Pound Foolish

The takedowns of various financial “experts” are fun - if you just read one chapter in this book, make it chapter three, “The Latte Is a Lie,” which is all about how cutting out your Starbucks run every day won't make you a millionaire and a lot of people are making big money by shaming regular people about things like that. The real problem is stagnant wages combined with skyrocketing costs for things like real estate, healthcare, and education, combined with a massive reduction in the societal safety net. People can't save as much because they're essentially trying to do more with less. I feel like since this book came out, a lot of what's in it has become almost common knowledge, or maybe that's just that I'm friends with a lot of frustrated millennials. Either way, this was easy to read and definitely educational, though there was a lot in here that I was already aware of. And now I still have no idea what a variable annuity is, but I know I shouldn't get one.