You Need More Money (Matt Manero)

You Need More Money: Wake Up and Solve Your Financial Problems Once and For All
Matt Manero
Portfolio
Nonfiction, Finance
***+ (Okay/Good)

DESCRIPTION: What does it mean to be wealthy, or even financially healthy? For most, it means having a few months' cushion in the bank and a decently reliable income stream. This is better than many people have in today's America, and should be good enough to see one through. Right?
Wrong.
It only takes one unforeseen incident to topple the "good enough" wagon - and unforeseen incidents are almost a given unless you're living in a bubble. It doesn't help that everything's getting more expensive; the retirement savings that worked for the previous generation are unlikely to last more than a few years for today's workforce. Even if you think you're doing okay, stashing a little aside here and there for the future, odds are very good it's not nearly enough. So what, in today's world of rising costs and stagnant wages, is one supposed to do about it? The first step is to wake up and see the problem while there's still an outside chance of course correction. Successful entrepeneur and finance speaker Matt Manero offers a wake-up call to those who think "good enough" is good at all, with questions to ask oneself and a roadmap for taking control of your financial life.

REVIEW: I live under no delusions that I'm anything but poor. This "wake up call" is not one I need; it's the "what to do about it" that proves elusive. Once again, however, the "what to do about it" in this book applies mostly to people who are already higher on the social and financial rung than I am, and at the very least are in (or have access to) white-collar sectors; there really isn't a ton here that's useful to warehouse workers, especially ones who lack anything like a marketable "super power" to capitalize on, unless "taking things out of totes" can be transformed into a six-figure income. (I did have to chuckle at the idea of checking what similar jobs to mine pay via sites like Glassdoor to negotiate for higher pay, as I listened to this audiobook at work... I'm the level of employee that the people on Glassdoor eliminate en masse at a stroke of a pen to earn themselves a bonus for saving the company money.)
That said, Manero does offer some decent advice. He also does not expect every reader to run out and start their own business, as some finance gurus seem to insist; he acknowledges that not everyone is cut out for that, that there are benefits to not being the boss, and he offers suggestions for getting the most out of being employed, such as how to improve one's visibility and effectively bargain for raises or seek greener pastures elsewhere. In other areas, though, he's very vague. Research risks on investments, he says... but where? And how does one separate the wheat from the chaff on investment advice and advisors, especially when one's a newbie? "Become interesting" to help with networking and finding new areas to explore, he says... right after insisting that the first thing one should do is eliminate any and all nonessential spending, and anything like a hobby ought to be monetized to justify time and energy spent on it (because all effort not spent on "stacking and racking" money before hitting the big goal is wasted), and any time not spent actively working should be spent considering where and how to obtain even more revenue streams (save his five-to-ten minutes of mental downtime he allows himself daily). So... when exactly is one supposed to be able to pursue the interesting-for-the-sake-of-interest things, and with what money (because even a walk in the park requires, at the least, bus fare to the park)? Though this is a relatively recent title, there are already signs of it aging; he mentions Twitter as a great place to network, especially because it's free - blissfully unaware of who would purchase it and what they would do to it, and how they would sell the appearance of credibility with a meaningless checkmark. He also mentions how skills like writing would always be lucrative in some form, completely unaware of what so-called "artificial intelligence" would do to creative industries and jobs like journalism, advertising, and article writing (built pretty much entirely on stolen material, no less). Other places made me raise an eyebrow, such as when he extols Cuba's history as one of the wealthiest nations in the world thanks to sugar, and expresses hope that they will rise again, completely disregarding the fact that that wealth was built entirely on the backs of literal slave labor (though I suppose that might strike an entrepeneur as an ideal situation, a workforce that required no pesky payroll department - and if they can't leverage their super powers to be running the place in five years or taking themselves to another plantation for better opportunities, I guess it's their own fault?). I also caught a whiff of victim blaming in his no-excuses attitude about wealth acquisition, how it's entirely a person's own fault if they're crushed by the system and/or haven't racked up north of seven figures by retirement age, even while acknowledging that the old ladders out of poverty, such the middle class, are disintegrating. When those ladders are gone, are the poor just supposed to fly, and sucks to be them if gravity exists? Why is this disintegration and stratification and exponentially increasing inequity treated as some nebulous natural phenomenon like plate tectonics or the weather, beyond comprehension or control, when it's a system ultimately created by humans, driven by humans, and co-opted by humans? When fewer people intentionally hoard more power and money, raising prices on those who can least afford it while boasting/gloating of record gains, while actively erasing means to acquire even the crumbs left behind, how are those hoarders utterly blameless for the consequences of their actions and the deprived entirely at fault? Just pull yourself up by the bootstraps, he declares - ignoring how that phrase was originally meant to show the impossibility of the task, especially when someone else has bought up all the boots. Heck, the notion that one can just learn whatever one needs to thrive for free via the internet presupposes one actually has sufficient access to the internet... and also presupposes that sites like YouTube will remain free to access in the future and aren't paywalled off. (Even libraries, one place a person used to be able to count on for services one couldn't afford if one was, y'know, not wealthy, are under threat.)
In any event, there is plenty of solid, if not entirely unfamiliar, advice to be found in this book, overlooking the parts that feel tone-deaf. Figuring out specific goals, paying closer attention to where money is going, being smarter about where to save and invest, being alert to opportunities and aware of one's worth, all are things worth considering. And there are things one can do to manage one's finances better in many circumstances (if not all). Ultimately, though, it's yet another book that I just can't see having much practical application to my situation.

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