Broke, Not Broken

Personal Finance for the Creative, Confused, Underpaid, and Overwhelmed

Anna Jo Beck

• Publisher: Microcosm Publishing
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781648410048
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Personal Finance

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Broke, not broken

Personal Finance for the Creative, Confused, Underpaid, and Overwhelmed

© 2021 Anna Jo Beck

© This edition Microcosm Publishing 2021

First edition - 3,000 copies - June 8, 2021

eBook ISBN 978-1-64841-004-8

This is Microcosm #445

Cover by Anna Jo Beck

Edited by Lydia Rogue

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https://microcosm.pub/broke

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Introduction

This is a book for people who hate thinking about money.

There are so many personal finance books for people who enjoy thinking about money. There are books about stock picking, early retirement how-tos, even books for children about starting businesses. Many of these books are aimed at those who are obsessed with fine-tuning their strategies. But there aren’t many books for people who can’t bear gazing into the abyss of their financial choices, let alone their bank statements. I wrote this book because every book I read on personal finance seemed to be aimed at somebody else: the aspiring investor, the hapless debtor, the single-minded seeker of the American Dream. While each of these books brought me insight, none of them had exactly what I craved: a clear outline of the basic tenets of personal finance, without the frills and narrative angles of traditional prosperity. And most of all, a bit more cognisant of the current time and social standing many of us are in. The narratives of “pulling yourself up by your bootstraps” and “being poor is a state of mind” felt hollow and unhelpful as a queer woman with an immigrant spouse. I can appreciate that a positive spin may be inspirational to some, but in my experience, dealing with finances can feel hard, and even unfair. Managing your finances is a long game that favors the people who already are in the know. It’s commonplace for the topic of money to conjure feelings of confusion, anxiety, and fear. We absorb our emotional associations with money and how to handle it from our family, our upbringing, and our culture. For those of us who came of age around the Great Recession, the national narrative around money was one of insecurity and loss. Many from that generation are also saddled with one form of debt or another, with opportunities and wages not keeping pace. And that’s what I think many books miss the mark on: they often operate with a homogenous set of conventional goals in mind and similarly assume that people are all at the same starting point, when actually our realities and abilities are vast and varied. Tips and tricks are great, but the path most books offered were limited to people who were building towards a future I didn’t (or couldn’t) aspire to: a big wedding, homeownership, traditional family. I wanted a book that acknowledged that thinking about my financial future brought up feelings of anger and hopelessness while still giving a way forward to the life I wanted to lead. This is that book.

I want to change how you think about money.

I wanted to write a book for people who have been burned by money—people who have been trying to follow their gut, but it keeps costing them. The margin of error on healthy financial habits has become razor-thin in the last few decades. Wages have stagnated, while the cost of living increases rapidly. There are aspects of our financial lives that are beyond our control, and that is super frustrating. We should advocate for systemic change, but in the meantime, one must learn to survive and thrive within the current capitalist world order.

We will cover the fundamental building blocks of a low-stress financial life. It sounds overly optimistic, but it is possible, although it does take real work on your part. I hope to guide you through this work of taking hold of your finances in a way that’s easy to understand and implement. Truly, a lot of these concepts will seem insultingly obvious, but the real trick is having patience and compassion for yourself while you work on rebuilding a foundation of habits that will improve your situation and outlook. Incredibly inspiring, I know, and not the silver bullet you were looking for, but it’s true.

This book will sympathize with you, help you realize what matters most to you, and show you how to try to get it. I know money is hard, and all situations are different. There is no one-size-fits-all, right way to do money. We all go on our own journeys towards the individual life we want to lead, and we all have different starting points. Balancing the distinct ideas of what matters most to you, and equally important, what matters least to you, can have a massive effect on your life, an...

Table of contents

• Broke, Not Broken