Barbara Stanny

Barbara Stanny’s Overcoming Underearning is a clear and empowering guide for anyone who struggles with charging what they are worth or believing they deserve financial success. Stanny draws from her own life experience and years of coaching women to show how chronic underearning is not about money but mindset. The five step plan she outlines feels practical and achievable, focusing on self awareness, accountability, and consistent action. Her tone is compassionate but firm, making it easy show more to trust her process and stay motivated as she helps readers break through limiting beliefs.

What makes the book stand out is how it blends psychology with practical financial advice. Stanny does not just tell readers to make more money, she shows them how to think differently about themselves and their potential. The exercises throughout the book help turn abstract ideas into concrete changes in behavior and income. Readers walk away not just with financial tools but with a stronger sense of self worth and confidence to create a richer life on every level. show less

Wow, this was an eye-opener for me. I pulled this book off the library shelf because I liked the title, read it and then bought it. This is a marvelous book about one woman's trials with money (having tons she ignored and then lost to a husband that was doing foolish things with it). Through her own journey to get smart about money on many levels, she examines the reasons, both personal and social, that she had a mental block around dealing with the financial aspects of life. She noticed show more that most women seem to have a similar blindspot and this book encourages every woman to truly get smart about our financial system. Leaving it up to "the man" only makes women vulnerable (and often irresponsible) when there is no need to be. show less

I try not to read too much of this kind of book these days, but this caught me in just the right mood for a bit of a motivational/cheerleading session as I was walking through the local library last weekend. I don't think it's going to propel me into the upper echelons of earning, but it did inspire some productive-feeling reflection and planning.

The content's not really that bad: it combines the therapeutic past-excavation and "I am a money magnet!" affirmations of a book like [b:Secrets of the Millionaire Mind|785092|Secrets of the Millionaire Mind Mastering the Inner Game of Wealth|T. Harv Eker|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1178324957s/785092.jpg|771090], the cheerleading of [b:Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway|653396|Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway|Susan Jeffers|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1293587188s/653396.jpg|2067235], and show more the practical advice of inventorying, tracking spending, and investing wisely from [b:Your Money or Your Life|78428|Your Money or Your Life Transforming Your Relationship with Money and Achieving Financial Independence|Joe Dominguez|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1170943850s/78428.jpg|1509321]. It doesn't have much to say to those of us uncertain about what kind of work to do in the first place, but there's only so many problems someone else's book can solve for you without your involvement.

The writing is clumsy and often sloppy—about the only thing consistently clear was that the phrase "Overcoming Underearning" must always be followed by a ™ symbol. I couldn't be bothered to collect examples of the clumsiness or sloppiness, because who pays attention to writing in this kind of book?

The worst thing about it is the design: overbusy, with pull-quotes, highlights, exercises in boxes (sometimes white, sometimes shaded; sometimes within a page of text, sometimes on their own), and at least three other kinds of typographic irruption which make it hard to follow the main argument. It's a typographic nightmare. The main text is in Goudy Old Style: OK. But chapter titles and subheads are in an ugly '70s-via-'90s faux Art Nouveau geometrical sans serif, made unreadable in the chapter titles by tight tracking. The exercises are in a readable rationalist sans, but way too tiny (7 point? 6?) and bold as though to make up for it. The pull quotes are in Rockwell Bold, shaded about 70% as though to cut the impact of the bold.

The design is credited to Ellen Cipriano; I imagine it was a challenge, since Barbara Stanny clearly turned in stacks of handouts and PowerPoint printouts for her Overcoming Underearning™ workshop/seminar thing along with the text, and the editor probably threw up her hands at the mess and decided not to even try to integrate it properly. But still: these typographic "solutions" solve only the problem of getting all the crap on the page somehow; they don't do anything to contribute to the organization and comprehension of the information. show less