I’ve been recently asked to help people learn more about personal finance. So I decided to put together a few of the resources that have helped me getting started. Once you’ve been through these, you can check out some of my guides on how to get started. You can find the guides here and here.

Book Recommendations

When I first got started, I read Ramit Sethi’s book “I will teach you to be rich”. It covers more than just the basics and it helps you actually getting started. The emphasis is on not getting it perfect but on taking the first step and also about setting up automated systems. Some of the aspects of the book are only applicable to the US but the vast majorty of the advice is still incredibly useful.
You can also check out Paddy Hirsch’s book Man vs. Markets. I just recently finished this book and have to say it is really easy to understand and brings great examples. Paddy Hirsch uses the example of an ice cream shop to illustrate the difference between loans, bonds, stocks and then uses the example of the Thanks Giving turkey to explain options or other complex financial instruments. While this one is less about personal finance, it is very insightful and provides a solid foundation with regards to how markets work.

Podcast – NPR’s Summer School

The NPR Summer school is a great place to start. 2021 was thge second season where they explain the stock market, investing, economics and really a lot of fundamental things in short, easily digestible episodes. You can check them out here.

Blogs With Great Insights

If you love a data driven approach to long-term investing and personal finance, I highly recommend the Of Dollars And Data Blog. Some great articles to get started are

1. Even God Couldn’t Beat Dollar Cost Averaging:  The Problem with Buying the Dip
2. Dollar Cost Averaging vs. Lump Sum (The Definitive Guide)
3. Saving is for the Poor, Investing is for the Rich: The Mathematics of Saving and Investing Over the Life Cycle

If you are in Japan, you definitely want to check out these two resources.

1. RetireWiki.jp: It’s a community created wiki around all finance aspects for people living in Japan not only related to retirement. It is run by the same guy who runs RetireJapan.
2. Alexkwa.com: has a great guide on furusato nozei and capital gains tax for Japan

Youtube Videos

Which brings me to a few other great YouTube videos. The first two are from Khan Academy. You know of Khan Academy, right? They offer a huge range of classes and courses, top-notch quality and it is all for free!If you are in it for the long term, which I would highly recommend, you need to know about index funds. Check out these two videos here and here. Other great videos are Introduction to Bonds and Bonds vs. Stocks.
Now, if you are in Japan, one thing you definitely should look into is Furusato Nozei. Alex Kwa wrote a great summary that you can find here. Also his other guides on capital gains tax etc. are very insightful and well written.
Here is also a YouTube video explaining the concept of Furusato Nozei.

Newsletters

Here are two of my favorite newsletters around personal finance:

MoneyScoop by Morning Brew: This is a new personal finance newsletter that provides some good insights and advice. Sometimes it’s as basic as some Excel advice, sometimes it’s about some finance jargon.

The other one is basically an extension of the blog I already shared above, ofdollarsanddata. Their newsletter does not only notify you of their latest blog posts but it also includes some other interesting articles that Nick Maggiulli thinks are worth sharing.

Done? Great, now you can take a look at the two guide I wrote. You can find the guides here and here.