A Fighting Chance

The Rules of the Game Have Changed

Amelia and I set to work right away. Life intervened, of course—and so did death. In 2003, Jim Warren developed lung cancer; within months he was gone. He was only fifty-eight. I hadn’t seen him more than a dozen or so times in the many years since our divorce, but I felt truly awful that he had died so young. For Amelia and Alex, the loss of their father hit hard.

Much happier news came the next year, when Amelia announced that another baby was on the way. That motivated both of us to get cracking on the new book, and we completed a draft ahead of Amelia’s due date.

All Your Worth was a pretty cheery book, full of optimistic advice about how to take charge of your finances and secure your future. But, truth be told, it was born from a fairly dark place. Families were still falling off the financial cliff, and Washington seemed hell-bent on serving the rich and powerful. As far as I could tell, nothing much was going to change that.

Our first book together had described many things Washington could do to strengthen the middle class. But All Your Worth started with a very different premise: In a world where no help is coming from Washington, what can you do to protect yourself? A generation ago, people who worked hard and played by the rules usually came out okay, as long as they didn’t go too crazy with spending. That just wasn’t true anymore. Now the rules of the game had changed, and people needed to learn these rules—and fast—so they could protect themselves and their families. The way I saw it, hardworking people were scrambling just to survive, and a giant credit industry had drawn a bull’s-eye on the back of every struggling family. I wanted to show them how to stay low, fight smarter, and take care of their families.

To that end, we created a formula to help people budget their “Must-Have” expenditures (mortgage, child care, utilities, and the like), their “Wants” (an extra pair of sneakers, a latte at Starbucks, or a vacation), and their “Savings.” We called this strategy “financial balance.” We didn’t push people to go on a starvation budget that left no room for fun—life is just too short! Instead, we helped people evaluate whether they were on a sustainable financial path and offered strategies for managing some significant downsizing if they weren’t. We also argued that anyone with a debt problem should cut up their credit cards and pay with good old-fashioned cash. I had seen the giant banks in action, and I knew how dangerous debt could be. I hoped this book would help at least a few people get out of debt once and for all.

The book didn’t turn me into the next Suze Orman. But I loved writing it, and I still get an occasional letter from someone who says the book made a real difference.

Up to this point in my life, I have always relied upon the BOMD [Bank of Mom and Dad]. I not only used my parents as a source of money, but I more importantly also used them as an excuse to continuously ignore my own financial situation.… [Now] I feel empowered.



This month we were able to make our loan payment four days early and we have money left over each month to pay our credit card debt off more quickly.



[Achieving financial balance] won’t happen overnight and that’s probably the hardest thing to accept, but it will happen.



The people who wrote me sometimes told tragic stories, but most of their letters showed determination and threw off sparks of optimism.

All Your Worth hit the bookstores in March 2005, just before the arrival of a beautiful little sprite Amelia and Sushil named Lavinia. This new addition to our family was a cuddler, and I put the California rocking chair to good use. Sometimes, late at night, when the house was quiet, I’d scoop Lavinia out of her crib and hold her. We’d rock back and forth in the dark—not because she needed it, but because I did.

We got more good news that year when Harvard offered Bruce a professorship. He loved Penn, but it was time to stop commuting and at last come home to Massachusetts. By now we were thoroughly settled in our home a few blocks from the law school, close enough that Bruce, Faith, and I could walk there every day, even in the blizzards.

And my work at Harvard? I kept launching new research projects and publishing papers in academic journals, but my energy was now spilling in lots of different directions. I didn’t know if All Your Worth would spur any big changes, but at least I’d found another way to help more people.





We Lost