Think Like a Breadwinner: A Wealth-Building Manifesto for Women Who Want to Earn More (and Worry Less)

Barrett (The Smart Cookies’ Guide to Making More Dough), chief education officer at financial services company Acorns, pleas in this dated-feeling guide for women to take responsibility for their own financial situations. Assuming men will make more money is, she writes, a common belief: “Most of us were conditioned to believe that we wouldn’t have to take care of ourselves for very long, and we weren’t brought up to prepare for that possibility.” She encourages readers to embrace a “breadwinner mindset” in which they’re financially self-sufficient and have confidence in being so despite a culture that discourages them. Barrett gives tips for countering internal beliefs about money and who should make it (such as an exercise in which readers examine “What values drive you?”), and suggests strategies for navigating systemic barriers to career achievement (advising readers to prove their worth to an employer by keeping track of notes of praise, for example). Her tips for women who want to negotiate better at work are concise and reasonable if not groundbreaking, but her generalizations and assumptions about women’s expectations and tendencies, such as succumbing to “princess fantasies,” are frustrating. This is a disappointing miss. Agent: Richard Pine, Inkwell Management. (Apr.)