Book Review: Effortless Savings

I received a copy of Effortless Savings: A Step-by-Step Guidebook to Saving Money Without Sacrifice a few weeks back and finally found the time to settle into a comfy chair to read it.

The book is a simple read. I probably read it from cover to cover in less than an hour. It’s broken down into eleven main chapters, which cover saving money in the following categories:

1. Telecom Services
2. Insurance
3. Home Energy
4. Grocery Shopping
5. Health and Beauty Products
6. Clothing and Household Items
7. Automotive Expenses
8. Additional Shopping Strategies
9. Restaurants and Entertainment
10. Vacations and Travel Expenses
11. Credit Cards and Banking

While we all know that we can clip coupons we also recognize that the big ticket items can help us save much more money. Syrop provides a list of simple yet cost effective strategies for saving a bundle. For example, increase the deductibles on your insurance coverage and you can save hundreds a year; wrap a cover around your water heater and save a hundred more.

I appreciated the author’s point of view, reviewing a few policies here and there, keeping an eye on your water and energy usage and spending wisely will certainly help you save. Syrop’s book provides a lot of suggestions and choosing to implement just a few would go a long way to helping you hold onto your money.

Effortless Savings focuses on ways to save without feeling deprived. While a lot of personal finance gurus might suggest attending a matinee to save money, Syrop explains how to save and still see the evening show.

The author suggests using the Entertainment Book or Costco to attain discounted tickets. You won’t save quite as much as you might be watching the afternoon, but the evening experience might be worth the slightly elevated price.

Syrop recommends the Entertainment Book to help with a number of different spending categories. He suggests maintaining a list of offers that appeal to you by reading through the book and recording the name of the business, value of the coupon and it’s corresponding page number. That way you’ll be able to perform a quick glance at your notes when deciding where to eat or what activities to partake in.

I haven’t had much luck with this particular savings mechanism in the past, (I think I used one coupon in the Entertainment Book that was gifted to me), but I will admit that part of the issue was forgetting about the coupons before heading out on the weekends. Syrop’s suggestion to maintain a running list is a good one.

Overall I thoroughly enjoyed Effortless Savings. It’s an extremely quick read with a lot of helpful advice for saving money. I implemented many of the suggestions listed in this book before I read it, but I still found quite a few suggestions I never considered.