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A review by gabsalott13
Bad with Money: The Imperfect Art of Getting Your Financial Sh*t Together by Gabe Dunn
4.0
Bad with Money by Gaby Dunn is a 60-40 split between a memoir and financial advice book, which offered just enough self-help and just enough self-loathing for my tastes. One of my favorite things about this book is that she admittedly acknowledges that financial advice is sort of foolish in our current economy—throughout the book, whenever you may start to feel too down on your spending habits, Dunn is there to offer the helpful disclaimer that the ultimate problem is that you probably aren’t paid enough money for the ever-growing expenses of American life.
This leads to several chapters of financial advice that don’t require you to turn your conscience off before reading (before you say I am so clever, this phrase is stolen from my Episcopal uncle, who succinctly describes his denomination as “church where you don’t have to turn your brain off.”) Dunn doesn’t shy away from the “racial, classist, ableist, transphobic, homophobic, and misogynistic tints to money that can’t be ignored.” Instead of ignoring them, she sees them as all the MORE reason why we shouldn’t experience shame about our money issues, and should communicate these challenges honestly and openly, so that we can resolve as many as possible. She’s arguing for the middle ground in a way that’s inherently logical, by calling for systemic and individual accountability : “we can prepare for future medical debts while still calling our congressional representatives to put universal health care in place.”
In addition to the strong ethical grounding of Bad with Money, Dunn is also a hilarious commentator and master conversationalist, which makes sense given the frequent interviews on her podcast. She also speaks to a number of financial experts here, but their insights appear alongside #relatable, meme-like asides:
Finally, I really enjoyed her accounts of how our early life experiences lead us to develop money scripts, which is right on time for me, given my own therapy visits and obsessive consumption of Esther Perel podcasts. This is another helpful way Dun encourages her readers to arrive at a more empathetic rationalization of their spending habits, and to ensure that we are learning more than a bunch of fad diets (I mean budgeting tricks.)
TLDR: Kudos to Gaby Dunn, and please read this if you are looking for common-sense financial self-help alongside an enjoyable memoir of an “LA creative.”
This leads to several chapters of financial advice that don’t require you to turn your conscience off before reading (before you say I am so clever, this phrase is stolen from my Episcopal uncle, who succinctly describes his denomination as “church where you don’t have to turn your brain off.”) Dunn doesn’t shy away from the “racial, classist, ableist, transphobic, homophobic, and misogynistic tints to money that can’t be ignored.” Instead of ignoring them, she sees them as all the MORE reason why we shouldn’t experience shame about our money issues, and should communicate these challenges honestly and openly, so that we can resolve as many as possible. She’s arguing for the middle ground in a way that’s inherently logical, by calling for systemic and individual accountability : “we can prepare for future medical debts while still calling our congressional representatives to put universal health care in place.”
In addition to the strong ethical grounding of Bad with Money, Dunn is also a hilarious commentator and master conversationalist, which makes sense given the frequent interviews on her podcast. She also speaks to a number of financial experts here, but their insights appear alongside #relatable, meme-like asides:
“It’s an unsolvable catch 22: how can I make sure I have what I need to exist and succeed within a broken system without supporting that system? To borrow from my own tweet: ‘me on Twitter: burn the capitalist system/Me on Amazon: check out my wish list’.”
Finally, I really enjoyed her accounts of how our early life experiences lead us to develop money scripts, which is right on time for me, given my own therapy visits and obsessive consumption of Esther Perel podcasts. This is another helpful way Dun encourages her readers to arrive at a more empathetic rationalization of their spending habits, and to ensure that we are learning more than a bunch of fad diets (I mean budgeting tricks.)
TLDR: Kudos to Gaby Dunn, and please read this if you are looking for common-sense financial self-help alongside an enjoyable memoir of an “LA creative.”