Why the money never stays

Listen to me. Most people believe the problem is the size of the wage. It is not.

I have seen a man earn very little and slowly build a house. I have seen another earn well and own nothing but debt, a fine telephone, and the good opinion of people who will not come to his funeral.

The money does not leave you because there is too little of it. It leaves you in the first hour, before you have even sat down to think. It goes to pride. It goes to the eyes of people who do not pay your bills. It goes to small comforts that feel like nothing on the day and add up to everything by the end of the year.

The five holes in your pocket

Your wage does not vanish. It drains, through holes that have been there so long you stopped seeing them. Look at them once, plainly.

Your bad week, drawn to scale

From the book. The bank rearranged the order of your transactions so the smallest purchase would tip you over. Then it charged you for the privilege.

The leak, by the numbers

Who I wrote this for

I wrote this for the working man and the working woman, somewhere between twenty-two and forty-five. The one who is paid on Friday and feels poor again by Monday.

You are not lazy. You are not stupid. You work hard, and still you cannot understand where it all went. That is not a fault in you. Nobody ever sat you down and told you the truth in plain words.

This book is not for people who already have money. They do not need me. It is for the one who is tired of watching the same month repeat itself, again and again.

Every hole has a chapter that closes it

I did not write this book to describe the water. I wrote it to plug the boat. Hole by hole, with the exact numbers waiting inside.

• Pride, and the neighbour's eyes closed in Chapter 2, with the rule I used my whole life when new money arrived
• Money with no name closed in Chapter 4, with my mother's jar system, unimproved in sixty years
• The leash of minimum payments closed in Chapter 3, in one debt-killing year, smallest first
• The rising floor closed in Chapter 4, with the one number that decides how free you are
• The predators, crude and polished named one by one in Chapters 1 and 10, with the question that unmasks them all

The water is leaking now

Every payday handled the old way is a payday you do not get back. There are only so many of them in a working life. The book at its dearest costs twenty dollars and ninety nine cents and asks for one evening. The holes are costing you more than that this week.