I never really seem to know where to start with these book reviews anymore. I finished the book, it was really good. The author is also the host of my favorite podcast and used to be one of my favorite tiktok accounts before I deleted my account, she was one of the main people pushing me left at first, so I kinda already knew I would enjoy the book. Most of the financial advice, if not all of it, contained in the book are also things she regulalry talked about on tiktok, so a lot of it was stuff I had heard before, and some stuff I had already implimented. Even so, I really enjoyed the memoir aspect of the book, even if it did start out really heavy, the overall theme wasn't doom and gloom like a lot of anti capitalist writings, somehow even in the midst of everything she still seemed able to keep an air of hope, though I'm sure thats easier to do looking back than it is in the moment.
The main piece of financial advice I took away from the book is attempting to consilidate my debt onto one card with a lower APR, something I had never really heard of, let alone thought to do, but looking around briefly, I found a card thats over 10% lower interest rates, that would make it so much easier to pay off my debt, because at my current rate it will take me forever. Another piece of advice mentioned in the book and on tiktok is having a seperate account for bills and have everything set to autopay, I've been using this method for almost 2 years now and it has been a huge finacial stress reliever. This book aslo gave me hope that owning a house isn't entirely impossible for me, which is a nice thing to know, and its a lot more believable from someone who came from a similair financial position to me, than from some random rich white guy who bought his first house in the 80s and has 8 rental properties, or the person who got 'a small loan of a million dollars' from their parents. Even while approaching everything from a fiercely anti capitalist perspective, Madaline recognizes that the only way to survive in this world is to play the game at least a little, and having a non judgemental perspective that recognizes that its not a choice, theres not even an illusion of choice, it was really validating.
If you grew up middle class or lower income I'd highly reccomend this book to you.
In other news, I removed Das Kapital from my reading lists, I will get to it eventually, but it might be something I read alongside other stuff, because it is 3 volumes and can get very in depth and difficult to parse. I had not originally intended the reading list to be for the month, and intended it to be something I'm constantly updating and stuff, but decided that was too much work, hence the monthly lists, but I was not realistic about my ability to finish all the original list in a month, hence removing Kapital I still have 11 books this mont instead of the 10 I have set for every other month, and I'm going to try to finish the list by the end of the month. I am still waiting to get Che Guevara from my library, I'm first in line when a copy becomes available, in the mean time I'll be continuing down the list to Captive Genders (which I'm only now realizing wasn't written by Cece McDonald, but rather by many various authors, and version 2, the one I'm reading, has a forward by Cece, I will update this list and future lists to reflect this, but I will not be changing past posts.)
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