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📚 reading list: everything they never taught you about money
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items I didn't learn anything useful about money growing up. Not in school, not at home, not at church. What I picked up was a mix of shame, avoidance, and the vague sense that wanting money was somehow unladylike or greedy.
It took years of reading, unlearning, and trial-and-error to build any kind of financial confidence. These books were part of that process. Some taught me the basics I should have learned at 18. Others helped me understand my own weird relationship w...
I've organized this list by theme rather than difficulty. Start wherever feels right. Whether you're digging out of debt, finally ready to invest, or just trying to understand why money feels so emotionally loaded, there's something here for you.
It took years of reading, unlearning, and trial-and-error to build any kind of financial confidence. These books were part of that process. Some taught me the basics I should have learned at 18. Others helped me understand my own weird relationship w...
I've organized this list by theme rather than difficulty. Start wherever feels right. Whether you're digging out of debt, finally ready to invest, or just trying to understand why money feels so emotionally loaded, there's something here for you.
Sections
6
The Basics No One Explained
The Psychology Behind Your Money Habits
Investing Without the Bro Culture
The System Isn't Broken — It Was Built This Way
Women, Money & Power
Building Wealth on Your Own Terms
The Basics No One Explained
The foundational stuff that should have been taught in high school but wasn't. Budgeting, saving, automating your finances — the unglamorous mechanics of not being broke.
The book that finally made personal finance click for me. Sethi is blunt, often annoying, and absolutely right about most things. He focuses on automating your money and optimizing the big wins instead of obsessing over lattes. If you only read one b...
I Will Teach You to Be Rich: 6-Week Program
Written for people who break out in hives at the thought of budgeting. Lowry is relatable and practical — she covers everything from splitting bills with roommates to having the money talk with a partner. A great starting point if you're in your twen...
Broke Millennial: Stop Scraping By & Get Finances
The premise is that all the financial advice you need fits on a single index card. They're mostly right. It's short, no-nonsense, and strips away the complexity the financial industry profits from. Read it in an afternoon and feel less overwhelmed.
The Index Card: Why Personal Finance Is Simple
Aliche breaks financial health into ten components and walks you through each one. It's thorough without being overwhelming, and she writes with warmth. Particularly good if you're starting from scratch or rebuilding after a financial setback.
Get Good with Money: 10 Steps to Financially Whole
Covers money basics alongside the life stuff that intersects with finances — career, relationships, food, home. It's approachable and realistic about what it means to manage money when you're not making six figures. A good companion to the more techn...
The Financial Diet: Beginner's Guide to Money
De Leon is a queer Filipina-American financial planner, and the book came out in 2022 to strong reviews. It covers the basics — budgeting, debt, saving, investing — but with an inclusive, non-judgmental approach that acknowledges not everyone starts ...
Finance for the People by Paco De Leon
The Psychology Behind Your Money Habits
Why do you spend the way you do? Why does money feel so emotional? These books dig into the behavioral and psychological side of personal finance — the stuff spreadsheets can't fix.
Housel argues that financial success has less to do with intelligence than behavior. Each chapter is a short, compelling essay about how we think (and don't think) about money. I've bought more copies of this book for friends than any other on this l...
The Psychology of Money: Wealth & Happiness
The original "enough is enough" book. Robin reframes money as something you trade your life energy for, which sounds woo-woo but actually shifted how I think about spending. It's been around since the '90s for a reason.
Your Money or Your Life: 9 Steps to Financial Independence
A psychologist and a financial planner examine the "money scripts" we inherit from our families — unconscious beliefs that shape our financial behavior. If you've ever wondered why you keep making the same money mistakes, this book has answers.
Mind over Money by Brad Klontz & Ted Klontz
Dunn is honest about her own financial chaos, which makes this feel less like a lecture and more like a conversation. She also digs into the systemic stuff — how being queer, or broke, or from a broke family shapes your relationship with money.
Bad with Money: The Imperfect Art by Gaby Dunn
Richards is a financial planner who draws simple sketches to illustrate the gap between what we know we should do and what we actually do with money. It's short, visual, and helpful for understanding why knowing better doesn't always mean doing bette...
The Behavior Gap: Stop Doing Dumb Things with Money
Investing Without the Bro Culture
Investing doesn't have to feel like a boys' club or a casino. These books make it accessible without being condescending, and none of them will try to sell you on crypto or day trading.
Bogle invented the index fund and founded Vanguard — he's the reason low-cost passive investing exists. This short book makes the case for why you should stop trying to beat the market and just own it instead. It's the philosophical foundation for ev...
The Little Book of Common Sense Investing
Collins wrote this as a series of letters to his daughter. It's a straightforward, no-BS guide to index fund investing. He makes a compelling case for simplicity — one fund, low fees, time in the market. The antidote to everything confusing about inv...
The Simple Path to Wealth by JL Collins
The classic academic case for passive investing. It's denser than Collins but thorough. Malkiel has been updating it for decades, and the core argument holds: you can't reliably beat the market, so stop trying.
A Random Walk Down Wall Street by Burton Malkiel
Written specifically for women who've been told investing is "too complicated" or "not for them." Kaur started an investing education platform and brings that accessible energy to the book. A good confidence-builder.
Girls That Invest: Guide to Financial Independence
Dunlap built a massive following teaching women to invest, and this book delivers on that promise. It's practical, feminist in its framing, and doesn't assume you already know anything. A solid entry point if the other investing books feel intimidati...
Financial Feminist: Master Money & Build Life
Schultheis makes investing as boring as possible — and that's the point. Build a simple portfolio, ignore the noise, get on with your life. It's been around since the late '90s and the core advice hasn't changed because it doesn't need to. A good rea...
The Coffeehouse Investor by Bill Schultheis
The System Isn't Broken — It Was Built This Way
The structural forces that make wealth-building harder for some than others. Housing, debt, race, policy — these books connect personal finance to the bigger picture.
Warren wrote this before she became a senator, back when she was a bankruptcy law professor. It examines why middle-class families are going broke even with two incomes — and spoiler, it's not because of lattes. Some of the data is dated, but the str...
The Two-Income Trap by Elizabeth Warren
A history of Black banking in America and why the racial wealth gap persists. Baradaran is a law professor, and she's meticulous about the policy history. It's dense but essential if you want to understand why bootstrapping advice rings hollow for so...
The Color of Money: Black Banks & Wealth Gap
Ehrenreich went undercover working minimum wage jobs to see if she could survive. She couldn't. It's a classic piece of immersion journalism that puts a human face on poverty wages. If you've never worked a service job, this is required reading.
Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America
Desmond followed eight families in Milwaukee through evictions and documented the cascading consequences of housing instability. It won the Pulitzer for a reason. One of those books that rewires how you see the world.
Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City
Olen takes aim at the personal finance industry itself — the gurus, the products, the bad advice. It's a useful corrective to the idea that if you just follow the right tips, everything will work out. Sometimes the game is rigged.
Pound Foolish: Dark Side of Personal Finance
Quart examines why middle-class life has become unaffordable — childcare, housing, education, healthcare. She profiles real families struggling despite doing "everything right." It's well-reviewed and complements The Two-Income Trap without overlappi...
Squeezed: Why Families Can't Afford America
Schwartz, a New York Times reporter, examines how American businesses have built two-tiered systems — premium experiences for those who can pay, and increasingly degraded service for everyone else. From airlines to hospitals to amusement parks, he sh...
The Velvet Rope Economy by Nelson D. Schwartz
Servon, a professor, went undercover working at check cashers and payday lenders to understand why people use them instead of banks. Spoiler: the traditional banking system fails low-income people by design. I think it pairs well with The Color of Mo...
The Unbanking Of America by Lisa Servon
Tirado's viral essay about poverty turned into this book — a blunt, first-person account of what it's actually like to be poor in America and why the "just work harder" advice is nonsense. It's rawer than Nickel and Dimed and hits differently.
Hand to Mouth: Living in Bootstrap America
Women, Money & Power
Books that specifically address the financial challenges women face — the wage gap, the confidence gap, the unpaid labor gap — and offer strategies for building wealth anyway.
Rodgers is a Black woman, mother of four, and self-made millionaire — and she's not interested in playing small. This book is part mindset work, part practical strategy, and entirely unapologetic about wanting women to have money and power. It's galv...
We Should All Be Millionaires by Rachel Rodgers
Steinberg founded DailyWorth and brings a financial planner's perspective specifically tailored to women. She covers the emotional and practical sides of building wealth, including the stuff we're not supposed to talk about — like wanting to be rich.
Worth It: Your Life, Your Money, Your Terms
Conroy addresses financial challenges faced by women in non-traditional situations — single moms, domestic violence survivors, women with disabilities. It's practical and inclusive in ways most financial books aren't.
The Feminist Financial Handbook by Brynne Conroy
Building Wealth on Your Own Terms
What does financial freedom actually look like for you? These books challenge conventional wisdom about saving, spending, and what it means to have "enough."
Perkins argues that we're too focused on saving and not focused enough on spending our money when we can actually enjoy it. It's provocative and won't apply to everyone, but it's a useful counterweight to the "hoard everything" mentality.
Die With Zero: Maximize Life Experiences by Bill Perkins
A Black couple documents their path to early retirement and financial independence. It's refreshing to see FIRE content from a perspective other than the usual tech-bro narrative. Practical and relatable.
Cashing Out: Win the Wealth Game by Saunders
The classic study of how millionaires actually live — spoiler: they drive used cars and live below their means. Some of it is dated, but the core insight holds: wealth is about what you keep, not what you earn.
The Millionaire Next Door by Stanley & Danko
Shen grew up in poverty in China, became a software engineer, and retired at 31. The book is part memoir, part investing guide, and entirely no-nonsense about the math of financial independence.
Quit Like a Millionaire by Kristy Shen & Bryce Leung