By: Larry MacDonald

Jonathan Chevreau’s Findependence Day is a tour de force: a personal-finance book that is hard to put down. It uses the story format of David Chilton’s Wealthy Barber to pass on financial-planning lessons — but in a more entertaining way thanks to extensive use of dramatic techniques customarily employed by writers of fiction novels.

Chevreau, the Financial Post’s personal-finance columnist, also uses Findependence Day to inject a new realism into the genre. It’s not just a didactic tale but a novella whose protagonist experiences setbacks such as job dismissal, matrimonial separation, and betrayal by a business partner.

There are many personal-finance lessons embedded in the narrative for those just starting out at the ground level of career and family — including the all-encompassing “Pay Yourself First.” Yet, I worry, the story line captures interest in such a way that there is a risk some readers may breeze past the saving/investing nuggets before they are fully digested. What perhaps might be useful then is section at the end of the chapters summarizing the personal-finance lessons, and perhaps a wrap-up at the end of the book.