If there's another book out there which addresses the topic of behavioral finance as it relates to everyday consumers and the money decisions they make, AND manages to keep the discussion on a level suitable for folks who don't have a Ph.D. in economics, then I haven't found it. On my list, Why Smart People Make Big Money Mistakes (hereafter referred to as "WSPMBMM") stands alone as fitting that bill.

While the book has become a favorite in stock-market trader circles (a decent portion of the work is devoted to the psychological reasons behind "common investor mistakes"), the majority of its content would be a beneficial read for anyone who (1) makes money, and (2) spends money.

The back cover labels WSPMBMM "...a fascinating investigation of the ways we spend, invest, save, borrow, and waste money." And in most places, the book is pretty fascinating. There are a few occasions wherein the authors (Belsky is an award-winning business journalist, and Gilovich a professor of psychology at Cornell University) spend an overly noticeable amount of time detailing and critiquing the studies put forth by previous researchers in the field of behavioral finance. On the whole, though, it's a well-written venture.

Each chapter is laden with scads of details about these previous economic "experiments" — which usually involve coming up with "Suppose you encountered this financial situation; what would you do?" questionnaires and foisting them upon unsuspecting groups of college students. Broad-based conclusions were then drawn from the surveys. (In real life, I imagine these findings lead to lots of professorial back-patting, followed by the obligatory 40-page write-up being published in the Journal of Unintelligible Contemporary Financial Theorems.)

Following is an example of just such an "experiment" as it was related in WSPMBMM.

Reading that, did you get the feeling (as I did) that you were listening to a narrator on a Discovery channel documentary? That's the tone the authors undertake in the entire book, and I think it works well. (In their introduction, in fact, the authors write that they want the book's tone to resemble "...a conversation at a cocktail party.") Honestly, I applaud that goal. If you've ever troubled yourself to read an economic- or behavioral-finance-related paper published by any of the stuffy academic journals out there, then you'd understand why I'm happy that someone took the time to write a book that makes this stuff accessible to the rest of us.

Here's another passage, this from the chapter on anchoring. This paragraph, for me, brought about one of those "Sheesh, why didn't I notice that before?" moments. (For what it's worth, I had a lot of those moments in this book.)

Rather than attempt to summarize many more of the book's themes, I'll take the easy way out and simply show you the Table of Contents, along with the authors' descriptions of each chapter. They do a finer job of conveying the info than I could. And don't let the econo-psycho-babble terms scare you off; by the time you've finished each chapter, you'll be on top of all of it ... and it won't even have been that hard.

As often happens with me, I found WSPMBMM to be much better on the second reading. If you're interested in delving a bit into the psychological side of money, spending, and the nonsensical financial mishaps we all make from time to time, then this is likely going to be a worthwhile book for you.

Buy This Book At Amazon.com:
Why Smart People Make Big Money Mistakes
...and How to Correct Them

Ratings are on a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being the top ranking.
readability: Was it an enjoyable read?
believability: Could this work for me? Could this apply to me?
price vs. content: Is it worth the money? Would I read it again?