"We Have Been Scared, Misled or Bamboozled"

"While we know intellectually that we need to save and invest for our future, our ability to do so varies enormously, Ms. Olen points out.
"'Between 1979 and 2007, the average after-tax income for the top 1 percent of earners in the economy soared by 281 percent,' she writes. 'The top 20 percent would see their incomes increase by 95 percent. The middle fifth? A mere 25 percent.'       

"THE solutions offered by the personal finance world have been unrealistic, she says, contending that 'the increasing problem Americans were having keeping up financially was not viewed as a social justice problem, but as a knowledge and smarts problem that could be solved on an individual basis, one investor at a time.'"

 

Caitlin Kelly in The New York Times reviews Helaine Olen's Pound Foolish: Exposing the Dark Side of the Personal Finance Industry.