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The Money Class: Learn to Create Your New American Dream
Title: The Money Class: Learn to Create Your New American Dream
Author: Suze Orman
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Type: Non Fiction
Released: March 8, 2011
Length: 304 pages
For generations, the American Dream worked: You could own a home that would increase in value; you could put your children through college; you could retire early enough for you to enjoy the fruits of years of labor. Today, all these expectations are under threat.
Personal finance guru Suze Orman says it's time for a serious reconsideration of the American Dream. In THE MONEY CLASS: Learn to Create Your New American Dream, Suze delivers a master class on personal finance for this pivotal time in our nation. In this bracing and urgently needed new book, she issues a call to action, demands that we "stand in our truth," and shows us how the landscape has changed and why a new approach is necessary. Suze points out both the pitfalls and opportunities of the current economic climate and sketches a path to security and control.
- Read an excerptRead Now
- Listen to the interview with author Suze OrmanListen Now
- The Money Class on AmazonBuy it Now
Suze Orman's interview made me chuckle. Everybody has learned their lesson and will change to a new thrift mode is true for some. Like the Great Depression the Great Recession will have profoundly changed some people forever, but it will not affect coming generations as much. There was a mention of people in the 1980's not saving and thinking social security will save the, but there WAS NO SOCIAL SECURITY when the Great Depression happened and a lot of people had not saved for retirement at that time. There were miserable poor houses though. Go read James Michener's THE FIRES OF SPRING about poor houses and the depression. The economy runs in cycles and there will be another bubble sooner rather than late. It probably won't be tulips, or stocks, or real estate, but the words to watch for are, "But it is different this time". But I applaud her for writing her book in hopes of keeping herself from the poor house.
I just listened to Suze Orman speak on Marketplace, and I was disappointed in the apparent lack of understanding, and Tess' not pressing her on the point that economies - local and large - are interconnected and dependent on the measured flow of commerce, and when you decide NOT to spend, you are doing a lot more than just saving money. When you decide not to go out to dinner, you are taking away from the restaurant industry commerce that in turn gets put back into the local economy and economy at large. I'm not suggesting that people should frivolously spend money they don't have, but to make blanket statements like Sue did and suggest that not spending any money on the things that make society run is negligible at best. As with anything, a balance needs to be struck in people budgets, so that they don't defrock local economies while maintaining personal fiscal responsibility.
I was slightly annoyed by the assumption that people who aren't saving are spending on unnecessary things. Most people I know aren't saving because they are spending every penny on food, shelter and health care. When are we going to hear about wage stagnation? and how to get ahead when health care costs are out of control. Thank you.
