This book explores the personal savings and credit discourses surrounding post-war British consumer culture. This cultural history highlights the contradictory meanings of home ownership, domesticity, women's consumerism, and banking deregulation that underwrote unprecedented financial crisis and consumer indebtedness.

Introduction Prudent Investment and Modest Consumption Women, Home, Consumption, Lending and Ill Repute Hire Purchase, Home Furnishings and the Cult of Domesticity Gentlemanly Bankers Adopt a New Set of Manners Big Bang Banking The Press Takes on Personal Debt Three Personal Finance Discourses Personal Financial Identities in Psychology and Popular Literature Conclusion Bibliography

JACQUELINE BOTTERILL is Assistant Professor of Communication, Popular Culture and Film at Brock University, Canada. She is co-author of The Dynamics of Advertising (with Barry Richards and Iain MacRury), Social Communication in Advertising, (with William Leiss, Stephen Kline, Sut Jhally) along with numerous articles relating to the cultural analysis of marketing, promotion and economic processes.