Die Broke: A Radical Four Part Financial Plan (Paperback)

If you follow his overall advice, you WILL have to work until you're 70, because you won't put enough away to provide for yourself. Yet many of the sub-components of his theory are perfectly sound and should be obvious to anyone who's ever balanced a checkbook: live within your means, don't use your credit cards to buy things you can't pay off when the bill comes, don't count on real estate appreciating like it did in the past.

My Midwestern grandmother expressed the rules of financial planning much more concisely years ago: "Save ten percent, give ten percent, spend the rest with thanksgiving and praise."

First of all, many of the recommendations in this book assume that a) You do not have enough money for retirement. and b) You don't have enough time and/or discipline to save for retirement. However, as young GenX'er, I personally have plenty of time and earning potential to accumulate enough wealth to retire and die rich. If a young person, not even making the median income saves a mere 10% of their income from age 25 until age 65, they can retire a multi millionaire. I have no intention of abandoning this goal, since I have over 35 years in which to build a nest egg.

The author presents several contradictory statements on how to manage your money. First, he recommends dumping credit cards and using only charge cards. The charge card he recommends costs over $50 a year to use. I can use a credit card, with no annual fee, pay my bill in full each month and save over $2000 in annual fee charges over my lifetime. Apparently, the author assumes that his audience is too undisciplined to use credit cards without paying off the balances each month. In addition, the author rails against consumerism and planned obsolecence and says that it is better to repair your VCR, computer, etc. rather than by a new one. In a later chapter, however, he recommends leasing vechicles to avoid paying repair bills associated with older vechicles. I drive a 12 year old truck, and I know that my repair bills on that vehicle are much less than the thousands of dollars I would spend on lease payments and higher taxes.

Don't get me wrong, I agree with some of his advice. As a GenX'er, I 'quit today' before I even got my first job. ;-) I also think that many people in my generation have already decided to place family and happiness above the pursuit of wealth. The benefit of being young, however, is that these goals do not need to be mutually exlcusive. Much of the advice that I do agree with he seems to have taken be observing the GenX generation.

In short, the book may provide a good guide for older, undisiplined boomers who have missed the chance to save for retirement, but for younger people, conventional wisdom (properly executed, and with some modifications) may still be the key to sucess.