It seems that everywhere you look today in the personal finance world, Jim Cramer is there. He is on TV every day with his show “Mad Money,” where he entertains with his wild antics as well as gives personal finance advice and answers questions from viewers. The show gets good ratings and provides a nice overview of the stock market, if you are interested in investing in particular stocks or particular sectors. Cramer is a former hedge fund manager, which gives him some credibility in this arena.
Cramer is also a best-selling author, and has six books. He has books on investing, wall street, and increasing your wealth. His wide variety of books is a reason that he is becoming very popular in personal finance circles, because he has books that would interest most people. The variety helps to make him more marketable because it exposes more people to his work and his stuff.
Typically, personal finance has been more laid back and factual, where as Cramer may be changing the face of personal finance because he is a lot more in your face and likes to yell and get animated. This goes against a lot of personal finance advice, which deals with making smart, rational decisions over and over as a way to get rich. While this may be Cramer’s message, it gets lost sometimes in his delivery. At times, it matters less what he is saying, and more about how entertaining he can be while he is saying it, because that is what will make viewers continue to turn into Mad Money on CNBC.
In general, most people find personal finance to be boring, and Cramer is well aware of this. This fact is what makes his shtick so successful, and a way that the personal finance industry is being changed. People are often more interested in being entertained rather than receiving sound advice. With the way that most people perform when picking stocks, the vast majority of them would be better served to buy broad-based index funds, but that type of advice will not sell or relate to TV. Thus, Cramer animatedly picks stocks or tells you which sectors you should be interested in purchasing stocks in. Regardless of whether it is sound advice, it is what people want to hear. In this way, Cramer is changing the face of personal finance. Let’s hope he continues to give people sound, practical financial advice.