However, let's challenge this thread from a different perspective. Not because it's inherently wrong—it might allow us to get a better understanding of what these people are talking about. As Kristin Wong pointed out in The New York Times, traditional personal finance advice is often tossed around in blanket statements. While there's nothing wrong with the actual advice in theory, the way we deal with money in reality is often much more nuanced.
Consumer spending is increasing and unemployment rates have fallen, but wage growth has been slow, and income inequality is still very much a problem. With the situation changing so fast and drastically, what can we actually do about money?
"I'm interested in the causes and consequences of inequality, particularly from a labor market perspective," Kate Bahn, director of labor market policy and an economist at the research organization Washington Center for Equitable Growth, told Wong. Dr. Bahn argued there's not enough emphasis on the larger structural barriers that make people's financial lives difficult. Personal finance might sometimes even further de-emphasize these barriers, she said.
There is, for example, a concept called labor monopsony, which is what happens when a single hiring entity gains control over the workforce.
"So employers will take advantage and pay workers less because there's nowhere else to go," Dr. Bahn said. "It's geographically remote areas where there may be only one big employer, and there's no other company to work for, so that company can pay whatever they want because workers can’t say, 'Screw this,' and go somewhere else."
Dr. Bahn's argument is that personal finance is necessary, but not quite sufficient. It's put forth as a solution when what we really need is policy, she said, and places priority on personal choice over issues that are ultimately out of most people's control.
But there are still plenty of folks who think that personal finance remains helpful because it is a way to share information that many are discouraged from seeking. "People have criticized financial education, saying it doesn't work because people are still making mistakes," Billy Hensley, president and CEO at a private nonprofit, National Endowment for Financial Education, also told Wong. "Education can't help access jobs, but it can help people navigate the system as it exists."
But when you think about it, how do you even measure the effectiveness of personal finance? After all, so much of it is... personal.
Rachel Schneider, a researcher and co-author of The Financial Diaries: How American Families Cope in a World of Uncertainty, tried to look at how people handle money in the real world. She and her co-author, Jonathan Morduch, a researcher and professor at N.Y.U., worked with over 200 families for a year, gathering information on every dollar that went in and out of their homes.
"A huge finding was the level of volatility people experience in their financial lives over the course of a year," Ms. Schneider explained.
Although she expected to find income volatility year to year, she was surprised to see how widely income varied within the year, too. A subject could be above the poverty line for the year overall, but that same person could fall below the poverty line in any given month.
