Every other Sunday, The Simple Dollar reviews a personal finance book. A couple years ago, I reviewed Stephen Pollan and Mark Levine’s earlier book Die Broke . I found it really interesting for the first half – which focuses on investing in yourself – and completely faulty in the second half, which talks about specific investment choices. The first half, though, was thought-provoking enough that I actually returned to some of the early chapters of it again in the future. Recently, I had the opportunity to read Pollan and Levine’s latest book, Lifelines for Money Misfortunes and I found it quite enjoyable. It’s composed of a lot of short chapters that focus on how to deal with various money problems, from losing a job to not having enough money for college. Because there are so many of these short chapters, I won’t review them in detail. Instead, I’m going to focus on the five central principles of the book, ones which Levine and Pollan apply to each of the problems. Accept the Problem and Own the Solution When something goes wrong in our lives, it’s easy to try to blame others. Here’s the thing, though: when something is wrong in your life, thinking about blame doesn’t help – at all.

Read more here – Review: Lifelines for Money Misfortunes