Book Review: Living Rich By Spending Smart by Gregory Karp

Filed in archive Book Reviews on February 5, 2008

I have referenced Gregory Karp's money-saving tips in the past, such as his tip for making razor blades last longer, so I was happy to see the always-frugal personal finance columnist come out with a new book, Living Rich by Spending Smart, which grabs hundreds of his penny-pinching ideas and puts them all in one tidy package.

Karp makes the case early in the book that a penny saved is actually better than a penny earned, because the penny you saved is after tax while the penny earned is only worth about a half-penny by the time the various governments are done grabbing their slices. (Karp puts this more eloquently than I just did.) In Living Rich by Spending Smart, Karp systematically goes down the list of all the places you could be saving money, and gives you idea after idea on how you might change your spending style to come out both wealthier and happier.

I will admit that my M.O. is generally to try to make more money versus being an ultra-savvy shopper or saver. Thankfully, Karp realizes that some of us are more lazy or time-constrained than others, so he starts the book by going after the big three money-sappers. If you do nothing else with the book, you could follow his plan to get FIT and save a ton. I capitalize FIT because Karp uses it as an acronym for the big three potential money-savers - Food, Insurance, and Telecommunications. Go after those three and you could make a serious dent in your spending pronto; Karp gives plenty of ideas on how to do it.

Of course he's got a zillion other ideas, covering topics such as bottled water, extended warranties, timeshares, ink-jet cartridges, greeting cards, hybrid vehicles, online comparison shopping, coupons, clothing purchases, buying used versus new, saving on heating and cooling, eye care, credit cards, holiday spending, kids birthday parties, cutting down on wedding expenses-need I go on?

Depending on your personality, you could get this book and go all crazy and do every single thing Karp suggests until you're wearing $8 glasses and have food for an army stockpiled in your basement and you're faking your wedding cake for the photos while the cheaper cake you're serving is waiting in the back room. Or, if you'd like to be a better saver but you know you're not going to get hardcore about it, you could go through and figure out which of Karp's tips you can do without feeling like you're over-sacrificing or being just plain cheap. Whichever way you lean, you'll still find plenty here to satisfy you.

Read the book once and you'll get sort of excited about the saving possibilities. But you might also feel overwhelmed and end up doing none of them because suddenly you feel like you're wasting money like crazy and you'll never get it under control. Here's what I'd do. After that first reading, go back through the book slowly, like maybe a chapter a week, and try at least one idea, whether it's changing your phone service or going to a thrift store for the first time in your life. Start slow, see what works for you, and you'll probably get excited to do more.

Finally, Karp makes two big points in this book that I think are important for everyone to remember:

First, saving in one area that matters little to you (maybe buying store-brand cookies instead of Oreos) allows you to redirect the money you save to areas that do matter to you, whether that means a better vacation or an extra $100 in your IRA.

Second (and this one's big for me), studies show that over time people's happiness comes much more from the things they've done and their memories of a life well-lived than from the material things they've acquired.

Experiences appreciate, assets depreciate. Save on the latter to get more of the former.