Abigail Johnson on financial freedom
Reader, I want you to know me at the outset: I read Frances Cook’s Your Money, Your Future: The realest guide to finding financial freedom with an unpaid medical bill as a bookmark. I’m fine, by the way ($49 for a check-up) just not super on top of things. The bookmark served as one of those ironies that you keep around because it tells a little story about the type of person you are. Aren’t I a loon? By the time I closed the last page I decided to pay what I owed, so: hurrah! The money book works.
Actually, Cook’s book has also seen me open a Sharesies account, calculate what I need to retire on (woof), and reassess my KiwiSaver. She’d probably have me negotiate my fee for this review if she could. As we learn in Chapter 3 ("Screw You, Pay Me") one of the key ways to have more money is to make more money. Get a promotion, she tells us, honestly, you won’t know yourself.
Seems a bit asinine, no? It’s a bit like asking a person who can’t hear very well to just… listen better? At times, Cook appears to subscribe the Lean In school of thought. Shed your insecurities, raise your hand, negotiate your wage, don white cashmere. I must admit when Sheryl Sandberg’s infamous Lean In hit the shelves in 2013, I was a disciple. I worked in Henderson, not Silicon Valley, but I felt the manifesto pretty much transferred. And yet, as others have pointed out, the Lean In philosophy offers individualised solutions to systemic problems. It positions employers and businesses as benevolent; happy to pull you up if only you’d ask. It assumes hard work begets reward and it fails to take into account the pervasive inequalities that screw people down. But then Cook switches gears. Another way to make money, she advises, is to join your union. “Knowledge is power” she says, “and unions help you get more of it.” A bit Sandberg, a bit Sanders, then.
So, of all the guides to financial freedom out there, is Your Money, Your Future indeed the realest? It depends, I suspect, on your definition of ‘real’ and how a guide can indeed be the ‘realest’. Is it real to live in a cheapo developing country while working for a company based in an expensive developed one (as she suggests in Chapter 11, "House on FIRE")? Or is it perhaps more real (realer) to work for a company based in the world-class city of Auckland while basing yourself in the developing city of Hamilton? Cook has done the latter, cleverly negotiating "an Auckland-level wage" for herself while "paying Hamilton living prices". Real.
Perhaps when she refers to real she means buying her clothes at the Sallies and walking to work (both of which she proudly claims). Perhaps the irksome ‘realest’ (most real, surely) on the cover is merely the stuff of marketers and publicists: kiwifolk want real, Cook. They want their books to swear at them — the real subtle art of not giving a fuck.
But financial witch Frances Cook does give a fuck. She’s the kind of teacher who cares. The careers advisor who tells you not to bother with uni when you’d clearly get more out of the trades. She’s the mum who offers to sew your wedding dress for you. Your weirdly rich aunt with buzzy stock tips.
And yet, do we really need all these books? These endless self-helperies? How to cook, have abs, feel fuller on fewer calories. How to deal with menopause, how to bank. Well — maybe. It depends on whose wisdom we’re gobbling. There’s a lot of room in the self-improvement space for charlatans. The audience is vast – almost everyone wants to ‘improve’ the ‘self’ – and advice can range from sensible to deranged. It can be difficult to tell the Petersons from the Pelligrinos, the seductive British cooks from the awful Paleo chefs. And neither does it help that these books all look the same. If it isn’t attractive people laughing over zucchini pasta its flashy primary colours and unattributed quotes ("The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago, the second best time is now". Is that Confucius?).
Your Money, Your Future is on the sensible side of the scale, and that’s before she pads the word count with advice from local finance experts of various renown (although Mary Holm is noticeably absent here, I guess this town isn’t big enough etc.).
The advice? Don’t bet all of your investment money on your boyfriend’s trippy start-up. Put it in an index fund. She also helpfully defines the term index fund. Avoid debt like the plague (too soon?). Pay your bills. Real talk. It’s not the type of book that wins Ockhams but neither is it trying to be.
That being said, if it nets me a few extra hundred thousand by retirement (based on changing my KiwiSaver scheme and putting money into set-and-forget investments) it’ll easily be the best book I ever read. I won’t be taking it to a desert island but perhaps it’ll help me find the cheapest boat out of there? Whatever, I’m a convert. It turns out saving money is good, actually, even loons should be doing it. Frances Cook, I am your humble student.
Your Money, Your Future: The realest guide to finding financial freedom by Frances Cook (Penguin Random House, $36) is available in bookstores nationwide.
