One idea that I’ve had churning about inside of me for a while now is the idea of starting an online book club for personal finance books. After mulling over the idea for months and looking at various ways of doing it, I’ve decided to give it a shot. So consider this an announcement of The Simple Dollar Book Club.
How will it work? Every other month, I am going to start reading a top-shelf personal finance book in detail, writing an extensive commentary on it. My plan is for it to take the entire month or a little bit more, so I can break the book down into pieces that are ten to fifteen pages in length.
Each day, I’ll post one of these pieces for discussion. If you have the book at home, you can read the ten or so pages I’m talking about and then offer your own commentary in the comments section, or even if you haven’t read the book, you can post your own thoughts. From there, the discussion can pretty much roll whatever way everyone wants it to go by adding their own voice to the conversation.
The best way for you to get something out of this is to read along at home, a few pages each night, then read the discussion each day. I’ll provide some pretty clear guidance as to how much I’m going to cover the next day so you have an idea of how much to read. I’ll also link all of the discussions forward each day so that, if you get behind, you can easily follow the discussion and catch up. Even better, if you choose not to read the book now and then read it later, the discussions will be archived and waiting for you.
Interested? The Simple Dollar Book Club will start its inagural book on October 1 – that book will be Your Money or Your Life by Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin. I previously reviewed this book and found it to be an incredibly valuable read. If you want to follow along, I encourage you to check out Your Money or Your Life from your library or pick it up on amazon.com before October 1.
What about other book choices? I’m giving this book club a trial run in October; after it’s over, I’ll post asking for feedback on the book club. If the club idea is well-liked and the readers want to continue it, I’ll post a short list of books for you to choose from for the next entry in the book club.
I hope you’ll all give this a shot – and I hope that it will be as interesting and successful as I think it will be.
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