Going Broke: Why Americans (Still) Can't Hold On To Their Money

by Stuart A. Vyse

Over the last four decades, debt, bankruptcy, and home foreclosures have risen to epidemic levels, and the personal savings rate has sunk dangerously low. Why, in the richest nation on earth, can't Americans hold on to their money?

First published in 2008, Stuart Vyse's Going Broke described the epidemic of personal debt that existed in the years leading up to the Great Recession, and anticipated the home mortgage crisis that started it. Ten years later, a fully-updated new edition tackles the post-recession era of economic
recovery. Today total household debt has actually surpassed pre-recession levels, and some of the same problems that preceded the crash are back again. But the shape of our troubles has changed: the new face of financial failure features auto repossession, bankruptcy, eviction, wage garnishment, and
being sued for unpaid bills. Vyse offers a unique psychological perspective on the financial behavior of the many Americans today who find they cannot make ends meet, illuminating these and other causes of our wildly self-destructive spending habits. But he doesn't entirely blame the victim, arguing
instead that the mountain of debt burying so many of us is the inevitable byproduct of America's turbo-charged economy together with social and technological trends that undermine our self-control.

This new edition illuminates everything from the rise of the credit card and ballooning student loan debt, to the expansion of new shopping opportunities provided by social media, revealing how vast changes in American society over the last 40 years have greatly complicated our relationship with
money. Vyse concludes with both personal advice for the individual who wants to achieve greater financial stability and with pointed recommendations for economic and social change that will help promote the financial health of all Americans.

Genres: Finance, Audiobook, Nonfiction

344 pages, Paperback

First published December 28, 2007

About the author

Stuart Vyse is a behavioral scientist, teacher, and writer. He writes the monthly “Behavior & Belief” column for Skeptical Inquirer and personal essays in a variety of places—lately for the Observer, Medium, The Atlantic, The Good Men Project, and Tablet. He also blogs very sporadically for Psychology Today.

Vyse's book Believing in Magic: The Psychology of Superstition won the William James Book Award of the American Psychological Association and has been or will be translated into four languages. His book Going Broke: Why Americans Can’t Hold On To Their Money is an analysis of the current epidemic of personal debt and has been translated into Chinese.

As an expert on irrational behavior, Vyse has been quoted in many news outlets, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times and have appeared on CBS Sunday Morning, CNN International, the PBS NewsHour, and NPR”s Science Friday.

Vyse holds a PhD in psychology and BA and MA degrees in English literature and is a Fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. The majority of his teaching career was spent at Connecticut College in New London, CT, where I was the Joanne Toor ’50 Professor of Psychology. His academic interests are in decision making, behavioral economics, philosophy, behavior analysis, and belief in the paranormal.

Reviews

[Scott · Rating 3 out of 5]

Stuart Vyse sets out to determine how so many wealthy people end up being poor, or at least bankrupt. For Vyse, easy credit is the problem, and our well-oiled free market economy works too well, consuming the very consumers it is fueled by. A behavioral economist and psychologist by training, Vyse explores the physics of buying. He shows how in the last thirty years the free markets have removed most of the barriers that used to inhibit our purchasing, with the result that by 2006 as a nation we spent more than we saved, pushing the economy overall ever higher, but at the same time destroying our nest eggs and with them our ability to weather future calamities. For Vyse, the solution to keeping Americans out of bankruptcy is a combination of automated savings plans, better financial education, and a series of techniques spenders can use to help limit marketers' temptation.

Vyse's book is informative (I had no idea how successful the QVC channel was), and I found myself agreeing with most of what he discussed. But he book is also repetitive, long winded, and not particularly original. We've heard most of his arguments for years on shows like 20/20, PBS documentaries, or campaign speeches, and most of his savings techniques have appeared in popular money management books for years. Going Broke may serve as a good book for classroom use, but I was frustrated with Vyse for making sweeping, often anecdotal generalizations, omitting persuasive statistical data, and straying at times very far from his original thesis. And I wasn't convinced that the bankrupts discussed in Vyse's case studies would have been helped by his solutions. Overwhelming calamity, failed relationships, addictions, and mental & physical illness seem to have as much to do with going bust as hyperconsumerism and marketing in the classroom.

[Biblioworm · Rating 3 out of 5]

Интересно прочитать про типичную ситуацию с финансами у среднего класса, а также как на это накладывается обычное американское "лузер сам виноват" и "всем надо говорить, что ты ок".
Описано немало психологических экспериментов, связанных с принятием "потребительских решений". Эта часть на мой взгляд чрезмерно перегружена пересекающимися опытами.
Последняя, к счастью совсем небольшая часть, где даны рекомендации автора, мне показалась предназначенной для "отпетых потребителей", совершенно не контролирующих себя. Автор в итоге дошел до того, что хорошо бы иметь возможность для своей карты разрешить тратить деньги только с 9 утра до 6 вечера, чтобы "магазин на диване" и прочие искушения не опустошали твой счет. Впрочем, учитывая что автор изучал патологии - людей, залезших глубоко в долги, видимо, есть целевая аудитория для таких советов..

[Jennifer · Rating 3 out of 5]

This actually is a lot more interesting than it sounds...According to the author our profligate ways are not ENTIRELY our own fault. Modern society makes it much too easy to spend money...more availability of more objects of desire, more advertising in media that didn't exist in our grandparent's day generating desire for the objects, greater ease in accessing the desired objects (we no longer have to get dressed and go to the mall, we can shop online!) and the ubiquitous credit cards that mean we don't even have to consider whether we can actually afford to buy whatever it is at this point in time. Although a great deal of the book is concerned with how we (Americans) got into our financial mess, he does offer suggestions/solutions for getting out of the mess and mending our ways.

[Jjudyfl · Rating 5 out of 5]

Going Broke is an incredibly detailed book not only of how individuals got themselves into debt, but how we, as a country, fell into the abyss.
It is not just a book about 'revolving' credit, but also about our own 'evolving' lifestyles. Even the invention of the first rickety, wheeled grocery shopping basket led to customers buying more items.
Plastic money may not be real, but the debt it creates sure is.
Some of the case histories are understandable, some are bad luck, most appear "good people."
This is a fascinating look at a scary subject, but we need to take a closer look anyway. Going Broke is accessable reading.
A wonderful book to discuss.

[Laurla2 · Rating 3 out of 5]

interesting points on why we spend the way we do, if you can make it thru the incredibly dry writing, including a chapter on how not to go broke and new ways of spending. this could have been a very good book if they guy had a better editor so i didn't have to wade thru so much mindnumbing text to find the good parts. all in all a helpful book for learning how to stick to my budget, but i didnt make it thru the entire book.

[Katie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good analysis of modern America's dysfunctional relationship with money, although the experience of reading it was somewhat stressful and depressing. It just really seems like we are on a road to a much less pleasant and easygoing society than we're used to. (Then again, I've always felt that way).

[Jennifer · Rating 3 out of 5]

I got to page 27 of this book, and then my eyes started to glaze over. Definitely read more like a text book. A few interesting nuggets in there… I probably read 2/3 of it hitting topics that were more interesting to me.

[Daniel · Rating 5 out of 5]

We're consuming more because it's physically easier to do so: internet, ground level shopping centers, bigger shopping carts, etc., and we have access to more capital to purchase goods, i.e., our cards of credit. So many great ideas in here that explain so much - highly recommended.

[Indah Threez Lestari · Rating 3 out of 5]

489 - 2019