Last year PropelHer’s Book Club read Nice Girls Don’t Get The Corner Office by Lois P. Frankel, PhD. At the time I was obsessed with achieving success in my career and even though the idea of the “corner office” doesn’t really exist in the performing arts I thought it would be a perfect book to read. It turned out to be a good choice with many women resonating with at least some of the mistake mentioned in the book. So I decided in 2017 we would read Lois’ other book, which is Nice Girls Don’t Get Rich: 75 Avoidable Mistakes Women Make With Money.

Now if you have been following the blog you will know I have been reading a lot of money books this year. I have reviewed The Millionaire Fastlane, The Automatic Millionaire, You Are A Badass At Making Money, The Science of Getting Rich, I Will Teach You To Be Rich and Secrets of Six Figure Women.

Nice Girls Don’t Get Rich follows the same format as Nice Girls Don’t Get The Corner Office. There is a self-assessment right at the beginning where you answer a number of questions and then are shown which areas you are strongest and weakest at. I really like the self-assessment idea as this means if you are short of time you can just read the chapters where you are the weakest. Great for busy, ambitious women like myself – although obviously, I read the whole thing. However, you can do the self-assessment and you will be pointed to read specific chapters.

The seven chapters are:

• Getting into the money game
• Taking charge of your financial life
• Spending your money wisely
• Learning money basics
• Saving and investing for future wealth
• Maximising your financial potential at work
• Playing it smart with your money

Lois states that the book is “not just a book on financial planning. It’s also a book about financial thinking.” and there are a number of mistakes that specifically explore women’s thinking to finances. Some of these statements are sweeping generalised statements, which can be hard to accept, such as “A woman’s mind-set is all too often about doing for others at the expense of taking care of our own needs”.

However, there are lots of very practical tips. The book explores financial planning, becoming financially literate, controlling your spending, investing for future wealth, attitude to debt, home ownership, pensions and negotiating. The fact is that improving in just a few areas can make a drastic impact on your future.

Now it is likely if you read the whole book there will be some sections that really aren’t applicable to you. For example, I am a great planner and saver so some tips I didn’t need. However, it is also reassuring to realise you aren’t making all of the mistakes, which can make it easier to accept the ones you do make.

For me, I really resonated with the quote “It’s not the actual amount of money that you earn that determines whether or not you’ll be rich, it’s what you do with what you earn”. This is one of the reasons I really don’t like the coaching industry with its emphasis on creating 10k months. If you earn £10,000 and then spend it all then are you really rich?

The truth is what do you do with the money you earn? Are you spending it all? Are you saving it in a 0.01% bank account? Or are you investing it?

Anyone can be rich if you learn the rules and play to win!

FINAL THOUGHTS

Overall, I think Nice Girls Don’t Get Rich has sound advice and that you can quickly action. It isn’t written in a particularly sexy way, which is why I believe it isn’t as popular as some of the other money books out there. However, it gives highly actionable points that I genuinely believe would help every different type of women out there to take control of their financial situation for today and the future.

I read Nice Girls Don’t Get Rich as part of PropelHer’s Book Club. PropelHer’s Book Club is a book club for ambitious women who want to work on themselves to further their personal development and professional success. If you are interested in joining you can find out more here.

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