Going Broke: Why Americans Can't Hold On To Their Money [Hardcover]

Stuart Vyse (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 29, 2008

Over 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.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"In this lucidly-written and very timely book, Vyse has brought recent empirical research by psychologists and economists to bear on the question of why so many people are currently getting themselves into unmanageable debt. Vyse makes astute suggestions as to what we can do individually and collectively to reverse this frightening situation. I highly recommend the book to anyone who is currently in such straits or who is in danger of getting into them -- and, as Vyse makes clear, that could be any of us." -Howard Rachlin, PhD, Psychology Department, SUNY Stony Brook

About the Author

Stuart Vyse is Professor of Psychology at Connecticut College, in New London. He is the author of Believing in Magic: The Psychology of Superstition, which won the prestigious William James Book Award in 1999.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 368 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA; 1 edition (January 29, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0195306996
• ISBN-13: 978-0195306996
• Product Dimensions: 6.5 x 0.9 x 9.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,148,448 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

79 of 80 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Economics, politics, popular culture, and science blended with humor and sound insight January 31, 2008

By Liora

Format:Hardcover

There are many things this book does well. (In fact, everything this book does, it does well.) First, and most remarkably, it tells stories. Not only is the author brave enough to reveal his own financial foibles, he includes interviews with individuals who have suffered financial ruin and lived to tell the tale. The stories are striking in their variety and poignancy, and they are made all the more salient by Vyse's beautifully written prose. The author paints a clear picture of his subjects' various crises, so that each story--no matter how different it may be from our own--has a sense of familiarity. We understand that these are fellow Americans who for the most part have worked hard and played by the rules, and we can't help recognizing their humanity and vulnerability as our own.

Moving beyond the stories that open each chapter, Vyse looks not only at the internal, "psychological" processes associated with financial difficulty--such as the seemingly inexplicable tendency to overpay for items on eBay--but he also uses a broad lens to examine the social and political forces that conspire against our best efforts to stay ahead in the financial game. Rather than simply attributing the bankruptcy epidemic to "shopaholism" or endemic self-indulgence (as many others blithely do), Vyse weaves together hard science, cultural criticism, and macroeconomic analysis to create a disturbing image of our personal--and national--economic landscape.

Finally, the majority of Vyse's suggestions for not going broke are practical, common-sense solutions that almost every American can employ. But even in presenting his suggestions, Vyse acknowledges that there are larger forces which need to be addressed before a majority of Americans can enjoy financial security. Far from being a panacea, Vyse presents his suggestions as something of a self-defense strategy in a world where our senses and sensibilities are constantly bombarded, and our financial futures are bought and sold by corporations without hesitation or regulation.

I recommend this book to anyone who is interested in human behavior, American culture, economics, politics, or public policy--and to anyone who just wants a good, thought-provoking read.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Completely Agree April 1, 2008

By K. Parsons

Format:Hardcover

I completely agree with the reviewer above. I found Vyse's sociological take on Americans and spending fascinating. He poses the same questions to his readers that he has posed to his university students and I found that my kids (teenagers) were interested in these questions and that they encouraged conversation. It was playful and energizing to take a look at the irrational ways that we relate to money and spending, and to choose ways to "trick" ourselves into spending less, rather than simply berating ourselves. An example of irrationality is the concept of "sunk" money. If we've already spent money on something, and we consider that money "sunk" or gone, we don't have as much motivation to recoup that money than we would have to "make" that much money. This helped me force myself go through the irritating process of trying to recover money from a travel insurance company when my son was too ill to go on a class trip to Costa Rica. I had already paid for the trip, so my motivation was lacking. When I posed the question to myself "would you spend an entire day dealing with an insurance company for $2500?" I decided that it WAS worth the aggravation of dealing with the paperwork.
I also appreciated Vyse's compassion toward modern Americans and the trouble he took to detail the kinds of necessary expenses that our parents did not have. For just one example, he points out that there are thousands of medications that did not exist in 1970. Even with good insurance, these medications can cost hundreds of dollars a month.
If you enjoy reading about money, this book is very different from all of the other cookie-cutter money books out there.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Hey Buddy, Can You Spare A Dime?? June 7, 2008

By A Customer

Format:Hardcover

Going Broke is a excellent book on why Americans cannot hold on to their money and stay out of debt. Author Stuart Vyse does a good job of explaining why 1) Americans are bankrupt due to over extending themselves.2)Instant gratification has replaced delaying the need of things.3)How modern inventions such as computers and credit cards have made the availability of buying things quicker and more convenient.4)How advertising influences us on a daily bases from tv to movies, to cell phones to junk mail.5)How society's view of needs are really more of wants and luxuries. The final chapter offers some help for those trapped in debt and addiction of spending. At the end of each chapter are real life examples of people caught in this deadlly trap.[[ASIN:0684859386 Why Smart People Make Big Money Mistakes And How To Correct Them: Lessons From The New Science Of Behavioral Economics] is another good book on this subject. Well done.