BOOK REVIEWS: KIERAN FAGANreviews How Come That Idiot's Rich and I'm Notby Robert Shemin; Piatkus; £8.99, and The Sixty Minute Debt Busterby Katie Clarke with Rob Parsons; Lion Hudson; £6.99.
TWO BOOKS, superficially very different. One is a very American take on making yourself seriously rich, written in ghastly jokey folksy prose, the other a sober British account of how to extricate yourself from debt. You can see where this review is going – but hold on, they converge when you least expect it.
There’s a place for the short book and both of these are short. Remember Pascale, the French philosopher, who hadn’t time to write a short letter so he wrote a long one instead?
Solicitor Katie Clarke has written a useful roadmap for those who find themselves sinking in a morass of debt, based on her work in a British debt-counselling centre.
She goes into why people run up debts, the basic steps to begin dealing with them, tips on saving money, avoiding having your home repossessed and not always paying first those who shout the loudest.
Most of us have either danced on financial thin ice at some stage – or have friends or family who do – and she is good on the trauma and depression that accompanies sleepwalking into financial chaos. Equally she identifies the feeling of control when the problem is overcome as the truly life changing gain.
She identifies credit cards as the main problem for many of us and suggests a useful strategy for weaning oneself off them.
The “cash only for a month” ploy is a useful step towards seeing where the money goes and getting better value for it. She reminds us that we now have choice and competition – in futility and other suppliers – and that we should make the most of the possible savings out there.
In fact, the only criticism I have of this positive and useful book is that an extra source of income can often help balance the books and reduce spending opportunities. The busier the body, the less “walking around” money is required.
Robert Shemin begins with a few strikes against him. He writes like a motivational speaker speaks – and there’s not much worse to be said about a writer.
His book is built around the notion that we all know thickos from our past who became fabulously rich and how in God’s name did that happen?
He calls them Rich Idiots, he’s strong on Capital Letters is Rob.)
Then there are regular guys like you and me, the Right Side Up but Broke brigade, the undeserving poor you might say.
Rob’s mission is to turn RUBs into Rich Idiots. He doesn’t serve his argument well by describing the rich as idiots. As his book shows, the rich are much the same as the rest of us, but they spend a bit of time working out their moves – but not necessarily a lot.
Shemin’s book is broken into three sections, called, wouldn’t you know, Ready, which challenges your preconceptions about wealth, Aim, which focuses you on thinking more productively, and Fire, in which the new you comes out with all guns blazing.
If you can hack your way through the guff, there’s useful stuff here, much along the lines of Margaret Thatcher’s resolve that if she only had five minutes to devote to a problem, she’d give it that five minutes.
I doubt if Robert Shemin will change your life, but he might just get you thinking that change is not so difficult. And in an odd way, there’s a humanity here I had not expected. He knows the importance of a treat, treats for oneself and treats for others, including the poor.
So the paths of two very different books crossed. Most of us could benefit from spending a bit more time planning our finances and our careers. Maybe an hour a week on one or the other, or both, would pay dividends .
The debt-buster book is good on cutting down expenditure to make it match income. The Rich Idiot approach is to maximise income. I know which approach I prefer. Hang on Mr Shemin, despite all your jargon and quasi-spiritual guff and the abuse I’ve hurled in your direction, I’m more likely to sign for your team.
Kieran Fagan is a freelance journalist
