Going Broke: Why Americans Can't Hold On To Their MoneyOver the last three decades, debt, bankruptcy, and home foreclosures have risen to epidemic levels. To make matters worse, the personal savings rate is at its lowest point since the Great Depression. Why, in the richest nation on earth, can't Americans hold on to our money? Winner of the prestigious William James Book Award for Believing in Magic and an authority on irrational behavior, Stuart Vyse offers a unique psychological perspective on the financial behavior of the many Americans today who find they cannot make ends meet, illuminating the causes of our wildly self-destructive spending habits. But unlike other authors, he doesn't entirely blame the victim. Bringing together fascinating studies of consumer behavior, he argues that the mountain of debt burying so many of us is the inevitable byproduct of America's turbo-charged economy and, in particular, of social and technological trends that undermine our self-control. Going Broke illuminates everything from the rise of the credit card, to the increase in state lotteries and casino gambling, to the expansion of new shopping opportunities provided by toll-free numbers, home shopping networks, big-box stores, and the Internet, revealing how vast changes in American society over the last 30 years have greatly complicated our relationship with money. Vyse concludes both with 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. Engagingly written, with startling insights into modern consumerism and with poignant human-interest stories of people facing financial failure, Going Broke offers a provocative new perspective on American economic behavior that is likely to stir controversy and serious debate. |
Contents
| 3 | |
2 Making Sense of Financial Failure | 23 |
3 The Story of Bankruptcy | 47 |
4 SelfControl and Money | 61 |
5 A Different Story of Bankruptcy | 91 |
6 New Ways of Wanting | 119 |
7 New Ways of Spending | 161 |
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addition advertising American auction bank bankruptcy behavior behavioral economics big-box big-box store bills borrowing brand cable cash casino Chapter choice choose commercial consumer cost credit limit customers day traders debt debtors decision declaring bankruptcy discount eBay economic economists effect effort eggs Benedict environment example expensive Furthermore future gambling Herrnstein hyperbola important impulsive income Internet involved iPod kind less life-cycle theory lives loans lottery magazine MasterCard Mental Accounting mortgage once options payment percent Pew Research Center problem programs prospect theory Psychology purchase R. J. Herrnstein rebate result retail Richard Thaler savings self-control self-service sell shopper social spending story of bankruptcy television Thaler things tickets tion today’s U.S. Census Bureau Wal-Mart York