The Soul of Money: A Book Review With Some Serious Eye Rolling
Well. Yesterday, at the beach, I finished The Soul Of Money by Lynne Twist (that’s an affiliate link so if you buy through there I’ll get a bit of money).
I had to do it at the beach because I’d been avoiding finishing it and knew that if I had any other options - like cleaning the toilet, doing my Swedish homework or scratching my bum on the sofa - I’d be doing those.
I didn’t hate the book. In fact I think there are some really solid concepts in there but parts of it made me really uncomfortable and parts of it I downright hated. It’s one of those finance books which is referred to again and again though, and it’s not a particularly difficult book to read. It’s also been on my to-be-read pile forever so it felt silly not to finish it. I’m glad I did but it hasn’t changed my life.
So let me start with what I did like…
What The Soul of Money Gets Right
This isn’t a financial how to book, in any way whatsoever. It’s a book about our relationship with money and how that affects how we live our lives, and earn and use money. A lot of the book is about the stories we tell ourselves about money and equity and in that way, it fits pretty well into a lot of what I want to do here.
She offers some myths about money and counters them: there isn’t enough, more is better and the way it is is just the way it is. These concepts are illustrated by real examples from her life as a wealthy housewife turned charity fundraiser and she really has led an interesting life meeting a lot of people from all walks of life all over the globe. It’s quite a captivating read from that perspective really. She also has a knack for pulling in stories and anecdotes from every corner of life - she mentions the Apollo 11 mission, the effect of advertisements on children, a story of a guy leaving the Amazon Rainforest and learning how to use money for the first time.
Sufficiency, Not Scarcity: The Book's Central Idea
I would say the central idea of the book is sufficiency. There is enough. She talks about this from lots of angles - illustrated by a deep, abiding respect for her personal friend Mother Teresa (eye roll…more on that later). One connection that she makes which I loved was about the environment and scarcity. She has worked with a lot of Indigenous people on safeguarding the natural environment, and the environment is certainly something she brings up a lot in the book.
The perspective I thought was interesting was that a lot of environmental activism comes from a place of assuming the resources are about to run out so we must conserve them and it leads to desperation. She describes it as a game of musical chairs where we understand that there isn’t enough for everybody and so everybody is grasping and running and stressing. If we come from an assumption that there is enough, plenty even, then we can take a calmer approach which emphasises stewardship, sharing and regeneration rather than desperate grasping and hoarding.
I’m not totally sure that’s the whole answer - a lot of what she suggests feels quite simplistic (although, maybe it is that simple??). But what’s happening now isn’t working, for the planet or the humans on it, and it does appear that this extractive mindset has led us here.
She goes into some depth about early economic theorists, like Adam Smith, who posited that the self-interest of humans is the natural order and the inevitable basis for our relationship with money. She compares that with her experience of Indigenous cultures’ reciprocity in ways which feel a little ‘noble savage’ but certainly start to poke holes in the narrative of individualism. She backs it up with reference to more contemporary economic theories about how greed and fear of scarcity are programmed rather than innate.
It’s interesting and wide ranging.
Money as a Tool (and a Legacy)
The other aspect that I loved about this book is the concept of money as a tool. She mentions individual finance here - choosing good investments, making ethical shopping decisions, buying less, appreciating what you do have including social relationships but I think the main emphasis is on philanthropy - both personal and corporate. There’s a heavy emphasis on giving to charity, monetarily as well as with time and effort and a really moving segment towards the end about caring for her mother as she was dying.
They spent time reminiscing about her life and part of this was about money. They discussed the charitable works she’d taken part in and the legacy that they left. For example she fundraised for an adoption agency to build a nursery where orphaned or abandoned children would live and also meet prospective parents. She, along with a group of other women, organised bake sales, second-hand clothing drives and garden tours but when they were falling just short of the target she had the idea to reach out for support from families who had already used the adoption service. They smashed the goal of course, and Twist and her mother realised that the children adopted through this new centre would now be in their 50’s - probably with children and grandchildren of their own. Quite an impact.
Her mother then spent some time thinking about each of her grandchildren, their different needs, qualities and desires and she wrote cheques to them to give whilst she was still alive so she could partake in their joy and the process of planning and imagining how they would use the money. This felt really joyful.
Finally she contacted people from her everyday life, who might generally be underappreciated, and told them exactly how they had affected her life positively - her dry cleaner, the owner of her favourite restaurant and her favourite server there, her hairdresser. They were all invited to her funeral. I found this bit particularly affecting, having owned an independent and developed deep relationships with customers, the connection you feel towards customers is really a unique feeling and one that lots of people will never understand. Nobody thinks to inform the yarn shop owner when somebody dies, but if you’re doing business right then you’re an integral part of their lives, a genuine source of support, you will mourn for them and you want to celebrate their life too. This isn’t nothing. I still think of many of my customers now, especially my older ladies, and wonder how they’re doing.
I also really appreciated the delicate handling of caring for a loved one as they die. It’s a such a specific feeling and not one that it’s possible to comprehend until you’ve been through it. Lots of people have been through it, of course, and I’m grateful that we have eloquent people in the world who can help me put my thoughts in more order. I guess that’s less about money though, and more about relationships, sharing wisdom and gratitude which are also key themes throughout the book.
Now, the Problems
So, the stuff I didn’t love. And there was a lot so I probably won’t get to everything!
Fat-Phobia Dressed Up as Wisdom
She really doesn’t like fat people. Like really doesn’t like them.
One of the first stories in the book is about how she met Mother Teresa and they had a quiet, spiritual, grown-up conversation about peace, sufficiency and charity, and then they were interrupted by this terrible, fat couple. They had met Mother Teresa just before Twist and forgotten to have a photo taken so they came back and demanded one. To be fair, the couple sounded pretty insufferable but the imagery of these fat people squishing poor old, saintly (literally), tiny, feeble Mother Teresa between their gluttonous bodies was absolutely vile.
The point of the story, actually, was that Mother Teresa taught her that wealthy people had their own burdens which were just as difficult to bear as poor people (eye roll…) and thus we shouldn’t judge them but meet them honestly where they are. She comes back to this repeatedly through the book - it’s okay to be rich, seriously rich even. It’s totally fine to have extra wealth stashed away in bank accounts or investments but it is absolutely unacceptable to have extra calories stashed away in your thighs… It made me wonder if she truly believed what is actually a huge part of the book, that wealthy people suffer too, or if she’s just been able to put that into words to sound noble but subconsciously switched her wealth-hate to fat people.
In the last chapter she uses the caterpillar to butterfly analogy to describe where we are in our societal struggle with money. I’m sure we’ve all heard - caterpillars don’t know what they’re doing when they’re eating, eating, eating, spinning a little silky cocoon, turning into mush and then reemerging as a butterfly - they just do it. It’s often used to help people who feel shit about themselves right now to imagine themselves as the caterpillar soup that will become the butterfly.
She’s using it as a metaphor for our society which is eating everything in sight right now, or maybe we’re mush and all very confused, but we will emerge as butterflies in an egalitarian, just and fair society. Tell me why she has to describe it as ‘a voracious, overconsumptive glutton, consuming everything in sight and within reach… the more it consumes the more fat and sluggish it gets’. Just kind of gross.
The White Saviourism Problem
Which brings me to another thought I couldn’t get out of my head throughout the whole book - white saviourism. White saviourism is the (usually positive) depiction of a white person rescuing, helping or liberating people of colour because they can’t do it themselves. It is often in relation to charity or aid, and extends into voluntourism and performative allyship online too.
About half way through the book I google ‘The Soul of Money and white saviourism’ and basically nothing turned up which I thought was so interesting! This is a seminal personal finance book, referred to again and again, the core of a lot of coaching and understanding in the area and yet there doesn’t seem to be any criticism of it. It’s an old book now, originally published in 2003, and I think we had a very different understanding of the world then but it’s not as if it’s disappeared from the mainstream and so we can forget to criticise it. I was shaking my head.
Now, I should preface this by saying that it appears that Lynne Twist is in the trenches here. She’s been an activist in this area since the 1970’s and I’ve no doubt she’s done a lot of good in the world. She also emphasises throughout the book that the charities and foundations which she works with and for focus on supporting the creation of homegrown solutions.
One example was how a wealthy woman (presumably from the US but it’s not specified) was paired with a group of women from Senegal who wanted to set up a micro-lending business in their neighbourhood based on an agricultaral business. The wealthy woman brought the money of course, but the eight Senegalese women each brought their own resources, and these were named; one woman was a natural leader, one good at accounting, one a promoter, another good with food storage etc. The idea was that in collaboration everybody’s unique gift can be valued and nobody is the ‘recipient’ but each a key stakeholder. This was a new concept at the time according to Twist, and ridiculed because it looked very different to the traditional charitable model but it’s been successful. It’s certainly how I understand charity now. I mean, it’s hard to argue with that isn’t it?
I just felt quite uncomfortable with a lot of the examples. I can only think of two which focussed on western people or groups. One was a story contrasting a CEO of a multi-national corporation and the poor, old but wise Black woman from Harlem who changed the way Twist saw money through an unschooled, but sage and soulful speech. The other was a group of female managers at Microsoft who were snapped out of their over-busy, goal-oriented, strict and regimented lives by stories of the community and wisdom of women from Senegal or Bangladesh, who despite their dire poverty were able to delight in their families, children and dancing, and also ‘[celebrate] life and love’. Can I write ‘eye roll…’ again?
A lot of the book is about individual power against structural problems - resting heavily on giving to charity and also individual people, groups and community building businesses and stability for themselves. There is mention of economics, politics, gendered access to power and big business - even the slave trade actually - but no mention of colonialism, unequal trade systems, debt burdens, discrimination and unequal access to healthcare, education and financial services. Just plucky people of colour who could pull themselves up by their own bootstraps if only westerners just realised they had enough and could start living a better life by giving to charity.
The saving grace I guess is that she’s talking (exclusively I think) about what she learns from these people rather than what she’s taught them. She seems to value what they bring to the table at the same worth as the money that she’s bringing with her but yeah, it just never stops and it gets quite boring actually. I wonder if I would have felt differently if I was reading this in 2003? Or if I was reading this as a wealthy US citizen? Or as somebody who had never felt financially capable? Perhaps it’s not meant for me - a white, middle class woman from the UK with fairly sound financial knowledge and a strong pull towards community building.
It’s also worth pointing out that wealth in the West looked very different then. The richest person in the world was Bill Gates with $40.7 billion. The richest person in the world right now is Elon Musk with $913 billion according to Wikipedia right now but which peaked at $1.4trillion on June the 16th 2026 (he wasn’t even on the Forbes list in 2003, but he had just sold Paypal for £180 million in 2002). That’s quite a different landscape and I think we have quite a different understanding of wealth and inequality now.
Mother Teresa's Halo Problem
Finally, I just wanted to mention Mother Teresa. Did you know there’s a statue of her outside Tirana Airport in Albania? Neither did I until we saw it looming over us as we pulled out in our taxi on the way to our hotel a couple of months ago.
The allegations against Mother Teresa, accepting money from criminals and fraudsters, glorifying suffering, providing poor medical care whilst accepting large donations, sending the money straight to the Vatican and opposing contraception and abortion, were publicly available at the time of the publishing of the book but they probably weren’t that well known. It’s obvious that Lynne Twist has a personal connection with the saint, she writes about meeting her and having deep conversations, it’s also clear that she admires her a lot, and there is no evidence that I can find that Twist has ever been critical of Mother Teresa. Twist seems most impressed by Mother Teresa’s ability to live in sufficiency, again and again it’s repeated that she is content that when the money is needed it will be there - by the grace of God.
My edition was published in 2017, just a year after she was canonised, and by then the allegations were very well known including a study by Serge Larivée from the University of Montreal from 2013. There doesn’t seem to be any acknowledgement that perhaps the money she received by the grace of God might actually be by the grace of criminality…
So, Should You Read It? My Verdict
In conclusion... Well, I don’t know quite what to say. I believe in the principles that she’s espousing - money itself is neutral but we make it mean something through our stories, sufficiency is the antidote to scarcity and that’s valuable, we should be intentional about our money and not hoard it but use it wisely, people are capable of creating wonderful things especially in community and should have the support to do so, we should be outward looking and value our world and our relationships, and we shouldn’t be constantly searching for more. I don’t know how many of these concepts originate with her or this book really, a lot of it is commonly accepted within personal finance (certainly the circles I’m in) but perhaps it wasn’t when the book was released.
I know that there’s a lot of good stuff in here, and it’s an easy read - enjoyable for the most part - she’s an interesting woman who’s done a lot more than most with her life but… I’d love for there to be more acknowledgement of the structural issues and a little more introspection about who we choose to deify and vilify.
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Love Eleanor xxx
