“She called it,” she said. “She was going on about how the banks were taking advantage of everyday people and it’s not going to end well. I remember saying, ‘Oh my God, this is exactly what is going on today.’”
Now 35, the Yorktown Heights, N.Y., resident has a Warren sticker on her car and is considering registering as a Democrat for the first time so that she can vote for her in the presidential primary.
According to NPD BookScan, which tracks print and e-book sales, the book has sold more than 65,000 copies in print — roughly half as many as Warren’s 2014 memoir “A Fighting Chance” — but it has something of a cult following online, with the 50/30/20 budget plan regularly cited on financial advice websites.
Harold Pollack, co-author of the personal finance book “The Index Card,” says financial advice alternates between unrealistic plans to save a million dollars by giving up coffee and risky pitches for individual stocks on cable television.
He praised Warren’s book for giving simple, sensible advice for an audience of middle-class readers.
“It’s striking to me how much personal financial advice people get is actually quite negative and even harmful,” he said. “Some of the most valuable things in Elizabeth Warren’s work are the things that she does not write about.”
Warren takes aim at that kind of advice in the introduction to the book, arguing that penny-pinching plans are actually “dangerous” because they distract people from the big picture of ensuring that they can survive a downturn in their finances from a layoff or a medical problem.
She even takes a shot at a certain Manhattan mogul who was running get-rich-quick real-estate seminars at the time.
“We are also not going to say that if you’ll just shift to generic toilet paper and put $5 a week in the bank, all your problems will instantly disappear,” she writes. “A few pennies here and a few pennies there, and the next thing you know, you’ll be debt-free, investment-rich and lighting cigars with Donald Trump. Nope, we’re not selling that brand of snake oil.”
Although she rarely talks about “All Your Worth” on the campaign trail, Warren hasn’t stopped fighting what she views as bad financial advice.