From the shelf · 102 money books
Does Budgeting For Dummies hold up?
Budgeting For Dummies (Lent) is one of the 102 money books on The Money Shelf. It comes from the shelf’s earlier bookshop lists and the books that make specific claims. The shelf links it to 2 of the 22 claims that the book tests against official records from the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia. Each verdict below comes from that test.
Claim 5 · Linked to the book from a short publisher descriptionDebt snowball: pay off the smallest debt first
Holds with conditionsThe arithmetic favours the highest rate first in every country, and the support for the smallest-balance-first order is behavioural: one observational study of real debt (Gal and McShane) and one lab task (Brown and Lahey), while a third study (Amar and co-authors) found that people tend to pay small debts first, at a cost, and that prompts about accumulated interest helped.
Read the full test →Claim 6 · The book makes this claimEmergency fund: keep three to six months of expenses in cash
Holds with conditionsUK and Australian guidance supports a buffer of three months or more, and the US guide leaves the amount to the household.
Read the full test →One book holds the whole shelf: 22 claims from 102 popular money books, every figure dated, every source named, and the arithmetic worked through for three countries.
Get The Money ShelfAll 22 claimsMore books from the shelf