This review references an earlier edition of the book. The Second Edition, updated in 2019, is available now: I Will Teach You to Be Rich, Second Edition: No Guilt. No Excuses. No Bs. Just a 6-Week Program That Works. Read on for a review of the earlier edition.

I Will Teach You To Be Rich by Ramit Sethi

It’s either a great name for a personal finance book, or a scam! Lucky for you and me, it’s actually good advice, packed into a six-week program that will kick your financial butt into shape.

Ramit’s no stranger to writing about personal finance for Generation Y (those of us aged 18-30) – his personal finance blog, also named I Will Teach You To Be Rich has been around for years now. It was actually the very first website on personal finance that I read, so you can thank him for inspiring this website, at least in part.

Ramit’s advice is rock solid. Thanks to him, I started paying attention to where all my money was going, instead of (as Ramit puts it) “opening my bills at the end of the money and saying ‘I guess I spent that much.'” I also opened my first high-yield savings account and paid off my credit card debt based on his advice.

In fact, if I add up the money I’ve saved in credit card interest and the money I’ve earned in high-yield savings interest, Ramit has saved me $1,290 over the last two and a half years. Which is small potatoes compared to what he’s managed to save some people, but it big news for me, since I’ve been in college earning less than $5,000/year!

So is there a big difference between reading the IWTYTBR site and the IWTYTBR book? Absolutely. Look, I won’t knock the website – I learned a lot of stuff from Ramit that way. But I learned it over the course of the past two and half years, plus I read a bunch of back articles that were written before I started reading. The book, on the other hand, is a much more condensed, straight-forward plan to jumpstart your financial life.

Let me dig a little deeper into what, exactly, this “Six Weeks to Financial Literacy” entails…

Week 1: How to set up your credit cards and establish a credit history (and why your credit history is important). Ramit points out that people tend to worry about saving money on little thing (like cutting out expensive coffee), but then ignore big things like improving their credit history. Having excellent credit can easily save you hundreds of thousands of dollars over your lifetime. And help you to get kickin’ jobs and apartments as well.

Week 2: How to set up the right bank accounts, including no-fee, interest-earning accounts. Boy, do I love my bank accounts! Seriously, I do – and you don’t hear a lot of people say that. Ramit knows which banks are worth loving, and how to negotiate with your current bank to make them lovable, as well.

Week 3: How to open an account and start investing, even if you’ve only got $50/month to start. I adore the concept of the “Ladder of Personal Finance” that’s introduced in this chapter. It quickly answers the question of what to invest in first: a 401(K), paying off debt, or an IRA? And don’t worry if you don’t know what those things are – Ramit does an awesome job of defining things.

Week 4: How to figure out what you’re spending, and then make your money go where you want it to. I’ll admit it: I’m obsessive. I track every purchase religiously, down to the penny, in a spreadsheet that I made myself! But you don’t necessarily have to be as big of a nerd as I am to get a handle on your finances. And you don’t have to make that dreaded thing called “a budget.” (Even I don’t have one of those!) This is one of my favorite chapters in the book.

Week 5: How to automate your accounts. Once you’ve got the ball rolling, wouldn’t it be nice if the ball kept rolling by itself? Yeah, it would! Automating your accounts is really helpful, because you no longer have to rely on willpower or memory or anything else to save – it just happens.

Week 6: How to invest… and why investing does not mean picking stocks. Common misconception: you need to be lucky to “win” in the stock market, because it’s like gambling. Pssh! Gimme a break. This chapter covers concepts that sound like buzz words (“asset allocation” and “diversification”) but are actually the ticket to slow and steady riches.

Extra Credit: Six weeks of the plan and you still want more? One short chapter offers nerds like me a bit more to chew on, once we’ve tackled everything in the previous six weeks. Portfolio balancing, emergency funds, insurance, saving for children’s college funds… and the importance of giving something back, as well.

Q and A: To close out the book, a series of questions and answers on very particular personal finance situations. Age-old questions include: Pay down student loans, or invest? How to talk to parents and significant others about money? How do I negotiate my salary? How do I save big money when buying a car, or a house? What about other major purchases?

Does it seem like I’m gushing all over this book? That’s pretty much true. Look, the truth is, I’m always on the lookout for good personal finance books for my age group: 18-30 year olds for whom most personal finance books do not apply. Simply put, most books are written for older people who’ve already made bunch of mistakes. I want books for people who want to do things right from the start.

By Age Group

High school: Not sure this is the book for you, honestly. This book is extremely practical: telling people what to do right now, so you might not be able to do most of what’s in the book yet. But, if you’re really future-focused and want to do the best things right out of the gate, you would do well to read this book now, hold onto it, and refer back to it several times over the coming years.

College/Early 20s: This is the best book I have seen for you. Go read it now.

Late 20s and beyond: This is the best book I have seen for you. Go read it now.

Bonus: Excerpt!

The book is I Will Teach You To Be Rich by Ramit Sethi, and I have never found a book I would recommend more.

This review references an earlier edition of the book. The Second Edition, The Bogleheads’ Guide to Investing (Revised) is available now. Read on for a review of the earlier edition.

The Bogleheads’ Guide to Investing, by Taylor Larimore, Mel Lindauer, and Michael LeBoeuf, Foreword by John C. Bogle

On the outset, this book just doesn’t seem very interesting – at least not to the demographic I belong to. Like most college students, I probably wouldn’t have touched this book if I hadn’t received it for free. And I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that it gets a little dry at times, and my eyes glazed over while reading some of the sections that don’t apply to me (yet).

But despite the dry sections, the book is exceptionally well-written and packed with information, without being overwhelming. I especially enjoyed the book’s use of humorous quotes and analogies to connect the world of investing to the world we know.

The guide offers a comprehensive walk-through on the different types of investments available, the types of accounts, asset diversification, estate planning… alright, sorry. I see your eyes glazing over now. But I promise, it’s not boring stuff! This is an excellent guide that I highly recommend for anyone who finds themselves saying “I know that I should be investing, but I have no idea where to start.”

Who are these “Bogleheads” and why should you take their advice on investments? They’re the followers of John C. Bogle, founder of the Vanguard Group. They believe in a simple, diversified investment strategy that blocks out all the “noise” of hot stock tips and media posturing.

The chapter I most appreciated was Chapter 15: How to Manage a Windfall Successfully. I find that this is a subject that just isn’t tackled often enough. Falling in line with my favorite theory (money doesn’t solve money problems), the Bogleheads suggest that you put a windfall aside for six months while you ride out the emotions related to it. Then, look at the true buying power of that windfall before you do anything with it.

By Age Group

High school: this book is a little too detailed and dry to appeal to high schoolers. However, if you read The Motley Fool Investment Guide for Teens and wanted more, more, MORE, this book would be a good continuation for you.

College/Early 20s: Not the first personal finance book you should read, but if you’ve already made your way through some Suze Orman or Your Money or Your Life and you’re looking for more details specifically on investing, put this book next on your reading list.

Late 20s and beyond: Read this book if you haven’t yet.

Get The Boglehead’s Guide to Investing from Amazon.com today!

This review references an earlier edition of the book. How to Survive Your Freshman Year: By Hundreds of Sophomores, Juniors and Seniors Who Did, updated in 2019, is available now. Read on for a review of the earlier edition.

How to Survive Your Freshman Year is a part of the Hundreds of Heads Survival Guides series – the back cover claims that “This book proves that all of us are smarter than one of us.” Oh really?

I was sent a review copy of the book, and for a week or so, I endured the ridicule of my friends while I read it. “Stephanie, aren’t you a few too years late in reading this?” Yes, yes I am – as a college senior now, this information is a bit post dated.

But I wish I’d had it before my freshman year.

This book is just plain excellent. It’s a collection of tidbits – advice from college sophomores, juniors, seniors, graduates, and even a few dropouts, for good measure. Due to the format, a lot of the pieces of advice contradict each other – for example, there’s one page with people arguing for and against bringing an iPod to college. I like the conflicting advice – it gives the reader multiple views and allows them to decide for themselves.

If you’re heading off to college this fall, or sometime soon after that, I highly suggest you grab a copy of the book and read it. The best part is that they put out a new edition every year, so it stays current. So if you’re not headed to college yet, wait a bit and grab the new edition the year you go off to school.

For good measure, I’d like to add some tidbits from my own college experience. These pieces of nostalgia and advice came pouring out while I was reading the book:

I loved living in my co-ed dorm freshman year. A lot of the advice in the book says to try and get a dorm with only other freshman – nothing like that really existed at my school (that I knew of), but I was definitely in one of the more mixed dorms, because I was in the honors dorm. Even though I wasn’t an honors student, I felt really at home there. We had a running joke that the honors kids were there to make the rest of us smarter, and we were there to make the honors kids dumber!

Two things that were indispensable my freshman year: a can opener and a doorstop. I was one the only freshman on my floor to bring a can opener, so I was in hot demand for a while. And the doorstop was necessary because our dorm doors would not stay open without one.

Speaking of the doorstop, here’s a big DON’T for you: DON’T be that guy that never has his door open. There’s one on every floor, and you don’t want to be him. Keep your room reasonably clean, and prop the door open as much as possible.

There are lots of professor rating sites, and they are well worth checking when signing up for the classes. But the site the worked best for me was the one that was for my school only – more people use it, and that’s really what counts. Find out if one exists for you school, and if it doesn’t, find someone who’s willing and able to start one.

A lot of the advice in the relationship chapter says to not get into a serious relationship your freshman year. I couldn’t agree with this more heartily (based on my own mistakes) and I really wish someone had said this to me before college!

Buy How To Survive Your Freshman Year from Amazon.com today! Used copies can be had for as little as $3.37 (plus shipping)!

Did you survive college? Are you surviving it now? Please share your tidbits of knowledge in the comments!

My generation: do we have a name? We are the young adults, born between 1980 and 1995 (give or take). I hear us called “Generation Y,” “Echo Boomers,” “the Digital Generation,” and “the iPod Generation,” but none of these names strike a chord with me. But there’s another possibility – are we “Generation Debt?”

One of our own, columnist Anya Kamentez, gives us this label in her book Generation Debt: Why Now is a Terrible Time to be Young. I picked this book up at the library after having read several of Anya’s articles on Yahoo! Finance – and I have to say, it was one of the most enjoyable and eye-opening books that I’ve ever put my hands on.

The book is a mishmash of relevant statistics and commentary on the economics of our generation, and how social and political factors play into those economics. It’s hard to write up a review, or even an overview, since no page is to be missed. It’s all startling and staggering.

In short, I knew our generation was in trouble, but I had no idea how much trouble we are in until I read this book.

There’s a large focus throughout the book, most especially at the beginning, on the problems in paying for college. This is obviously something I know a great deal about, living through it every day. But Anya has pulled together all of the factors feeding into it, which brought new light to the problem for me. The government’s shift from providing grants to guaranteeing loans. Schools raising their tuition prices faster than inflation and faster than the growth of the average income. The FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid) being a poor system for calculating aid, since it doesn’t take many factors into account, including recent changes in family status (such as unemployment, disability, or emergencies).

Although there’s a strong focus on college and the enormous debt it brings so many of us, there’s also a good deal on low-wage earners: both those who forgo college (for any number of reasons) and those who get a degree that doesn’t end up being any help.

Our benefits are shrinking. Social security won’t be there for us. The entire economic system is taking a shift, and we’re going to be the ones caught up in it. The baby boomers are beginning to retire right now – and over the next 30 years or so, we’ll be picking up the bill for a lot of them.

As I said, this review is difficult to write. The copy of the book I have is full of post-it notes – item after item of things I would like to go on about in great detail. But here it is: you should really just read the book. Whoever you are. If you’re a member of Generation Debt, like I am, do not miss this opportunity to pick up the book and start to understand the world that you’re entering.

If you’re a parent of one of us “G-Debters” (I just made that term up – Anya, you can thank me later), please read this book. Please, please. I’m very much hoping to get this book into my parents’ hands, so that they can better understand what world they’ve sent me and my siblings into.

If you’re a high schooler, I also encourage this book. But be warned, a lot of it will seem like doom and gloom, and you may even be tempted to put the book down and never look at it again, halfway through. Do not fall into this trap – you really want to read the whole thing and especially get to the last chapter: “Waking Up and Taking Charge.”

Get Generation Debt from Bookshop today!

“From My Reader” is a weekly series, highlighting one of over 30 blogs that I track using Google Reader.

This week, I’d like to highlight one of the smaller blogs I subscribe to – the personal finance blog at KMull.com, which is still trying to find its wings. But that’s okay – you could say the same thing for Poorer Than You. (Unless anyone I went to high school with asks you. In that case, you should tell them about how I run the most spectacular personal finance blog out there, and that you once heard I wrestled a shark while calculating my annual return.)

The thing I love about Kevin’s writing at KMull is the real “personal” side of the personal finance. There’s an awesome story about how his college roommate fell out of bed and broke his finger. Though, you might want to hold off on that story if you just had lunch. Just warning you.

And, of course, there are some good solid financial commentaries on the site. Be sure to run by and check out:
I Don’t Need Credit or Why I Enjoy Making My Life Difficult
Setting Goals
Charge More Than You Can Afford

You keep on writing Kevin, and I’ll keep on reading!