Best Financial Planning Books for Beginners
- Your Money or Your Life
- Personal Finance for Dummies
- All the Money in the World
- The Automatic Millionaire
- Broke Millennial
The best financial planning books for the layperson cover topics that aren’t always easy to understand. Those who don’t have much finance experience may feel their heads spin when they read about Roth and other types of accounts and investments. The top books are easy for beginners to read through and will provide them with tips on how they can prepare for the future.
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1. Your Money or Your Life
Though Oprah Winfrey no longer has a TV talk show, she still recommends books she loves such as this one. Your Money or Your Life breaks financial planning into nine key steps. The two authors do a good job of explaining why each step is so important and how readers can move from one step to the next. This title is so easy to understand that some give it to graduates who recently finished high school. It sets them up for the future and helps them learn how to make smart financial decisions.
2. Personal Finance for Dummies
Personal Finance for Dummies is a great book for those who find finance terms confusing and hard to understand. It was one of the first books in the series to deal with financial information. Readers will find entire chapters devoted to budgeting, including how to set a budget and how to set aside money for future expenses. The book also provides tips on saving money for expensive purchases such as a new car or a summer vacation. It offers guidance on buying insurance, and planning for retirement too.
3. All the Money in the World
All the Money in the World isn’t a traditional financial planning book because it doesn’t teach readers how to save money or plan for the future. Laura Vanderkam, the author of the book, instead focuses on helping readers afford the things they want and teaches them that it’s okay to splurge every now and then. Readers learn how they can cut back in certain areas of their lives and put more money towards the things they really love.
4. The Automatic Millionaire
David Bach wrote The Automatic Millionaire because he wanted readers to think about financial planning in a different way. This book is so easy to read that some compare it to their favorite fiction books. Bach writes about one simple step that anyone can take to get the type of life and retire the way he or she wants. It focuses on a single couple who make enough money to buy a home and put funds in their retirement account with scrimping and saving.
5. Broke Millennial
It’s popular for members of the older generation to blame today’s economic problems on the millennial generation. Those men and women have large student loan debts and cannot afford to spend as much money as the previous generations did. In Broke Millennial, Erin Lowry offers tips and guidance for readers in their 20s and 30s. She goes over how they can save money and work towards a healthy financial future. According to New York Magazine, this is one of the 13 best financial planning books.
It wasn’t that many decades ago that couples could buy a house and pay it off in a few years. People today have loads of debt from college and make less money in their jobs. The best financial planning books for the layperson provide those in debt with tips they can use to get what they want.