Helaine Olen

For the second time today I’ll remind readers that I received this book as part of a GoodReads drawing. Despite that kind consideration which saved me upwards of $12, I give my candid feedback below.

The simple premise of this little treatise is to tear everything you know about finance limb from limb. All the rot designed to help you with money from self-help to Dave Ramsey to the latest stock market guru is nothing but a fraud designed to get you to pay for something. Anybody who claims show more to know something you don’t is just selling something. There, now I’ve saved YOU $12.

In greater seriousness, the author has a point and she very skillfully illuminates it for us. She methodically goes from one financial fad to the next and very neatly deconstructs them. She’s even polite enough to tear everything down and at the end NOT really present us with an answer. There are some liberal leanings in which she suggests that government regulation is the real answer to our problems but even that, she admits, isn’t a panacea.

To summarize, since I have little else to say, Pound Foolish happily tells us all what we long ago suspected about the financial services industry. Nobody really knows the answer to how to get rich excepting through an inordinate amount of faith in straight up luck or perhaps getting your own talk show to sell your wares. The book is at times rather ponderous and redundant but ultimately informative with its most important take-away being the attitude of realism which accompanies it rather than any specific detail the author provides. show less

Depressing but important messages: you are not one latte a day away from financial security; the key things that make peoples’ savings insufficient and insecure are structural and can’t be fixed by individual self-management. People who tell you that there is an easy solution are selling something. Pensions have disappeared, replaced by uncertain stock investments (topped by fees that greatly cut into gains from saving); an annuity is unlikely to be a good idea for almost anyone, and show more even if it is, the people selling them will try to steer you into ones that are lucrative for them but not necessarily right for you, and it will be very hard for you to figure out what the costs and benefits are. Again and again, Olen emphasizes the importance of the overall economy; individuals can’t reliably escape just by being fiscally virtuous (for example, having a savings plan won’t do much good if you earn 77 cents on a man’s dollar and are also a primary caregiver for an elderly parent). show less

This is a great concept that needed some tighter editing. The overall idea is that we are duped into believing that "personal finance" (aka personal responsibility) is all that lies between us and a prosperous retirement. In reality, stagnant wages and a very unequal economic system have set the odds against us. Personal finance gurus (which include policymakers, not just charlatans) try to convince us that we are to blame if we wind up 50, broke, and deep in debt. I wish she had been able show more to drive this one home, it's an important message for Americans. show less

Two specific fund recommendations (small cap index, limited international) gave me pause, but their general recommendation for total market indexes evened them out. Also, their warning about target date retirement funds neglects to mention the indexed versions, which generally offer preferable fees and returns. However! This book is full of sensible, actionable advice for younger and older readers.