All the Money in the World: What the Happiest People Know About Getting and Spending in Around the Year in 52 Books

Aug 26, 2012 Ciara rated it liked it

Shelves: read-in-2012, self_help_y

i really enjoy reading books about money, & i was enjoying this book, despite its occasional wackadoo suggestions, right up until the end. but in the very last chapter, she writes about phil cooley, who owns slows BBQ in detroit. she casts him as someone who is making all the right financial decisions & turning them into community dividends, running a successful restaurant in a depressed urban area & using the profits to buy up abandoned buildings & transform them into artist's lofts.

seriously, i really enjoy reading books about money, & i was enjoying this book, despite its occasional wackadoo suggestions, right up until the end. but in the very last chapter, she writes about phil cooley, who owns slows BBQ in detroit. she casts him as someone who is making all the right financial decisions & turning them into community dividends, running a successful restaurant in a depressed urban area & using the profits to buy up abandoned buildings & transform them into artist's lofts.

seriously, just read that sentence again & ask yourself some hard questions about whether the answer to massive state disvestment, race-based economic discrimination, & complete industrial collapse is really ARTIST'S LOFTS. come the FUCK on. all artist's lofts will do is spur a little bit of gentrification, which is probably really great for cooley's restaurant, but not exactly the recipe for saving detroit. & let's not pretend: cooley DOES think that somehow his mix of chicken wings & art colonies is going to save detroit. & vanderkam bought right into his little narrative.

in retrospect, it's not surprising, because there are many things about this book that are slightly bananas. vanderkam has a very off-the-beaten-track attitude toward finances. her primary recommendation for a person who is having trouble making ends meet isn't "cut back on your spending" or "find some ways to save on what you need". instead she suggests "making more money". as if it's that easy? she's a freelance writer, & while most freelancers will tell you it's not exactly the easiest gig in the world & you have to hustle a lot just to get a single assignment, especially when you're just starting out & have no relationships with editors or name recognition, vanderkam has a couple of published books under her belt & probably has an easier time than most adding a few extra assignments to her monthly tally. what about people that work fixed income jobs? what about people struggling to find work at all? vanderkam makes some insightful points about how the time spent clipping coupons & driving to a different grocery store on the other side of town might save a few dollars here & there, but could potentially be better spent in some money-making endeavor. she just seems very naive about a person's actual access to said money-making endeavors.

she also goes on & on & ON about how most personal finance literature focuses too much on helping a person save for retirement. they encourage people to take money that they are making now & sock it away somewhere inaccessible so they will be able to live idly once they are old. vanderkam's argument is that everyone should find a job that they love & just do it until they die, no retirement necessary. which is all well & good for a freelance writer (who apparently can't imagine that she might someday get sick & lose some of the faculties that are necessary to sustaining her career). but what about, say, a firefighter? someone with a very physically demanding job that they simply are not going to perform when they are 73 years old? even someone like my partner, who loves his work as a historian & hopes to become a professor, which is certainly a job that someone can keep well into their twilight years, thanks in no small part to the perks of tenure, acknowledges the economic realities that oldsters eventually have to leave the job market to create space for young people to contribute to & benefit from the economy. it's not that people want to retire because they hate their jobs & are toiling away for fifty years in misery. it's that people recognize that their health isn't going to last forever, & most people do have other interests in life outside of what they do for money, even if they absolutely love what they do for money. it's also worth remembering that the people that are generally in the best financial position to retire are the people who enjoy their jobs the most. someone who slings burgers at mcdonald's most likely won't report much job satisfaction, but will also have a harder time cobbling together the savings to retire.

if you take some of vanderkam's bizarre financial arguments to their ultimate logical conclusions, it all becomes something of a randian dystopian nightmare. like, can't pay both your mortgage & your electric bill? clearly you're just not trying hard enough to make money! want to retire one day so that you can travel & see your grandchildren & maybe the pyramids? well, REAL economic contributers work until they're DEAD, mr. lazybones! have a health issue that prevents you from entering the traditional workforce? no one understands why you're such an enormous waste of carbon.

vanderkam's writing is certainly lively & entertaining, but also, you know, crazy. ...more

18 likes · Like · see review