Book Review: He Said It! I Did It!

When you get a book that's subtitled "Lessons From My Father on Mastering Personal Finance" and see that it includes Bible study questions at the end of each chapter, you may think many different things. The first thing I thought when I saw this book and read the press release that came with it was "prosperity gospel."

Thankfully, that is not accurate. Charles Buffington III has written this book as a guide to managing your finances with a goal in mind - and the goal is to use the wealth you get to help others. Wealth is not regarded as an end unto itself, but as a means to an end. The book is really, first and foremost, about stewardship: putting the resources that you have been entrusted with to the best use possible, not just for yourself, but for others.

Buffington recognizes that for the average American, debt is a huge problem. In fact, debt has a power to enslave people; we are stuck in jobs we hate because we have bills to pay. How many of us have sat back and said "If I just had these bills paid off, I would..."?

But unlike so many other writers, Buffington also recognizes that some debt is unavoidable. He breaks debt into two categories: constructive and toxic. Constructive debt is your home mortgage, or your business loan. Toxic debt is the payments on that new plasma TV, or the even bigger car. Constructive debt should be minimized; toxic debt should be avoided.

So many of these "get out of debt and stay that way" books have a very preachy tone. Reading many of them, I feel like I'm in college again, and my father is lecturing me about using and abusing credit. In He Said It! I Did It!, we learn with Buffington, from his father. Each chapter begins with a conversation with Charles Buffington II, where we get an overview of what the chapter is going to teach us. This makes it a lot easier to read — we know that the author isn't a know-it-all, because he had to learn these lessons, too, just as we are.

Article Author: Warren Kelly

Warren Kelly is currently taking time off from his seminary studies to earn an MAT from Liberty University. He also runs the View From the Pew blog, the Pew Reviews review site, and the currently on hiatus View From the Pew Radio podcast.

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