September 10, 2025

Personal Finance is Broken—Can These Economists Fix It?

1 hour 19 minutes

My guests this week, economic professors John Campbell and Tarun Ramadorai, argue that the financial system itself is a powerful contributor to wealth inequality, and that there are ways to improve it. Their new book, Fixed: Why Personal Finance Is Broken and How to Make It Work for Everyone (out October 21), addresses how the bulk of our financial issues are downstream of poor structural design, not personal shortcomings—and what we can do about it.

(00:00): Intro

(04:00): 🏁 How our financial system allows the upper middle class to pull away from the lower middle class, even if they start in relatively similar places

(26:55): 😈 Why financial firms aren’t incented to make better products, and how “competition” produces services that exploit the human tendency for bad decision making

(41:42) 🏡 The unique products in the mortgage market that might actually be underutilized (like ARMs and reverse mortgages)

(57:50): 🍼 What John and Tarun would include in a “personal finance starter kit” for every adult (like a Finnish baby box, but for when you’re a baby adult in a predatory system)

(01:08:50): 👊 Where the three of us disagreed about who should be providing said starter kit

Our show is a production of Morning Brew and is produced by Henah Velez and Katie Gatti Tassin, with our audio engineering and sound design from Nick Torres. Devin Emery is President of Morning Brew content and additional fact checking comes from Scott Wilson.

Transcripts, show notes, resources, and credits will be available within a week at: https://moneywithkatie.com/personal-finance-broken.

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Money with Katie’s mission is to be the intersection where the economic, cultural, and political meet the tactical, practical, personal finance education everyone needs.

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