A personality-driven handbook for mastering one’s personal finances.
Langin’s brief, pointed debut introduces a clearheaded money-management approach that hinges on four key elements: thinking of money as a “power tool”; realizing that you already have enough money to be happy and that the more you appreciate what you have, the happier you are; figuring out that feeling wealthy is an essential building block for becoming so; and abandoning the conviction that repeating the same actions will yield different, better results. “The source of financial abundance is inside of you,” Langin insists, somewhat counterintuitively, and throughout this book, she takes a hard look at the personal, psychological element of individual economy. “True wealth is when the wealth in you increases,” she writes. “Be patient. The fruit of the seed planted takes time to manifest.” Thankfully, she goes on to ground her book in more concrete ideas, including practical strategies that many readers will find useful. She reminds those on limited budgets, for instance, not to spend emotionally and to be aware of how the nickel-and-diming of daily life can erode even sizable financial reserves. She even encourages readers to enlist a professional financial “mentor”—a sort of adjutant brain whose job it is to introduce pragmatic restraint. These succinctly written, common-sense sections brim with optimism, insight, and inspirational language: “The buck will stop here, right on our own desk,” she writes. “Let us declare no more limits on our talent and potential. Let’s take pride in where we are now and strive for even more where we are going.” The focus on the mental aspects of personal finance gives the whole book an inviting flavor.
A quick, clear breakdown of how to change one’s mindset to fix one’s cash flow.Pub Date: Aug. 29, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5127-4678-5
Page Count: 132
Publisher: Westbow Press
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Categories: GENERAL BUSINESS | BUSINESS | PERSONAL FINANCE
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A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 4, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
Categories: BUSINESS | LEADERSHIP, MANAGEMENT & COMMUNICATION | PSYCHOLOGY
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Noted number cruncher Sperling delivers an economist’s rejoinder to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Former director of the National Economic Council in the administrations of Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, the author has long taken a view of the dismal science that takes economic justice fully into account. Alongside all the metrics and estimates and reckonings of GDP, inflation, and the supply curve, he holds the great goal of economic policy to be the advancement of human dignity, a concept intangible enough to chase the econometricians away. Growth, the sacred mantra of most economic policy, “should never be considered an appropriate ultimate end goal” for it, he counsels. Though 4% is the magic number for annual growth to be considered healthy, it is healthy only if everyone is getting the benefits and not just the ultrawealthy who are making away with the spoils today. Defining dignity, admits Sperling, can be a kind of “I know it when I see it” problem, but it does not exist where people are a paycheck away from homelessness; the fact, however, that people widely share a view of indignity suggests the “intuitive universality” of its opposite. That said, the author identifies three qualifications, one of them the “ability to meaningfully participate in the economy with respect, not domination and humiliation.” Though these latter terms are also essentially unquantifiable, Sperling holds that this respect—lack of abuse, in another phrasing—can be obtained through a tight labor market and monetary and fiscal policy that pushes for full employment. In other words, where management needs to come looking for workers, workers are likely to be better treated than when the opposite holds. In still other words, writes the author, dignity is in part a function of “ ‘take this job and shove it’ power,” which is a power worth fighting for.
A declaration worth hearing out in a time of growing inequality—and indignity.Pub Date: May 5, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-7987-5
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Penguin Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 26, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2020
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