cover image Overcoming Underearning(tm): Overcome Your Money Fears and Earn What You Deserve

Overcoming Underearning(tm): Overcome Your Money Fears and Earn What You Deserve

Barbara Stanny. HarperCollins Publishers, $24.95 (220pp) ISBN 978-0-06-081861-6

Stanny let the men in her life-first, her father, Richard Block of H&R Block, and then her husband-manage her money, but a divorce and a financial crisis served as a wake-up call. Since then, the author of Secrets of Six-Figure Women and Prince Charming Isn't Coming has taken her message on the road to show underearners how to achieve a greener financial future, and here lays out her five-step plan for those with money worries who want to earn, as the subtitle suggests, what they deserve. Step one, Stanny says, is ""You've got to be willing to be uncomfortable."" She defines many of the barriers and negative mindsets that plague underearners and uses exercises throughout the book to help readers with their ""Inner Work,"" or their attitudes about money and self worth. It may take some very intensely willful delusion for readers who barely scrape by to envision themselves slathered in dough (and cynics may balk at the inspirational quotes from, say, Oprah and Groucho Marx), which is why Stanny employs a mind-spirit-pocketbook approach-learn to embrace money, be strong about what you want, earn more because you're worth more-that aims to change readers' thinking about money and improve financial habits (bottom line: save more). The advice here is common sense, but Stanny's upbeat empowerment will hit home with readers feeling the paycheck blues.