Okay, this is the book that goes with the YNAB budgeting website. Kristin recommended the site to me at some point in the last year or so, strongly recommended, and I have since recommended it to other people who have had some level of monetary stress (where "some level" is greater than zero). This book came out in December of last year, though I hadn't picked it up from the library until last week.

The website that describes the different approach to budgeting, and handholds you through the process is at https://www.youneedabudget.com/ with the guides at https://www.youneedabudget.com/guides

So, you know that I'm not giving anything away by saying YNAB has four rules (since they are right on the website):

1. Starting with the money you have right now (not the paycheck coming up, not the invoice you sent, what you have right now), Give Every Dollar A Job.
2. Don't be all wishful thinking and hopeful and "this month I will be good with my money," Embrace Your True Expenses
3. Accept that you are human and that life is unpredictable, Roll With The Punches
4. See how long you can hold on to your money, make it a game, and Age Your Money.

The shift in thinking is goooooooooood. Doing the exercises, setting all of this up, is haaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrd. . I believe the process is worth it. I liked the chapters on budgeting as a couple and teaching kids how to budget, which is more than a bit ironic.

This book is everything that I expected to be, which is awesome. I believe adopting the strategies in the book will change your life. If you can't check the book out from the library (my library had a 14 week waiting list), let me buy you a copy.

You haven’t failed at budgeting, you’ve adapted with the best of them.
Location 270

That cruise is a pipe dream if you don’t know where you stand with the basics that make you a functioning member of society.
Location 568

Write down all of the places your money needs to go. Focus on payments you’re obligated to make to keep your life running. Think food and shelter, loans, school payments, and any necessary work expenses(for example, an Internet connection if you work from home, commuting costs, etc.).
Location 569

To start, make sure you’re separating honest-to-goodness obligations from habits disguised as necessities. It can be hard to distinguish between the two at times.
Location 598

So try this: Imagine your future self having done each thing on your list. Which feels better? Seeing the kids and their friends enjoying the yard? Bike riding through Amsterdam as a family?
Location 694

The sense of security knowing you’re helping with college? Or imagine your future self explaining to a good friend why you chose one over the other. Does it feel right?
Location 695

Maybe you spend more than the “recommended percentage” on rent, but you also don’t own a car and you bike to work. Boom: car insurance, car payments, fuel, and gym memberships have no place in your budget. This is just one way that cookie-cutter advice rarely works.
Location 735

Lifestyle creep is when the cost of your lifestyle rises in tandem with your income.
Location 820

Once a year (I like to do this in January), question every one of your expenses. Question the “givens” like housing, transportation, and insurance. Question the vacations you always take, the gifts you always buy, and the food you always eat. Every single item should be on the table.
Location 828

Rule One hierarchy: Take care of your immediate obligations first — a roof over your head, food, for you and your family, and bills like electric and heat that mean bad things if you don’t pay them.
Location 858

Then move to the true expenses. These are large, irregular expenses that surprise you(you know the feeling) but really shouldn’t.
Location 860

What are your highest priorities after your obligations?
Location 863

The question stops being "Can I afford this?" You can likely afford lots of things if you have the cash on hand, but that’s not the point. You’re now asking yourself, “Does this move me closer to my goal(s)?”
Location 977

You may not like the truth, but you’ll be better off.
Location 1062

Budgeting forces you to make decisions you’d otherwise avoid when you think you’re steeped in cash. You need this clarity on a variable income, or else the agony of your low-income months will be so much worse than the joy that comes with big payments.
Location 1062

Predictable expenses aren’t frequent but we know exactly when they’ll hit and how much they’ll cost.
Location 1102

Unpredictable but inevitable expenses are things like car repairs, impulse donations,
Location 1106

Whether you’re dodging blows or coming up with your game plan, you’re always strategizing, adapting, and working to accomplish a big goal. You wouldn’t think of just standing there. And like any challenging activity, you’ll do your best only if you take care of yourself in the process. That means being kind to yourself when you need it, sticking to your values, and staying focused on the big picture.
Location 1293

If a budget sounds worse to you than talking about money on its own, hang with me. It really does help. On a very basic level, it’s much easier to talk about your money when it’s through the lens of a budget. Now it’s not about your debt or my debt, my spending or your spending. It’s about how it all works within the budget. The budget is like a neutral third party that keeps the conversation grounded in reality.
Location 1558

If you’re struggling to convince your partner that budgeting is important, be sure you’re very clear on what you mean by “budgeting.” Nobody will be micromanaged or put on a leash. The point is to actually feel free and empowered. Budgeting together will mean you’re working together to achieve your shared goals — not your goals for your partner. You’re asking him to budget with you because you want him to have a voice in what happens with your money. Not the other way around.
Location 1579

Your idea of peace may involve freedom to order takeout most nights so you don’t have to worry about cooking. Your partner may look forward to cooking each evening as a way to unwind.
Location 1594

You can use your first budget date to explore Rule Zero in three ways: what’s most important to you as an individual, what’s important to your partner, and what you value together as a couple. These will evolve into your budget priorities, because when you’re budgeting as a couple, your budget will have three sets of priorities: yours, mine, and ours.
Location 1660

The only way to reveal all those priorities is to talk. Think big. Be open. Share your hopes and concerns. These conversations do end up looking a lot like first date material, only now you don’t have to worry as much about scaring the other person away.
Location 1663

Assumptions will get in the way if you aren’t clear with each other about what’s important to you as an individual, and which goals you share as a couple. It’s too easy to assume that your priorities are the same as mine. Or that our priorities are always more important than mine. These quiet assumptions are what make budgeting as a couple stressful when it absolutely doesn’t have to be.
Location 1675

You need these sessions to be a safe space where you can talk openly, listen to your partner, and compromise.
Location 1754

Before each of them started on their debt paydown journey, reaching the end seemed impossible. But they set their goals and put in the work every day, consistently, for a long time.
Location 1993

The hardest part of teaching my kids to budget was teaching myself to let go. Once the money is theirs I fiercely believe we should not try to manage or control it for them.
Location 2091

Usually a restart just involves putting away your old budget and starting a new one. Simply looking at all of your money as a clean slate, nothing attached to any jobs, is a powerful exercise.
Location 2479

I have no idea how this book came to my awareness. If I had to guess, it was mentioned a number of times on Bookriot, causing me to go, "Hey, science fiction recommended by several people? Okay!" Or something like that.

I enjoyed this book. It had a number of eye-rolling technology descriptions, most notibly the "I can debug things that take mere mortals three weeks to debug, just be unfocusing my eyes and staring at the whole" idea of debugging. Good viruses take weeks if not years to decode, making the idea that someone can unfocus her vision and See The Bad Guy™ an absurd notion.

That said, I love the whole Black Swan aspect of the plot: that someone can glitch into the system with a hack, and end up being invited to the big leagues. I love the idea that merit is worth notice, that it isn't who you know or what hands you've bribed to get to the top. It appeals to the 12 year old girl in me.

I enjoyed the book. The ending, however, had me crying out, "No!" with its abruptness. I'll read the sequel, no way I'll be left hanging on this one. It's a cute Sci-Fi / Virtual Reality book.

Death has a terrible habit of cutting straight through every careful line you’ve drawn between your present and your future.
Location: 313

Everyone has a different way of escaping the dark stillness of their mind.
Location: 472

My contented mood wavers, and abruptly I have a sensation of unbelonging.
Location: 1,043

“I thought that was just some science fiction myth.” “Everything’s science fiction until someone makes it science fact,” Hideo says.
Location: 1,202

I bet I’ll be the last one picked.” Ziggy just gives me a good-hearted laugh and pats my shoulder. “What is that saying? Never say never?” she replies. “Besides. Do you remember one year when that player—Leeroy something—actually got drafted into the Stormchasers, even though he always just charged in and messed up his entire team’s play? My God, he was terrible.”
Location: 1,421

And no one goes into the Dark World unless they’re doing something illegal.
Location: 2,130

Hideo shakes his head. “I like to keep my home real. It’s too easy to lose yourself in an illusion,” he replies, nodding at his physical book.
Location: 3,118

His emotions crash against mine, roiling into one, and he is undone in this moment, the reserved, distant, proper version of him stripped away to reveal the part that is unthinking and savage.
Location: 3,194

I nod, as if in a dream, as if I can’t stop taking this drug. “Yes.”
Location: 3,215

“You remind me of myself from several years ago,” she says. “I always offered help—but I refused to accept any. My mother scolded me about that. Do you know what she told me? When you refuse to ask for help, it tells others that they also shouldn’t ask for help from you. That you look down on them for needing your help. That you like feeling superior to them. It’s an insult, Emi, to your friends and peers. So don’t be like that. Let us in.”
Location: 3,745

Why would anyone give up the perfect fantasy reality just because they have to give up their freedom? What’s the point of freedom if you’re just living in a miserable reality?
Location: 4,373

I started reading this book because Caltech had a new alumni book club starting up, and this was the first book to be discussed. My timing in the reading, however, wasn't so great. I was all SQUEEEEEEEE about reading this book, and placed a hold on the book from the library. The book club started on February 22nd, my loan was due on February 24th. Which is to say, I read the book on the 23rd. As I do.

This book is about the math women at what would become, and is, Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena. The people who computed. The computers.

Of this story, of their tales, I have mixed feelings.

The strongest feeling I have is of anger that smart, well-educated, ambitious women can't be engineers because, and only because, they are women. "Let me do all these amazing calculations, but I'm not allowed to design these things, or if I can contribute, my contributions aren't even a footnote in history." Every part of the book about this, about the history of this, is rage-inducing.

A close second to this feeling is appreciation. That I would go to college was never a question, of course I would. The question was always, "Which one?" That I was able to go to Caltech is to me these days, somewhat stunning. At the time, my thought was "of course," but that's the arrogance of youth and my ignorance of the world. Probably a good thing on the latter, not so much on the former, because it leads to the third feeling.

Sadness. Sadness that this rich history was there, that these women had blazed the path I so obliviously walked. I wish this book had existed when I was at Tech. I might have appreciated where I was an the opportunities in front of me more.

Or maybe not. Arrogance of youth and all.

I enjoyed this book a lot. The girlie parts, however, were REALLY CONFUSING TO ME. So much so, I had to write notes down about them as I read. My first note was about all the fashion stuff. It bugged me. Is this a book about the girls or the rockets or what? I wanted the history of the rockets. And THIS, ladies and gentleman, is a defining feature of Kitt. And one of the reasons I ended up at Tech, and not, say, Pomona.

I found much of the random details strange. The fireworks fire was weird. At one point, we hear about the chocolate shake and croissant one of the "girls" had for lunch. Because you remember that detail for a specific day? Did the woman keep a food journal, and have it tucked away in case she was interviewed 40 years later about that day and could tell the author exactly what she had for lunch that day of that one event? Those details pulled me out of the narration a bit.

That said, this was a fun read. I am glad this book exists. I am glad these women were able to use their intelligence, interests, and education; that they were able to walk the path, even if they couldn't soar in the skies. This book is worth reading.

It seemed incredible that in the midst of her crumbling existence, the world kept spinning and people went on with their daily lives.
Location 669

I understand this. The hardest part about death is that life keeps going.

JPL was used to hard-won success born from repeated failure.
Location 755

It didn’t feel like a job; it was more like being part of a secret society.
Location 820

One of the features of the teams I like to build and be on is this element, that you are part of a high-functioning team working towards a common goal, without ego.

Careers were rarely a topic of discussion among the women. Their importance was seen as marginal in comparison to their social lives.
Location 901

See? Rage-inducing.

They couldn’t help but feel that if they were using their own rocket, they would have better luck with it, or would at least be in control of their failures.
Location 2045

Employers argued that too many women vanished after taking a leave. Instead, she would use her saved vacation time and sick leave to be home with the baby. When those ran out, she’d come back to the lab.
Location 2071

F'ing short-sided asshats. If you'd provide child-care and flexible hours, HEY, they would stay. See above, secret society.

The engineers viewed the IBMs with suspicion, while the women embraced the new technology, largely because of their hands-on experience in using the machines. The world of programming kept drawing them in, expanding in both complexity and scope.
Location 2147

Yep. Why did we ever relinguish control over this amazing technology?

Janet Davis was about to leave too. Fulfilling Dr. Gates’s prophecy, she was eight months pregnant and knew she would have to quit soon. She hid the pregnancy as best she could, wanting to work right up to the end.
Location 2233

When a person enjoys what she does, she'll endure a lot to keep doing it.

As Carl Sagan said, “Observation: I can’t see a thing. Conclusion: Dinosaurs.”
Location 2238

When the news anchor announced that Kennedy was dead, they held one another, in shock and sobbing. They knew that neither the country nor the fledgling space program they belonged to would ever be the same.
Location 2336

Debugging a program at JPL in the 1960s simply meant talking through the problems. Margie would sit with Barbara, and they would run through the programs one command at a time.

Each equation, each string of text, was thought through logically. As Margie described the program aloud step-by-step she would usually come across the error herself. Even if she didn’t catch it, her friend Barbara was there listening and would be sure to spot it. But while
Location 2563

So, rubber ducky debugging? This process still exists, btw.

Meanwhile, a manufacturing flaw meant that structural panels began to fall off the lunar module adapter.
Location 2575

Highlight(yellow

Sylvia had always loved to travel. Even as a child she felt the lure of leaving familiar places.
Location 2588

Returning to JPL and her friends, she was thankful to have no feelings of guilt at leaving her children. Her psychologist had told her this was a medical necessity, and it also helped that so many of her colleagues were working mothers.
Location 2646

When Margie struggled with some parts of the program, she did what she had always done—asked the other women. She loved having her friends to rely on.
Location 2741

O. M. G. What is this craziness? An environment where YOU CAN ASK FOR HELP? Where you aren't shamed because you're human? What the f, people, can we have one of these f'ing everywhere please?

Helen enjoyed being a mentor to the women in her group and wanted more for them, so she came up with a simple plan. She would find intelligent women and get them in the door by hiring them as programmers. Then she would encourage them to get advanced degrees in engineering. While they went to night school, she’d teach them to succeed within the framework of JPL.
Location 2753

And this is how you keep women in STEM.

Between their aptitude and her guidance, a generation of female engineers would emerge in the lab.
Location 2755

Muller was a complainer. He whined that the women monopolized Cora, the IBM 1620.
Location 2788

Asshattery knows no gender, btw.

Unfortunately for Muller, the women had priority on Cora since they were responsible for 90 percent of the lab’s computer programming. The men were just beginning to dip their toes into the technology, and they lagged behind their female colleagues.
Location 2790

Writing the program was so much fun that Sylvia could hardly call it work. She came into the lab each morning excited to get started.
Location 2823

Sylvia’s programming made sure the ship swung in line with the movement of the planets it passed, so that instead of using fuel, it would simply be thrown from one planet’s gravitational field to the next. Each step of the elegant dance was carefully choreographed.
Location 2828

When Macie hired new women she had often told them, “In this job you need to look like a girl, act like a lady, think like a man, and work like a dog.” In some ways, her advice still rang true.
Location 3090

"In some ways" I eyerolled here. In pretty much all ways, unfortunately.

While it was a mild day in Pasadena, in Florida the weather was unusually cold. However, after six delays, everyone was eager for the launch to go forward.
Location 3141

This whole incident is rage inducing, too, by the way.

After the craft had spent five years in storage, no one had thought to check the lubrication and coating on the antenna’s rib apparatus.
Location 3253

No one had thought...

“They’re always focused on the control room at JPL. The people really doing the work don’t get on TV,” she remarks.
Location 3476

In 2008, the fiftieth anniversary of her starting at the lab, JPL changed the rules and dictated that all engineers were required to hold advanced degrees. Because Sue never finished college, they took away her salaried position and switched her to an hourly rate. However, once administrators saw how much overtime she was getting, they made an exception and switched her back.
Location 3479

Dying laughing here.