Sort Your Money Out and Get Invested: An Honest Review

📖 What is Sort Your Money Out about?🔗

Glen James spent roughly a decade as a licensed Australian financial adviser before launching the My Millennial Money podcast in 2018. That matters: this isn't a podcaster with opinions, it's someone who spent years sitting across from real clients fixing real money problems. The book, published by Wiley in 2021, runs to 372 pages across nine chapters.

The spine of the book is his "Sound Financial House" framework: you build your finances in a specific order, like a house, and you don't put the roof on before the foundations. The four foundations come first.

Once the foundations are solid, the framework moves up: super and career on the floor, lifestyle goals as the walls, and investing in shares and property as the roof. The core argument is simple: don't rush to the roof, get the foundations right first.

That second foundation is worth pausing on. If you want the specifics on building the buffer James talks about, our guide to how big your emergency fund should be fills in the numbers, and if you're carrying consumer debt, our comparison of the debt snowball versus the debt avalanche covers the two clearance methods the book only gestures at.

⚖️ Strengths and weaknesses🔗

👤 Who should read it, and who should skip it?🔗

If the super chapter is the one that finally gets you to engage, our plain-English guide to what superannuation actually is is a good next stop, before you decide whether your fund's fees are worth worrying about.

🔍 What do critics say?🔗

There aren't major newspaper reviews of the book itself, which is normal for Australian personal finance titles aimed at a general audience. What does exist is a solid presence in Australian finance resource lists: it's featured in "best Australian money books" round-ups by advisers and finance communities, and the Australian Financial Review has covered Glen James's podcast business (describing it as a million-dollar operation that started as a laugh). The most common shorthand from reviewers: a modern, more flexible version of The Barefoot Investor.

💬 What do readers say? Goodreads and Reddit🔗

On Goodreads the book holds around 4.02 out of 5 from 513 ratings, a very tight cluster at the top (30% five stars, 45% four). On Audible Australia it's near-perfect, with listeners praising James's own narration as relatable and clear. The praise that recurs: easy to understand, practical, no-BS and relatable. The criticism: the tone can feel blunt or presumptive.

🇦🇺 The Australian angle🔗

This matters more than it sounds. A huge proportion of the personal finance content available in Australia is adapted from American books and podcasts, and while the advice isn't wrong, it doesn't map cleanly onto Australian super, the ASX, our tax brackets or mortgage structures. This book is written for Australians, by an Australian, with Australian systems in mind. That's a real advantage.

Compared to The Barefoot Investor, James's book is broader and less lecture-y: if Barefoot felt too rigid, this is worth trying. Compared to She's on the Money (which skews toward a female audience and leans into the psychology of money), this one is more structured and step-by-step. All three occupy similar beginner territory with plenty of overlap, so if you haven't read any of them, start with whichever tone appeals to you most.

💰 The verdict🔗

Sort Your Money Out and Get Invested is one of the best-structured Australian personal finance books for beginners, and it doesn't try to be anything else. The Sound Financial House framework is genuinely useful, the Australian focus is a real advantage, and the breadth (debt and spending plans through to super, insurance, property and shares) gives you a working map of the whole landscape in one read. The one star it loses is the beginner ceiling: if you already know the basics, there's nothing here to stretch you. But if you're starting from scratch, or you've been meaning to sort your finances for years and just haven't, this is the book to pick up. Our rating: 4 out of 5.

❓ Frequently asked questions🔗