- Thomas M.
- Wednesday, December 13, 2023
After nearly two years of monthly book reviews about money, the #FinLit series is coming to a close. After looking back through all the books, I have picked the Top 3 in a few categories to give one last endorsement. Each linked title leads to the blog post about it.
Fiction With Financial Concepts
Jackpot by Nic Stone - "Readers will learn a lot about how people choose to (or have to) handle their money while following a whirlwind mystery with two magnetic leads."
Millionaires For The Month by Stacy McAnulty - "Laura’s $5 million game will cause readers to explore their own feelings about money and consider how they would react to each character’s perspective. The financial facts sewn into the story are great lessons, too."
Eat Bugs: Project Startup by Laura D'Asaro, Rose Wang, Heather Alexander, and Vanessa Flores - "...the book excels the most at depicting an entrepreneurial mindset and what it takes to start a business."
How-To Guides
How To Money by Jean Chatzky, Kathryn Tuggle, and Nina Cosford - "...a great book for young adults and, honestly, anyone looking for a financial refresher from experts who talk to the reader like a human being."
Get Good With Money by Tiffany Aliche - "Does the author write in a unique style, and is the information organized and easy to follow? In the case of Tiffany Aliche’s Get Good With Money, she delivers on both and then some."
The Index Card by Helaine Olen and Harold Pollack - "...personal finance itself is not too complex to understand. What if the rules of thumb could be simplified and fit on an index card? That is exactly what this book does"
History of Finance/Economics
Understandable Economics by Howard Yaruss - "Yaruss asks readers to reach their own opinions, and urges us all to “always question” the costs carried by taxpayers, and why. Examples and stories help the reader understand, which is important because an informed public is the best cure for dishonesty, bribery, and cover-ups."
Easy Money by Benjamin McKenzie and Jacob Silverman - "If all of this sounds solidly anti-crypto, well, it is! But I recommend this book, even for crypto's true believers. Any financial product has the potential to be a wolf in sheep's clothing. You deserve to know what you're getting into."
The Unbanking of America by Lisa Servon - "Servon takes banks and government agencies to task for their role in allowing poor or absent services to continue to drive people toward harmful options."
I hope you enjoyed learning something new that helped you understand your own financial situation, someone else's, or even the world's. There are year-end lists full of good financial books too, such as Morningstar’s Best Books To Give and Get, Banker On Wheels’ Best Investing Books, Business Insider's Best Personal Finance Books of 2023, and the Financial Times' surprisingly broad Best Books of the Year 2023.