Get Smart with Money: come gestire al meglio le tue finanze

Supposedly an "informative documentary... on managing money", Get Smart with Money instead offers more reason not to move to or live in the United States. We have a waitress who makes $4000 a month, spends almost $200 a week on takeout, then claims to have no money left to pay for anti-depressants. Which is more damning, that or the fact she thinks the only way to deal with her anxiety and depression is to take medication? Next we have a young mother who is deep in debt with a penchant for impulsive spending and it does not occur to her that she should trade retail therapy for actual psychotherapy. Then comes the NFL athlete who earned more with his first professional pay check than most people on the planet earn in a lifetime crying that he has financial worries. Finally the stay-at-home dad and his life-coach wife whose issue is her curiously skyrocketing income from empowering women and his apparent joblessness? These sound like manufactured difficulties to me and insulting to those facing real hardship.

It is difficult to have sympathy for these people because they are so swept up by the ideals of financial and material success in their society that they do not take pause and ask themselves what they actually value in life. Unfortunately, they are no closer to examining their own values and definition of success when they have these dubious experts impose their values on them. If it was so easy making money by investing, there would not be poor people left on this planet. Where there are winners, there will always be losers; for some to gain, others have to lose. This is simply the way the world works. It is ironic that one of them pointed out that money is a "tool". If it is indeed a tool, what explains their obsession over it and the idea of early retirement? Instead of taking advantage of one's talents to make money, they could focus on living a self-actualised life led according to one's values. I would argue that it is the collective obsession with wealth that is making Americans mentally unwell. They have so much compared to other parts of the world, but yet remain so deeply dissatisfied.

Can be watched as comedy. But as documentary it is all around an insult to your intelligence if you know basic arithmetics and very basic financial knowledge. And if not, it's misleading and unsound financial advice.

Some nuggets of gold from these so called "financial experts":

• Put all your money on S&P 500 bro, you feel me? It returns %10(no, it's not) you will be a millionaire. Google warren buffet bruh, he is the best.

• Put 8k every month in S&P 500, you will retire as a couple in 5 years(!) with 2 kids (!) and at age 40 (!). (Do you have a calculator?)

• Bro I bought apple and Facebook shares too! Man you couldn't do better.

This documentary was I think shot during the legendary covid bull rally. So everyone seemed happy with profits. My worry is some people watching it now will start deploying all their money to these risk assets unproportionally and get hammered.

I also don't understand the dream of early retirement and stop working. What are you gonna do after you retire at age 40? Sit all day at beach? (Probably you can't afford it anyway living off the interest of your s&p500) Can't you do anything useful for the world which you also enjoy doing and can also get paid?

If you don't care about your finances, just want to complain about not having money and do nothing about it, read the negative reviews and you will find lots of sympathy.

If you do, watch the documentary and pick up what could be used for your own life's scenario.

In terms of the quality of the documentary, you have to realize that you won't learn from anybody how do deal with your personal finances because as the name suggests, they are personal. What this video does is teach you about financial literacy, and in this category I have to say it's one of the best out there. From the get go I was skeptic on for how long they would follow up on the various cases they show, since in financial literacy it doesn't work to just give someone advice and expect everything to go smoothly. So following up until one year later is a reasonable amount of time to get an ideia of how its working out.

To really show you how to get better with money in a film, they would have to follow these people 24/7 for 5 years, so you realize what the mindset around good financial decisions is.

What they have done instead is give you some examples for you to look into financial literacy a bit more in depth if you think it makes sense for you.

They should do more documentaries like this, even if it just helps a couple of people at a time.

We watched this with our two college students home for the summer, it was eye opening for them and made an important impression I hope they carry into their young adult lives. The reviews here are very polarized, love it or hate it. Americans' relationship with money is not unlike our relatinship with food. Basic truths of spend less, save more; eat less, lose weight are the hard truths we don't really want to hear. Most want mindless entertainment to forget problems, not a documentary that challenges their life choices. Mr. Money Mustache should teach a required high school class, entertaining, and espouses a life style that would benefit many as well as our planet. Get Smart with Money is worth your time, but only if you are open ways to think about the world. If you think you know it all, you really know nothing.

In a world of nearly limitless possibilities and scenarios that will affect ones personal finances, this documentary follows a select few individuals with different stories of their own.

Get Smart with Money is aimed at the most basic level of personal finance but it also tries to relate to as many income levels as possible.

If you follow your finances closely and manage your money well then this documentary is only going to serve as pure entertainment for you, as it did for me. There are no new or groundbreaking ideas shared within this hour and a half long video. It was interesting to see the lives of various individuals at different stages in their careers but nearly the same level of knowledge about personal finance.

If you are lost in your personal finance journey then this is a good starting point. Latch on to one, two, or all of these financial advisors and learn more than what is shared in the documentary. They only lay out the foundation on what you need to do to fully experience a life changing financial mindset.

This documentary definitely worth watching by anyone who enjoys listening to personal finances stories, however, if you are actively against the basic fundamentals then you will be annoyed at the advice given. Typically, the people who I see getting annoyed at basic advice have an unrealistic expectation on the rest of society and cannot see who the targeted audience is. Just because something isn't for you, doesn't mean it's bad for the masses.