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Netflix further delves into kinda-weird PSA/life-coach content with Get Smart with Money, a feature-length sort-of-documentary in which four Americans – of the Millennial/frontline Gen Z persuasion – share their money woes and get financial guidance from experts. You may see yourself in some of these people, who are either saddled with debt or don’t know a damn thing about investments and retirement savings. And that’s the hook, because their experiences, laid bare and deconstructed, might just yield some practical application to your own situation, oh ye average American.
The Gist: Lindsey barely gets by working two service-industry jobs. She sometimes struggles with depression, but has no health insurance, and can’t afford the therapy she needs. She went to fashion school and is a skilled artist in many mediums. And she’s kinda stuck here, so Paula Pant, a financial journalist and entrepreneur, sits down with Lindsey and helps her shore up her spending, and stir up ideas for side gigs that could help her shift some focus to her artistic ambitions.
Teez is a professional football player. He was the Detroit Lions’ second-round draft pick in 2017, so his first paycheck was for $1.6 million. NICE, right? Well, 40 percent of that went to the IRS. He bought his mom a house. He bought himself a house – and about $60,000 in jewelry. And all of a sudden, he wasn’t so rich. He put on the brakes, but didn’t know what to do next. These days, he’s married and has a toddler and has bounced around from team to team, so he often goes many months without a paycheck. Ro$$ Mac, who dubs himself a “Wall Street rapper,” steps in and teaches Teez what the S&P 500 is. If Teez had taken that $60k in bling and put it in the market, it could be worth much much more than that – and maybe he’d feel a little more secure about his ability to provide for his family.
Adriana is the daughter of immigrants from the Dominican Republic. She has two kids, an old car, $108,000 in student loan debt and $45,000 in credit card debt. For years, she justified buying this and that and the other things, nickel-and-diming her way into this deep hole that has her living paycheck to paycheck. Tiffany Aliche, an author and financial educator, takes a look at Adriana’s situation and helps her change her spending habits and manage her money better so those trips to Target don’t further cripple her – and maybe she and her significant other finally can afford to take the kids on vacation.
Kim and John have two kids and a pretty damn nice house. He got laid off from his engineering job thanks to the pandemic, but her gig as a psychotherapist and women’s empowerment coach skyrocketed. Now John is a stay-at-home dad and Kim is making in the neighborhood of $300,000 a year. But she hardly ever has time to spend with the family – and they have no idea how to manage that much money. So in steps Pete Adeney, a.k.a. Mr. Money Mustache, a blogger who scaled back his lifestyle, invested his money and retired young. He has some ideas to help Kim and John stop blowing through $13,000 a month (!) so Kim can not only afford to take some time off, but maybe even retire in 10 years or less.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: This not-at-all-traditional doc is somewhere between FYI-fodder like Explained and advice-for-living stuff along the lines of Netflix’s Headspace series, which purport to help you learn to meditate, sleep better, etc. Also, ESPN’s 30 for 30: Broke goes deeper into Teez-like situations, deep-diving into why so many athletes go from nothing to millions and back to nothing.
Performance Worth Watching: Teez’s story is pretty common among young professional athletes who go from modest-to-poor backgrounds to PHAT paychecks overnight. Teez and Ro$$ Mac do more than just solve the problems of one NFL player – they also park in front of an assemblage of young Black men, presumably athletes, to educate them about money management.
Memorable Dialogue: Teez speaks for the Black community when he addresses his background on money and finance: “It’s a language that’s never taught to us.”
Sex and Skin: None.
Our Take: Cheers to the participants in Get Smart with Money, who were brave enough to so openly discuss their lives and their bank-account details so zillions of Netflix subscribers can judge them. It’s bound to happen, because the hectoring stop-buying-avocado-toast a-holes are going to look at Lindsey’s sizable takeout expenditures and wag their fingers. But hey, whether it’s financial education or learning to judge not lest ye etc., we all have room for improvement, right? And it’s inspiring to see Lindsey shore up that part of her finances and rustle up enough time to land a mural commission and sell her wares at art fairs.
If nothing else, the movie will allow you to indulge some of your voyeuristic tendencies. Other peoples’ lives are SO FASCINATING sometimes, aren’t they?
Director Stephanie Soechtig makes sure there’s some small emotional component to each participant’s story: Lindsey’s depression temporarily curtails her ambition. Adriana’s old car breaks down, and she doesn’t have much in the emergency fund to cover the repairs. Teez gets let go by the Lions and goes to the 49ers then hurts his foot and gets cut and lands on the Bears’ practice squad, and his future in the NFL may be short. Kim and John ONLY cut $3k from their monthly expenditures so, OK, maybe they’re not quite as easy to sympathize with, but that’s still a problem that needs to be managed.
The doc is calculated to highlight four money-management situations that are common enough to relate to a lot of middle-class folk aged roughly 25-35. The advice doled out can be overly simplistic (“you can’t lose making long-term investments in the S&P 500” is an absurdly pared-down description of how Wall Street can work for the common person), but it’s a starting point where many have none. And sure, it’s a promotional tool for these four financial experts, but their advice is sound.
So what’s the subtext here? Well, the doc is kind of a cross-section of the experience of living within modern American capitalism. YOU, CITIZEN, ARE A CONSUMER, it says, which is a little terrifying, until you realize being a smarter consumer is absolutely to your advantage. A few times, our advice-givers hint at deeper issues, the big one being, how American education emphasizes consumerism over all else. But Soechtig skirts around that, avoiding the big-idea stuff and leaning into the type of solid, pragmatic information you might get from an advice columnist. For more on Grand Fu- er, I mean, financial education, consult your school library. And maybe Get Smart with Money II will delve into the financial woes of the minimum-wage class, which would be a far more ambitious, thorny venture.
Will you stream or skip the informational and inspirational financial doc #GetSmartWithMoney on @netflix? #SIOSI
— Decider (@decider) September 15, 2022
Our Call: Get Smart with Money doles out information and inspiration (for its middle-class demographic target) in an engaging enough way to warrant a watch. STREAM IT and then wonder if $15.49 a month for Netflix is a cuttable expenditure.
John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com.
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