In my defence, I didn’t get into financial trouble immediately after finishing my master’s degree in economics. It took months. I had a decently paid graduate job and was living within my means, so how did it happen? Simple: I had “cleverly” put all my savings in a 90-day notice account to maximise the interest I earned. When I was surprised by my first tax bill, I had no way of meeting the payment deadline. Oops.

Fortunately, my father was able to bridge the gap for me. He had no economics training, but three decades of extra experience had taught him a straightforward lesson: stuff happens, so it’s best to keep some ready cash in reserve if you can. It wasn’t the first collision between formal economics and the school of life, and it won’t be the last.

My eye was caught recently by James Choi’s scholarly article “Popular Personal Financial Advice versus the Professors”. Choi is a professor of finance at Yale. It’s traditionally a formidably technical discipline, but after Choi agreed to teach an undergraduate class in personal finance, he dipped into the market of popular financial self-help books to see what gurus such as Robert Kiyosaki, Suze Orman and Tony Robbins had to say on the subject.