Maxing Out: Why Women Sabotage Their Financial Security - Hardcover

Dowling, Colette

4.31

13 ratings by Goodreads

9780316191203: Maxing Out: Why Women Sabotage Their Financial Security

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0316191205 ISBN 13: 9780316191203

Publisher: Little Brown & Co, 1998

View all copies of this ISBN edition:

Looking back on her own experiences of financial distress, the author of The Cinderella Complex examines women's fear that financial security will lead to their isolation from others, due to a lifetime of social conditioning. 60,000 first printing. Tour.

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.

Review:

"If you had suggested to me ten years ago, even five, that I would methodically (if unconsciously) set about destroying my financial security, losing all the money I'd made on a bestselling book, losing, even, my furniture, I would have laughed. I would have told you I was over my biggest hurdles, that I knew who I was and had the financial comfort and psychological equanimity to prove it."

So begins Colette Dowling's Maxing Out, a compelling personal-finance autobiography. Dowling recounts the gritty details of three years of mindless overspending that culminated in a tax bill that forced her to sell off two homes in order to pay off part of a debt to the IRS. From there, the 55-year-old bestselling author of The Cinderella Complex culls her full life story (and incorporates short bios of half a dozen professional women) to forward her premise that even today's younger generation of women often fall into a stance of almost willful noncomprehension of personal finance in line with a cultural bias against women who are financially competent and independent.

Women on the hunt for detailed financial guidance will want more than this book. But for the insecure woman who's just acknowledging the limits of her financial knowledge, this book can give some helpful context to some women's struggles, as well as the sense that one's got--in Dowling--a very sympathetic and wise fellow student. --Jean Lenihan

From Kirkus Reviews:

The Cinderella Complex revisited, this time with dollar signs added. In The Cinderella Complex (1981) Dowling hypothesized that even the most liberated woman had a secret hope that The Prince, glass slipper in hand, was en route to rescue her from independence and responsibility. The book was an international bestseller, earning Dowling millions. Ten years later she was broke, owing the IRS more than $70,000. She sold the two houses she owned, moved into a small rental, and paid the federal government $760 a month to retire her debt. At one point, Dowling moans, she had grossed $400,000 a year and ran American Express bills up to $3,000 a month; now she was reduced to shopping at discount stores and coloring her own hair. Sympathy from economically hard-pressed readers is likely to take a deep dive at this point. To her credit, Dowling takes responsibility for her irresponsibility about money and seizes the opportunity to explore why she and other women like her dont, or cant, plan ahead. The same yearning to have someone else take care of them, a reluctance to take risks, and an inclination to provide for others lead women toward financial insolvency, as does a pervasive ``bag lady'' fantasythat they will end up on the streets, penniless, in their old age. While noting recent research on preadolescent girls' socially conditioned retreat from competence, Dowling nevertheless rather unconvincingly sets up men as models of financial prudence. Her efforts to present female role models are undermined by her examples, among them the Beardstown Ladies, recently exposed as less than they seemed to be. There is no question that managing money is a cause of great anxietybut as many men as women have ridden the roller coaster of high times, only to crash and burn. Copying male habits may not be the answer. Engagingly written, but essentially a reworking of the territory of the author's earlier books, without many surprises. (Author tour) -- Copyright �1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.