Index Card Finance

Guest: Harold Pollack, PhD, Professor of Social Policy at the University of Chicago, Co-Author of "The Index Card: Why Personal Finance Doesn't Have to Be Complicated" There’s an entire industry dedicated to helping us manage our money, make it work for us, plan for retirement, and get rich off the stock market with our best interests in mind. These financial advice companies give the impression that getting it right is enormously complicated and not something any sane person would undertake without help from a professional. But Harold Pollack says it’s just not true. He’s a professor of public policy at the University of Chicago and he off-handedly mentioned to a financial reporter a few years ago that everything most people need to know about money management could fit on a three-by-five card. Then he actually wrote it down on a three-by-five card. It went viral online and big name finance experts started agreeing with him. It was such a phenomenon that Pollack, and the original journalist he mentioned the card to, expanded the idea into a book. It’s called “The Index Card: Why Personal Finance Doesn’t Have to Be Complicated”, and it’s just out.