Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I wanted to like this book; I really did. I felt it was long overdue that someone write an expose' on the personal finances sector. Lord knows there are plenty of abuses out there, and anyone who alerts us to unscrupulous shysters who relieve us of our hard-earned money should be applauded. I feel that Ms. Olen is a gifted writer. At times, I found myself laughing out loud at her clever expressions and way of crafting her words. Often, she hit the nail right on the head with her biting criticisms of particular individuals and shady financial practices. At other times, I didn't know whether to laugh or cry to see how so many people get themselves into so much trouble over money (all of us do to some extent, I suppose, but some much worse than others). Throughout the book, the author writes smoothly and uses some great words and witty expressions which made turning the pages easy and pleasurable. So, why only one star? Here is my list: 1. The author picks on the easiest of targets. It is almost as if she builds a house of cards, blows it down, and then acts like she has really accomplished something. For example, she finds contradictions in the practices of Suze Orman, Dave Ramsey, David, Bach, Robert Kiyosaki, Jim Cramer, and Carlton Sheets, to name a few. She warns of late-night infomercials. Most intelligent people do not really need to be told that fantastic claims made by these kinds of people need to be taken with a grain of salt and carefully scrutinized; they already have assumed as much. 2. Ms. Olen is a huge believer in playing the "victim" card. There is absolutely zero room in her universe for any kind of personal responsibility. If you are bankrupt, it is not your fault. A shopaholic? Not your fault. Lousy job? Not your fault. Bad investments? Not your fault. Steeped in debt? Not your fault. A recent divorce? Not your fault. Well, you get the idea. I think we can all agree that bad things can happen to good people but can we always blame everything on others? In Ms. Olen's view, everything that goes wrong is the fault of bad government policy and only government can fix your problems. 3. The book has virtually no balance in its reporting. She criticizes Dave Ramsey, for example, but never mentions that getting out of debt just might be a good idea for a lot of people. She also hammers Suze Orman but fails to mention that Suze might have a good point every now and then. She even picks on the book "The Millionaire Next Door" but remains stunningly silent on the central theme of the book -- to live within your means and practice self-restraint. And never does she mention that seeing a financial advisor might be a good thing to do for some people with no self-discipline or investing knowledge. I am not necessarily a fan of financial advisors but for some people they can actually be a good beginning. 4. The author is apparently a big feminist. She wastes a whole chapter explaining why women are better money managers than men. She posits that women are less emotional, better savers, less impulsive, more grounded, ad nauseum. She even claims that there would be much fewer problems if the world was run by women. I found that particular chapter highly annoying and distracting from the central issue. 5. Each chapter oozes with Ms. Olen's ill-conceived, delusional politics. One readily concludes that she has no managerial or executive experience. She should have kept her political views out of this book -- it would have been so much more enjoyable (and accurate). 6. Although she identifies numerous shortcomings of the financial services sector, she offers no meaningful solutions. Granted, the answers involve a lot more analytical thinking than the questions, which is something the author isn't terribly adroit at. However, Ms. Olen states openly that she is an "Occupy Wall Street" sympathizer and she encourages us to all band together to bring about change. As I stated before, the subject matter of financial service abuse was long overdue. But the author botched it badly. The highly contemporary topic of personal finance was deserving of a far better analysis than what was delivered.