Tl;dr: Financial Literacy for Young (and Not-So-Young) Adults (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781096901631)

Updated April 2024

You know you need to learn more about personal finance in order to make financial decisions, but you just find it too overwhelming, too intimidating, and too time consuming. This book was written for you, giving you the basics in less than an hour, and then directing you to further resources (fischlearning.com/tldr) if you'd like to learn more. It's about 35 pages and should take less than an hour to read, so instead of TL;DR (Too Long; Didn't Read) it will hopefully be JR;DR;KM (Just Right, Did Read, Know More).

This book isn't about "getting rich quickly" (not that's there anything wrong with that), but it's about gaining knowledge and building your capacity in order to live a good life. What's a "good life"? I don't know, everyone's definition is different. What's important is that you take the time to define what a good life is for you, and then align your financial decisions with that. The goal of this book is to help you think about your finances in such a way that you have the independence to lead the life you want to live; to give you as much control as possible over your financial situation so that your finances don't prevent you from living the life you want.

I say "book" because that's what Amazon calls it, but it's more like a series of blog posts. I wrote it because finances and financial decisions are such a huge part of everyone's life that they should take the time to thoroughly educate themselves. Since many folks won't do that, this book is an attempt to quickly give them the basics and hopefully encourage them - and give them the confidence - to learn more.

Full Disclosure: I am not a financial planner. I have taught students mathematics and computer science for over thirty years, but have no formal training in personal finance or investing, and no certifications. I am simply a lifelong learner, constantly curious, and have been interested in personal finance since working in a credit union during high school and college, and continued to be curious and learn more about finance during my career as a public school teacher. Over my years as a teacher, I discovered that not only did my students not know much about personal finance, but neither did my family, friends and colleagues (I often served as a resource for those folks). Partially as a result of that experience, I see the necessity for a book such as this, as I wanted to do my part to try to help others become financially literate.

While it would be nice to make a little bit of money from this, that's not really my expectation or my goal. This is a passion project for me. I hope folks find it helpful. If you do read it, it would be helpful if you could leave a review on Amazon, and/or email me feedback at karl@fischlearning.com or at bit.ly/tldrfeedback. So, about 40 pages. About an hour. Ready to get started? Future you will thank you.

Author: Karl Fisch
ISBN-10: 1096901633
ISBN-13: 9781096901631
Publisher: Independently Published
Language: English
Published: 05/05/2019
Pages: 48
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.23lbs
Size: 9.69h x 7.44w x 0.10d