Pros: humorous accounts of looking for answers to dealing with a surplus
Cons: some of the chapters are a bit dated
The Bottom Line: This is an amusing book to read, if you take it at face value - a funny look at money. But material is not a true investment 'how to'.
martytdx's Full Review: Squandering Aimlessly: On the Road With the Host o...
My Amazon wishlist is filled with book I want to read – some I've discovered myself, and some I've found by reading reviews by fellow Epinionators like Grouch and Bruguru. Mostly, I end up grabbing the books at the library when I can, and from Amazon when I can't get free copies. But every once in a while, one falls into my lap. Squandering Aimlessly: My Adventures in the American Marketplace was one of those, a book 'discovered' on the shelves at a dollar store. I picked it up, figuring that for $1, I couldn't lose. I was right.
[ • about DAVID BRANCACCIO • ]
David Brancaccio is pretty well-known to listeners of NPR, having hosted shows like Marketplace for more than 10 years (he currently appears on Now with Bill Moyer on PBS). I'd never heard of him but he seems to be generally recognized by those who follow money talk shows (and NPR).
[ • the BOOK • ]
The cover shows Brancaccio sitting in a convertible throwing dollars to the wind – enough to catch my eye, particularly when coupled with the title. The premise is what hooked me at the store (well, $1 for that premise is what hooked me, at least). Brancaccio ponders what one could do if they suddenly had a surplus of wealth – that is, a largish sum just burning a hole in your pocket. He wonders about the possibilities and then sets himself to examining them on a whirlwind trip around the country to test each theory and get a better idea of what the potential of each is. Each chapter covers ones of his methods for "spending" a surplus.
Chapter 1: The Naked Truth about Money tackles the principles behind his adventure, his modus operundi and goals as he sets out on these trips, excursions and adventures to find out what your average American can do with money instead of the average savings account. Each subsequent chapter starts with a lottery winner example that exemplifies the 'theory' that Brancaccio decides to study. He then finds an appropriate place to study that method further, and gives us the gory details. The chapter ends with a 'scorecard' of his adventure, tallying what he got, what he learned and his next steps based on his education.
Chapter 2: Going Back to Shop Class starts the adventure, as Brancaccio looks at the first thing that most people do with new-found wealth: spend it. He visits the Mall of America with the objective of seeing if he could just blow it all. In Chapter 3: Invest Like Your Very Liberal Mother is Watching, he moves to a more responsible action, researching socially-responsible investing at a conference in Jackson Hole, WY. Chapters 4 and 5 (Be Your Own Boss and Learn to Play the Game) investigate the more risky ways of dabbling with your money – entrepreneurship and gambling, respectively. He tackles franchises and inventing, with their inherent risks, and moves to the easy-come, easy-go method of simply hitting Las Vegas and taking the risks at the tables, slots and roulette wheel. Again, he doesn’t just go, he finds people to explain the risks to make an informed choice about these risky ventures.
Chapter 6: Give it Away tackles charity and 'social capital', that is investing in one's own community or area to make the world (or your locality) a better place. He checks out not only the altruistic sense of this way of dealing with a surplus, but also the way that it can affect your real income via taxes and income. The next 2 chapters, Invest Like a Grown Up and Getting Real get into the more hard-cord investments: stocks and real estate. Brancaccio ends up learning a lot about the worlds of investment, and offers us up a lot of information to digest. Unfortunately, by the time I read much of the stock information, it is dated – the market is no longer booming, and the stocks are a much riskier venture than the late 1990’s.
In Chapter 9: Quit Your Day Job, the concept of re-education or recreation is discussed. Do we NEED to always think of working hard until a certain age, and then retirement? Or are their other ways to be fiscally responsible and still get more out of life. He examines a school where most of the students have left the work-force to discover more about life, then talks with others who have found less economically bountiful but more emotionally satisfying second careers. The last 2 chapters - Seek a Gray Area and Go Conservative tackle retirement and the art of simply scrimping and saving to provide for a later life. Whether learning about a 'Senior Community' in Arizona or learning how to make do with less in Seattle, he rounds out his adventures talking about not only WHY we should consider saving for the future, but how we can do it without suffering now.
The final chapter acts as an epilogue, a footnote where he expresses his own experience with a new windfall. In all honesty, his grid explaining how he rationed the new wealth – and why – was one of the highlights of the book. But this chapter was only a few pages, a conclusion to a long road about money.
The book overall is a light and fun read, and Brancaccio has a good rapport with his "guests". Many of the tales come at his expense, and add even more levity to an already humorous accounting of money-spending (and saving) adventures. He's no Dave Barry or Bill Bryson, but he was amusing enough to keep my interest.
His observations are fairly sound and he does a good job of finding experts in each of the chapters to show the good and bad of the individual methods. Some are probably more reliable than others (talking to Alan Greenspan before he was Fed Chair has a little more weight than the Wall Street shoe-shine man, although both have their own charm and value), but all have a wisdom born of experience that translates well.
The one major problem is that the information is aging quickly. Written in 2000, it falls victim to the same assassin as many money "how to" books – time changes the rules. While some of the chapters breeze through timelessly (such as Chapter 6 which speaks to Social Capital, for example), others fall victim to recent events to the point of almost being useless.
[ • final THOUGHTS • ]
Financial books aren’t usually my 'thing', but I took a chance on this one and it doesn't disappoint. Brancaccio is an amusing writer who obviously enjoyed his adventures for this book, and offers up good advice for the most part.
However, some of the information does come across as dated, particularly in regard to the stock market statistics. For that reason alone, I’d be hesitant to recommend it as a true 'how to' book on finances. As a humor book with truly helpful ideas on what to do with a surplus, however, it makes a decent pick up for a quick read. Particularly if you can get away with only paying $1.
The host of public radio's enormously popular, award-winning show "Marketplace" brings his clever, inventive approach to all matters--financial and ot...More at Alibris
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