far when trying to instruct the reader on how to save. I eventually stopped looking at her quotes and scriptures because they were more distracting due to their inaccurate application than anything else.

Stick with the idea that she's practical and that should be enough. You're chances of gleaning a thing or two from this read are rather high although I do think there are certain parts of it that are best ignored.

On that note . . .

Worthy Publishing has offered to give away one copy of Saving Savvy to one of you. This contest is open to US AND Canadian residents and will be open through Tuesday, November 8th. To win? Simply leave a comment below along with a valid e-mail address.

Thanks to PR by the Book for shooting a copy of this book my way and to Worthy Publishing for offering the giveaway!