Fixed: Why Personal Finance Is Broken and How to Make It Work for Everyone

Two leading economists reveal why today’s personal finance markets are rigged against us and offer practical steps to fix them

We interact with the financial system every day, whether taking out or paying off loans, making insurance claims, or simply depositing money into our bank accounts. Fixed exposes how this system has been corrupted to serve the interests of financial services providers and their cleverest customers--at the expense of ordinary people.

John Campbell and Tarun Ramadorai diagnose the ills of today’s personal finance markets in the United States and across the globe, looking at everything from short-term saving and borrowing to loans for education and housing, financial products for retirement, and insurance. They show how the system is ＂fixed＂ to benefit those who are wealthy and more educated while encouraging financial mistakes by those who are aren’t, making it difficult for regular consumers to make sound financial decisions and disadvantaging them in some of the most consequential economic transactions of their lives. Campbell and Ramadorai describe how some even opt out of the financial system altogether, relying on unregulated and often shady mechanisms to implement necessary financial functions, with dire consequences for individuals, families, and the economy more broadly.

With the explosive growth of the global middle class, longer lifespans, and greater numbers of seniors managing their money alone, the pitfalls of personal finance now affect billions of people around the world. Fixed proposes concrete solutions that harness the expertise of economists, the power of government, and the speed of technology to restore fairness and trust in our broken system and make it work better for ordinary people.

John Y. Campbell is the Morton L. and Carole S. Olshan Professor of Economics at Harvard University and the author of several books, including Financial Decisions and Markets and The Squam Lake Report (both Princeton). Tarun Ramadorai is professor of financial economics at Imperial College London. From 2016 to 2017, he served as chairman of the Inter-Regulatory Committee on Household Finance of the Reserve Bank of India.