I’m pleased to announce the availability of my newest book, Financially Stupid People Are Everywhere: Don’t Be One of Them.
I’ve written extensively about personal finance in the past but, frankly, nothing has worked. Most people are still woefully ignorant of the most basic rules of money management, and end up precisely where they don’t want to be: in debt, at a job they hate, permanently behind and unable to pursue their dreams.
The economic situation is getting worse, not better. If you or anybody you know thought it was hard to make ends meet in the past decade, wait until you see the coming decade. Paul Krugman wrote in the New York Times last Sunday:
We are now, I fear, in the early stages of a third depression. It will probably look more like the Long Depression than the much more severe Great Depression. But the cost — to the world economy and, above all, to the millions of lives blighted by the absence of jobs — will nonetheless be immense.
My new book examines why, and it tagged months ago the pieces we’re now seeing move into place for the hardship to come. The book accurately foretold that President Obama would ramp up spending for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq despite having campaigned as the anti-war president, accurately foretold that President Obama would pursue the same oil-based energy policy as every other president before him despite having campaigned as the new-energy president, accurately foretold that financial reform to come wouldn’t change a thing, and so on. It even mapped out how health care would go, and it went exactly the way predicted.
The book got everything right by asking what banks and corporations would want, then using history as a guide for how they’d use politicians to get it.
Since the book was finalized earlier in the year, almost everything it saw coming has arrived. Already. That was sooner than even I expected, and places a renewed urgency in the book’s message.
That message is simple. The damaging cooperation between government, banks, and big business has reached a point of implosion. It’s finally raped consumers and the economy so savagely that a downward spiral has begun. Your taxes will be wasted on a scale you never thought possible. The job situation will get worse than you ever thought you’d see. The national debt will make the country’s geopolitical options almost unimaginable.
It’s time to stop thinking in terms of fixing the system. It’s time to accept that the system is shot, and start preparing your own finances to weather what’s on the way. If you’re ready, then it’s time to help those around you get ready. This book pursues that. Every money smart person I know lives a life filled with money stupid people all around them: immediate family members, neighbors, relatives, co-workers, and friends. With more than half of the population critically and chronically in debt, the odds are good that you know people in need of financial rescue.
We don’t have time to mess around anymore. The luxury of being able to ignore degrading balance sheets is gone. That’s why the title of my new book and its content smack this message in hard and effectively. Americans need to wake up. They need to stop falling for every financial trick put in front of them. They need to say goodbye to the damaging consumer culture that encourages them to spend their lives in debt. They need to hunker down and streamline their finances for their own happiness, and the strength of the nation in coming years.
There’s a lot already happening around the book, and I hope you’ll join the gathering movement. I’ll frequently post updates on the book’s impact and events around it. A recent sampling includes:
- A fine introductory glance at the book by J. L. Pritchard at All Financial Matters called Amen, Jason Kelly, Amen!
- An interesting talk yesterday on the Success Express portion of Big Blend Radio, which you can listen to without commercials here.
- A complete online media kit that includes a digital flip book you can put on your site, and a financially smart partners page where you can be listed.
- Two radio interviews tomorrow, which you can see along with other upcoming and past events on my Events page.
Join in somewhere.
Step one is to buy the book for yourself and anybody you know in need of a financial wake-up call. After that, peruse the media kit to see why I wrote the book and what makes it different, and how you can become a financially smart partner and earn yourself a listing on that page.
I look forward to hearing how this new book, on which I’ve worked so hard for the past 18 months, makes a positive change in your life and the lives of those around you. The basics of money management are contained in just four guidelines in this book. There’s no excuse not to be secure in your wealth. You and yours can find prosperity even in America’s debt-based consumer society.
2 Comments
Thanks for the link, Jason. I enjoyed the book.
You’re most welcome, Jeffrey. I’m looking forward to our upcoming email interview. Oh, and thank you for the pre-review followed by the actual review. You’re a good guy to know!