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The Complete Cheapskate: How to Get Out of Debt, Stay Out, and Break Free from Money Worries Forever | 
 enlarge | Author: Mary Hunt
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
Category: Book
List Price: $13.95
Buy New: $8.01
You Save: $5.94 (43%)
New (20) Used (13) from $6.68
Avg. Customer Rating:  22 reviews
Sales Rank: 128721
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1 Sub
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 208
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 8 x 5.4 x 0.7
ISBN: 0312316046
Dewey Decimal Number: 332.024
EAN: 9780312316044
ASIN: 0312316046
Publication Date: August 1, 2003
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Brand new item. Over 3.5 million customers served. Order now. Selling online since 1995. Few left in stock - order soon. Code: V20080825034147S
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Product Description
In need of a Money Makeover?
Let America's most popular cheapskate show you how to go from financial chaos to freedom and security--painlessly and in less time than you ever imagined.
Mary Hunt has helped thousands live a debt-free life with her popular newsletter, "The Cheapskate Monthly." In The Complete Cheapskate, Mary puts all the very best money advice she has in one place. Becoming a classy, dignified cheapskate is not all that difficult, and Mary shows how with her user-friendly principles of saving, restraint, and living debt-free.
This book will teach you how to:
- Create--and stick to--a monthly spending plan
- Live well off 80% of your income
- Climb out--and stay out--of debt's hole
- Stretch every dollar to its absolute maximum
- Manage savings and investments
- Lower bills on clothes, food, and gifts without lowering living standards
- Live within a financial plan that includes a margin for fun and spontaneity
With hundreds of tips on cutting expenses, The Complete Cheapskate is the indispensable guide for people ready to regain control of their finances, relieve the stress money has created, and prepare for their future.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 17 more reviews...
 Read it, Believe it, Do it! May 24, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This book changed my life. It only took five years. I now have $0 bills and a nice nest egg. Just follow the advice in the book to the letter. I give this book to everyone I care about.
 PSA: The Author's a Fraud May 20, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
Her style is annoying and smarmy, but that's the least of it. Claiming it came to her "out of the blue," Mary Hunt stole her newsletter idea (and story ideas and some illustrations) from Amy Dacyzyn's Tightwad Gazette (Dacyzyn has records that Hunt subscribed to her newsletter from Dec 91 - 93; Dacyzyn corresponded with Hunt regarding obvious "copying" of ideas and illustrations but Hunt did not reply or attribute the source).* First called "Cheapskate Monthly" and now "Debt-Free Living," the preview issue on Hunt's website likewise presents unattributed ideas as Hunt's own (Heloise's vinegar hints, for instance). She advises you to buy a house at half the price that you can afford, make double payments so that you can pay off the mortgage in "about five years," and then sell that home and buy the house of your dreams. This is a program outlined in Ted Carroll's LIVE DEBT FREE (published 1991), which she cites (amazingly!) in "Complete Cheapskate" but claims as her own idea on her website. "Owning your home free and clear," she says, "...is what Harold and I are working on now." (Cough, cough! She's had plenty of time to put her plan into action, plenty of dollars to do it, and she's "still working on" it?!?) Meanwhile she has churned out an armload of books and regurgitated her ideas for every TV camera she can find. She doesn't have to practice what she preaches because she hauls in the dollars of the faithful through coaching seminars, books, and her newsletter (a $29.95 value, she claims, but if you check it out, you'll see it is a compendium of links to other sources, outdated quotations, and self-promotion).
I'm afraid that with the current economy, a lot of people will be tricked into shelling out for this kind of warmed-over hash. Check it out at the library, if you must, but don't buy it. I've found Ron Blue's Master Your Money to be a more practical, Christian and truthful resource. Amy Dacyzyn's work is the original (which is why she is so widely copied). Flylady.net has budgeting and checkbook hygiene advice; googling will provide more information than you can ever process. Why doesn't Mary just admit that the way she got out of debt and broke free from money worries was not by being a cheapskate, but by being a plagiarist?
*Sept. 1996, Issue 76, The Tightwad Gazette
 Doesn't help much January 20, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
Being the ultimate cheapskate I went to the library to look at this book to see if I would want to buy it. I am so glad I didn't buy it first. Everything in this book you can look up in the net for free. There are no suggestions that I haven't seen before.
If you are brand new to the frugal experience, save your money and do web surfing instead. You are already paying for that.
Very useful January 21, 2007
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
Loved this book. So many practical ideas for getting out of debt. Especially her rapid debt repayment plan. I appreciated Mary Hunt's inspirational story for motivation. It's a very useful book!
Very impressed with the tips in this book November 16, 2006
11 out of 12 found this review helpful
This is a great primer for those getting started on a path to living debt-free, living on one income, or just trying to be fiscally responsible. Hunt talks about attitudes about money that can be helpful to take on, strategies for thinking about and reducing your debt, and lists a number of weighty cheapskate tips that I found very helpful.
The only odd thing about this book is that it mentions God a number of times and suggests titheing and other activities and attitudes that have to do with God, yet it does not mention God or Christianity anywhere on the front or back cover - I don't know why. I am not a Christian and so I just skipped over these parts, but I would have liked to know that I was reading a book based on Christian beliefs before I bought it, since it wasn't just the odd mention.
Other than that surprise, this is a book I'd recommend to those new to frugality.
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