Get Good with Money book review

When I started eating ramen noodles, I saved $1,500. It broke my heart but also changed my life. Keep reading to find out what book I'm reviewing today. 

Hey, I'm Kyla Denanyoh, and today, we're talking about noodles. I'm not becoming a food blogger, but we're talking about the book Get Good With Money today. Tiffany Aliche wrote this book. It is nonfiction and has a theme of money management. 

So, what do books and ramen noodles do with each other? Tiffany says, What is your noodle budget? And she means literally. If you only ate ramen noodles, what is your budget? You got your mortgage, house note, and electric bill, but you're spending money on DoorDash, ordering pizza, going out for ice cream, and doing everything. If you only ate ramen noodles, if that's all you could afford, the 39-cent pack of noodles, what's that budget? 

I know that my husband and I spent a lot of money on food. If you want a snack here, something there, or some fast food, get it. I downloaded the Mint app and looked at what we were spending. We were spending about $1,400 a month on food. This was in a month. Why? I'll tell you why because we had no idea what we were spending. 

I have been terrified of learning about money because I always had a handle on it. I always knew what I was doing and what was happening, but I didn't. From this book, I've learned that I am a tracker. I have an Excel spreadsheet. It shows what I spend. It has a rough category of what I want to spend on electricity. It is not realistic at all. 

I never had a budget. I didn't understand how people say your budget shows how you spend your money. There should be no surprises because everything should be budgeted. Even if you go out to eat, you should have a budget. Even if you buy yourself some new clothes, that should be in your budget. How can you budget for that? I didn't know. 

So, all of that said, identifying my noodle budget was paramount for me because, in its simplest form. You know how much money comes in and how much money is going out, but I had no idea. I've also recently started working. I've been working for myself for the last year and a half. I make some money here and there. It's never consistent. But I went out and got a consistent nine-to-five job, so now I have consistent income so that my expenses can line up, and we can know what's happening.  

The point of her budget is that there's a B for bill, which has to be paid, and she determines this as something that someone will sue you for if you don't pay it. I don't pay my mortgage; somebody's gonna sue me. I don't pay my car note; they will repossess it and then sue me. You know what I mean? Things you gotta pay. 

And then there are your utility bills, UBs, which are probably fluctuating, like maybe a gym membership or your DoorDash membership fees. They would cancel it. 

And then some things are just straight up C for cash, like picking up some bubble gum and ordering food from the store. I can live off the groceries that I've bought. Do I want to eat ramen noodles every day? No, but I could, and it would nourish my body. My daughter's groceries are a bill, and my food on Doordash is completely C; cash can be cut. 

So, everything on your budget that's an A or B consists of your noodles budget; everything else is what you've been living on. 

When I think about budgeting and money and stuff like that, I think about buying a luxury option—a house that is too big for us. I don't think about what I could do with $1,400 instead of spending that on extra gravy or two scoops of ice cream instead of one. And to be honest, I intentionally wasn't thinking about it because I didn't have it written down; I was tracking what I spent. I was not budgeting whatsoever. 

So I did what Tiffany said. She gives you a ton of templates. You can even download one from her website, Budgetnista, which automatically has the columns. You have to plug in your numbers. I'm 39 years old, and I finally have a budget. I have a noodle budget, which is about $2,000 less than the budget that we were living on. The actual amount that I saved in 30 days from eating ramen noodles is $1,400. No joke. 

The last thing here that was important to me was saving. According to Tiffany's budget, a savings account is a B for bill. Capital B has to be done. That blew my mind. If I have credit card debt, I'm not trying to put $300 in a savings account. I'm trying to put it on that bill. Tiffany has times when she talks about why you could not save. But if you're going through a time when you were just financially unstable, which I was, I need to set aside six months of savings. You have to be prepared for that rainy day. And so savings are 100% mandatory. 

Until the next book review, Kyla