Description
With more Americans than ever investing in the stock market, has money become more important than sex? Is money the real obsession of our time? This book offers a charming and whimsical look at how we think about and behave with money—our attitudes and idiosyncrasies about every aspect of our finances, from the way we organize money to how we save it, invest it, spend it, agonize over it, cheat for it, and use it as a badge. Kanner pulls together a myriad of surveys, statistics, and factoids to reveal our very personal relationship to money. Sometimes surprising, sometimes hilarious, the results are riveting. Did you know that 25 percent of us would abandon all our friends for $10 million? If you're like most people, you store your paper currency in rigid order—from singles to larger denominations. More than half of us would rather talk about a friend's marital problems than his or her shaky finances. This book also reveals our approach to the fiscal fundamentals—when we first start handling money (by age 16 most people have a checking account), whether we pay our credit card balances in full (49 percent do), and whether we pay our taxes voluntarily (83 percent do, according to the IRS). But the most intriguing revelations are those we say under our breath—how we really feel and act and what money means to us. So, are you normal about money? Representative Facts from the Book: • In three out of ten households, one spouse doesn't even know how much the other makes • 80 percent of men and 72 percent of women say they're saving money regularly—but the average American saves only 4.9 percent of net income • Asked whether they'd rather be too rich or too thin, 82 percent go for the gold • Money is the biggest cause of matrimonial discord—29 percent of couples argue more about spouses' spending habits than anything else, such as sex or children
