Not long ago my college student daughter asked me to find a good money and budgeting book for her. My other daughter needed some information to relieve anxiety about the idea of investing in the stock market. (My son didn’t ask for a book, but he was the first one to finish one! An audiobook.) Here our favorite audio books about budgeting, money, finance and investing.
I’ve been studying investing in the stock market for about 5 years now. So when my daughter talked about worrying about handling her finances responsibly while she’s in college, she asked me to find a money book for her. Listening to my talk about investing, my young adult kids are also starting to wonder (and worry!) about making intelligent investing investing choices as they become adults who need to take care of their own money.
The book about money and finances I had to go hunting for. The book about passive, almost worry free investing, I just came across as a part of my wide reading and learning experience.
You will notice that I said learning, and I’m not going to even claim to have made tons of money in the stock market (mostly because I haven’t!) But I’ve learned enough to start feeling confident about recognizing when someone knows what they’re talking about.
When it comes to finances, on the whole my husband and I have made good financial decisions throughout our married life and have managed to live within our means. We are fine financially, and financially stable, and that’s what we want for our kids. So in addition to starting to freely talk about money, finances, our income, costs and expenditures, insurance and our investments in front of our young adult kids, here are the books and audiobooks I have given them about finances.
Lifetime gifts for graduates, weddings, and other young adults
These books would make fantastic high school and college graduation gifts, and even wedding gifts, for the young people in your life. In addition, they are accessible and fantastic books about money for anyone who feels like a beginner.
Why audiobooks about money and finances make great gifts for young adults
I have found that audiobooks have been best for my young adult kids. Even though my kids loved reading when they were young, as top students their love of reading was mostly ruined for them by their advanced English teachers and classes. My daughter who still loves reading the most, first asked for a finance book. But she never got around to reading it until I made the audiobook available. So even for kids and adults who don’t mind reading as much as the average person, I highly recommend the audio book. If you can, I even more highly recommend giving both the written book (you can’t say printed anymore if we’re talking ebooks!) and the audiobook. The audiobook to listen to first, and the printed book to use as a resource for specific questions.
Our favorite books about money, budgeting, finance, saving, & investments for graduates and other beginners
Looking for the shortcut to learning about money? Just want to take my word for it and not have to slog through reading why I recommend these books? Here’s the two best books I’ve found about money, budgeting, finances, saving, and investing for graduation gifts for young adults and other beginners.
Want to know more? Keep reading!
The best book about money, budgeting, and finances for millennials and other young adults and beginners
It’s never too late to get on track financially!
Except, in my notes, I have down that her chapter on education and college debt should be mandatory reading for every student and parent before they start taking out education and college loans. Like I think colleges should be required to hand this to you as they hand you your loan papers, or better yet, explain it to you. (Chapter 9 if you need that information in a hurry!)
And as I said above, I highly recommend that for young adults you give the audio version of Broke Millennial.
You can also get this audiobook on your Amazon Audible Subscription
Fair warning! This book does have the “F-word” in it. I think I need to disclose that since I’m telling parents to give it to their kids. My kids assure me that they are used to hearing that word on a regular basis (except at home) and I have to admit that Erin Lowry does use the word to good effect. I get why she uses it, given her target audience. But maybe let your teenager know not to listen to the book in front of their little sibling.
One other thing about Broke Millennial. She does go into some basic investing advice, but primarily this is a book about other money, budgeting, credit ratings, credit cards, debt, and financial matters. I know she made an attempt to research investing and wrote the best information that she could, but I think this section could be stronger. For example, she goes into management fees for mutual funds, but she doesn’t do the math to show how devastating these fees can be to your financial savings.
If you’re looking for beginning investing advice, then go ahead and move on to the second book, my favorite book about beginning investing in the stock market.
The best investing book for young adults and investing beginners
We’re talking MILLIONS! automatically sounds like a lot more fun than Broke Millennials, but let me assure you that both books are important.
We’re Talking Millions is by the investing professionals Paul A. Merriman and Richard Buck. I came across it on one of the many investing blogs I read. And you want to know something else amazing about this book? All of the author profits are going toward Paul Merriman’s Merriman Financial Education Foundation.
I wanted to be able to also recommend We’re Talking Millions! audiobook. I’ve read the print book and was planning on getting the audiobook of We’re Talking Millions on our Amazon Audible Subscription today! (And I mean literally today.)
But unfortunately there’s no audiobook.
So Instead I’m going to recommend that you can get motivated to read this book by listening to this podcast Youtube edition of Stacking Benjamins, one of the investing podcasts I listen to.
Why is We’re Talking Millions! the best passive investing book for beginners?
Why am I recommending the book We’re talking Millions? Even if you don’t have the time, or the inclination, to learn about the stock market in-depth, it’s important that you get started with investing. The earlier you start investing, the more compounding interest (meaning interest you earn every year stacking on top of itself) will work for you.
This book is about how to make smart passive investing decisions. Even Warren Buffett recommends passive investing in a large index fund for most people.
But We’re Talking Millions! goes a step further. They explain HOW to pick your passive investing funds (index funds and ETFs) and other investing basics.
How to pick your investing funds for 401K plan
It might seem easy to invest in just a broad fund until, as part mountain of paperwork and rush of getting started at your first job they dump you into a 401K portal and tell you to pick your investment funds. There are statements and questions and then they software will recommend some funds, but do they really know what their talking about? And was all this just written so whoever is managing the fund can make the most money off of you? (Yeah, I’m kind of a suspicious person.)
In We’re Talking Millions! they explain how and what types of funds to choose, the importance of investing over a lifetime, how compounding interest, target date retirement funds, and the power of dollar cost averaging. Not only that, they back up everything they’re telling you with TONs of research, calculations from stock market data over multiple time periods, and also their decades of being financial advisors. And really they make doing all of this even easier than reading that sentence I just wrote.
As they do this, they go through the math in very simple and easy to grasp ways and also start to educate you about investing terms and principals in a very approachable way. For years I have heard about the importance of “dollar cost averaging” (investing over a period of time instead of all at once), and thought I understood it. But the way Merriman and Buck talk about dollar cost averaging gives a really simple outcome story to where you can see the effect in real numbers. It also really connected to some other investing concepts that I’m learning.
I hope these investing and finance books give you the right start to your investing journey.
Let me know how you like the books! Have you read them? What did you think?
You notice that I said I’m still studying about stock market investing, so automatically it should be obvious to you that I’m not an investing professional. But here is the type of disclaimer you will start seeing at the bottom of every finance post, and “getting this right” has kept me from posting about what I have learned about stock investing so far: I am not an investment professional. The information here is for educational and entertainment purposes only. I have not considered your personal financial situation as your financial advisor. Before making any financial and investment decisions, consult a professional.
Resources for this post about the best money, financial planning, budget and investing books for millennials, young people, and other beginners
Is college worth the cost with COVID quarantine and remote classes?
Why does a university or college cost so much?
Why is required school reading so depressing?
Paul Merriman, Sound Investing for Every Stage of Life
Paul Merriman’s articles on MarketWatch
Paul Merriman’s podcast Sound Investing
Warren Buffett thinks index funds are the best way for everyday investors to grow their money — here’s how you can start – actually I recommend you read We’re talking MILLIONS! to get advice on passive investing funds, but I wanted a source for my Warren Buffett quote
I am not an investment professional. The information here is for educational and entertainment purposes only. I have not considered your personal financial situation as your financial advisor. Before making any financial and investment decisions, consult a professional.