Squandering Aimlessly : MY ADVENTURES in the AMERICAN MARKETPLACE [Hardcover]

David Brancaccio (Author), Kyoko Watanabe (Designer)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1, 2000

Poor, misguided fellow. David Brancaccio, host of public radio's rambunctious and eclectic business program "Marketplace," used to think the big problem with money was getting some. Didn't he understand that during a time of bounty the big problem is knowing what to do with money once you have it? It took a conversation with one of the richest guys in America to set him straight.

"I think Warren Buffett's got the problem and Gates has the problem and Bloomberg's got the problem," the billionaire said. "And the problem doesn't just have to be at our level. It can be with people who have just a couple of million bucks." It was the second "just" in that sentence that made tears well up in Brancaccio's eyes.

Most of us once thought the problem was getting some money. Now what?

Squander: to spend or use something precious in a wasteful way. Squandering ranks even below "leaving it in a passbook savings account" on the list of the greatest personal finance sins of our age, according to Brancaccio, who hit the road to determine the right answer to the question of what to do with money. Brancaccio gets this question from "Marketplace" listeners all the time: What does one do with a lump sum, perhaps the proceeds from some stock options, the profit on the sale of a house, an inheritance, a bonus, a settlement, or even a modest accumulation in a savings account?

A natural storyteller, Brancaccio has a clear, intelligent, and delightfully offbeat way of explaining to his listeners the complexities of business, investing, and the economy. He has access to rivers of market information that should help answer this question of what to do with money. But data do not necessarilyequal wisdom, so Brancaccio hit upon the idea of venturing out on a random "walk" to acquire some street smarts.

Imagining a windfall of his own and haunted by his own checkered history with money, Brancaccio embarked on a funny and irreverent personal finance pilgrimage. His travels took him from Minnesota's Mall of America to New York City's Wall Street to one of the poorest towns in the West. He encountered entrepreneurs in California, homeowners in New York, retirees in Arizona, and some folks following their lifelong dreams in Texas. A drifter in a desert offered advice. So did a U.S. secretary of the treasury.

Along the way, Brancaccio was challenged by a cascade of practical and philosophical issues: If consumption drives the economy, is there something wrong with saving? Is there such a thing as a socially responsible investment? Is charity an investment? If you can't beat a Las Vegas casino, can you beat the stock market?

While Brancaccio's journey was a personal one, his eye-opening adventures reveal a great deal about attitudes toward money in America at the dawn of the new century -- and they provide entertaining lessons about how best to spend, invest, and save.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

David Brancaccio's Squandering Aimlessly is a rare treat--an insightful look at economic matters that is also a terrific read. Through his award-winning Marketplace radio program, Brancaccio has become a popular commentator with a distinctive take on financial issues. In his first book, he smoothly transfers this perspective to the description of an entertaining literary pilgrimage designed to answer the eternal question "How should one spend an unexpected windfall?" It was, after all, a query Brancaccio felt compelled to explore. "As host of a public radio program about money, I am asked all the time about what to do with it," he writes. "I needed to answer that question for myself before I could have anything meaningful to say about other people's money."

In a journey as personal as it is universal, Brancaccio crisscrosses America to examine possible responses to a monetary bolt from the blue: "spend it on a shopping spree, do good, start a business, gamble with it, give it away, invest it in the markets, buy a house, go back to school, retire early, save it for a rainy day." Hooking up with an array of savvy individuals who are focused upon these divergent alternatives, he ultimately discovers that true fiscal fulfillment is achieved only when individual needs and wants are really understood and successfully balanced. More to the immediate point, however, he also uncovers a perfect way to judge the expenditure of any honest-to-goodness surplus: the ability to answer yes when asked if the money's use, whatever it is, will have a lasting, positive impact on your life. --Howard Rothman

From Publishers Weekly

Brancaccio writes like the public radio broadcaster he is (on the show Marketplace), in slow, even tones, savoring every detail of his stories, in firm control of where he is going but in no hurry to get there. This is not a book you attack, but one you surrender to. In fact, so easy is it to read that when you put it down after the last page, you will have no idea if you have painlessly learned anything or have just been entertained. The book consists of 10 travel vignettes arranged around the topic of spending money. Brancaccio wonders what he would do with a sudden windfall: save, spend, invest, retire, give it away or something else. For each answer he travels to various places to experiment and discuss the solution with people he meets. Having secured an advance for this very book, he goes to Minnesota's Mall of America to shop, to Las Vegas to gamble, to Levittown to investigate buying a house. Each story ends with morals, souvenirs and life resolutions. The author is intensely introspective and easily disoriented, so an ordinary trip to a mall seems psychedelic; Las Vegas, Silicon Valley and Wall Street seem like other galaxies. The only fixed referents in this world are eccentric individuals and attitudes toward money. Brancaccio is deliberately impressionable, and he has a knack of discovering interesting attitudes, empathizing with them completely and then analyzing them. He finds that generosity is common, as are guilt, insecurity, confusion and regret. However, there is very little of either greed or indifference. Perhaps the most important message of the book is that no one seems to have a good answer to the question of what to do with money. Neither professional money managers, professional thinkers nor gamblers have the secret. The people Brancaccio meets who are happy and secure do not worry much about money, but seem to have enough (everyone else has a problem, either financial or emotional or both)--but the cause and effect of this relation is not clear. (Feb.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 283 pages
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster; 1st edition (January 1, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0684864983
• ISBN-13: 978-0684864983
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,021,642 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

48 of 52 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wit and Wisdom, February 11, 2000

By 

Carl Carter (Mountain View, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Squandering Aimlessly : MY ADVENTURES in the AMERICAN MARKETPLACE (Hardcover)

David B. is so original and fun on Marketplace i wondered if his style would work in a book. It sure does! Talk about a road trip---first, we meet a lot of people from all walks of life. And David is a much better companion than Kerouac. David B asks a lot of good questions about money--the stuff that haunts you late at night or on the ride to work. This book is deep, human, smart and like David on air, original.

18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Meandering about Money, May 27, 2001

By 

Jacki Stirn (Greenwood Village, CO United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Squandering Aimlessly: On the Road with the Host of Public Radio's "Marketplace" (Paperback)

In Squandering Aimlessly, David Brancaccio allows us to accompany him on his personal finance pilgrimage. While there was no surplus in question at the moment, there had been a surplus of money in the past and he didn't know what to make of it at that time. Brancaccio is the host of the public radio program, Marketplace and wanted to have more answers handy when asked about money.

"I didn't start out with a surplus, but I came back richer and no longer breaking out in hives if I found myself in the clutches of a bonus payment, a severance check, a capital gain of one sort or another, an inheritance, a lottery win, a tax refund, or simply the realization that the passbook savings account finally contains some serious money."

While some of those situations may not be your money issue, it is that time of year for many of us to have a tax refund pop into our hands. His travels take us from a nudist village in France to the Mall of America to a discussion with Vicki Robin(co-author of Your Money or Your Life) in Seattle to a music college in Texas. I savored this book. This book is to money the way Calvin Trillin's Alice, Let's Eat is to food. There are very few books that that have made me laugh out loud and this is one of them. Beware reading while eating or drinking lest liquid exit through your nostrils.

Let me state up front that I was utterly jealous of a fellow human being who managed to have this pilgrimage supported by someone else's surplus. While the book allows us to share and enjoy Brancaccio's experiences, the subtle lessons about money and life are there in all their glory. In the Mall of America, I want to shout, "Go ahead, have a Cinnabon !" Each chapter ends with a souvenir, a to-do list and calculations relating to the chapter.

Brancaccio considers socially responsible investing while attending a conference in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. One of his conclusions is that: "Trying too diligently to come up with a really groovy portfolio runs the danger of turning you into one of those obsessive-compulsive hand washers. You keep trying to sanitize your holdings, but you keep turning up more dirt." His wife has endeared herself to me forever with her comments before Brancaccio heads out to research charity in Hawthorne, Nevada. "On the way out the door very early this morning, my wife cast a protective spell around me. `If you run across a place called the Mustang Ranch,' she said matter-of-factly from her pillow, her eyes still closed, `keep in mind those women wear stretch pants and fuzzy slippers in their off hours.' "

This book covers the gamut of financial choices one might make with a sense of humor and wonderful storytelling. I highly recommend it.

16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars writes as good as he talks, March 18, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Squandering Aimlessly : MY ADVENTURES in the AMERICAN MARKETPLACE (Hardcover)

Good talkers don't necessarily produce good books--other Radio and TV interviewers ("journalists")often try to foist off as book what are little more than pastiches of transcripts. Broncaccio writes in the "show, don't tell" style that has the reader with him in every town, roadstop, meeting, casino, flophouse and in on every epiphany. He also knows how to crunch the numbers to learn the truth: how much will it take if a late 30-something like himself wants to retire in an "active" community (millions). Is buying a house really the biggest economic plus you can tally? For such a public figure, Broncaccio gives a lot of himself away in this fast, fun informative book. His premise for this one was right on, and I hope he thinks up some more.