The Two Income Trap

Published in 2003, this book was way ahead of its time. I credit it with encouraging me to choose to focus on cash flow management and family issues in my own financial planning practice.

This revolutionary expose written by Harvard Law School bankruptcy expert Elizabeth Warren and her daughter, Amelia Tyagi, show that today's middle-class parents are increasingly trapped by cash flow shortfalls and financial peril.

The shocking finding: sending mothers to work has made families more vulnerable to financial disaster than ever before.  Today's two-income family earns 75% more money than its single-income counterpart of a generation ago, but has 25% less discretionary income to cover living costs.

The authors show why the usual remedies: child-support enforcement, subsidized daycare, and higher salaries for women-won't solve the problem.

But as the Wall Street Journal observed, "The book is brimming with proposed solutions to the nail-biting anxiety that the middle class finds itself in." From Senator Edward M. Kennedy to Dr. Phil to Bill Moyers, The Two-Income Trap has created a sensation among economists, politicians, and families-all those who care about America's middle-class crisis.