Money: What I Wish I Knew When I Was Younger: A Cautionary Tale & Lessons Learned for Teens & Young Adults by Brian Siemens
A Personal Finance Novel published by Brian Siemens LLC (10/27/20)
First reviewed through Reedsy Discovery
Summary:
Brian Siemens is a financial educator and a public speaker, but he wasn’t always so money savvy. This nonfiction book on personal finance follows Brian’s early relationship with money, the pitfalls you should avoid, and how he learned to manage his finances. Through his own choices with money early on, Seimens shows the reader where he went wrong and how the reader can start off their personal finance journey on the right foot.
Keywords:
Personal Finance, Money, Debt, Student Loans, Personal Loans, Habits, Lifestyle, Quality of Life, Impulse Buying, Budgeting, Money Management Software, Credit Cards, Interest
My Review:
Out of all the personal finance books available, this book stands out because it is geared towards a younger audience. It is both a cautionary tale and a book full of words of advice. It is easy for adults to tell young adults and teenagers to avoid making the same mistakes they did. Usually, this phrase is accompanied by a lecture and a warning to avoid certain pitfalls. In personal finance, these pitfalls are abundant and include credit cards, student loans, impulse buying, etc. Brian Siemens expounds on these pitfalls with well-thought-out details and his own experience. He tells the whole story, including his own. For instance, he brings the reader’s attention to the concept of tax brackets. Even as an intermediate/advanced personal finance enthusiast, I haven’t fully taken tax brackets into consideration. Some of these small details can be very important and if overlooked, as Brian did early in his life, they can lead to poor financial decisions. Bad habits early on can be even harder to break. Even if you don’t know the difference in cost between getting new tires for a truck and getting new tires for a car, you’ll understand why the difference is important after reading this book. Maybe, if you’re a younger reader, you might even start an investment account!
Though this book is short, most of it is to the point and very practical. The last chapter is a tl;dr of advice that sums up the rest of the book. For those with short attention spans, this is a great beginner’s comprehensive guidebook for personal finance that is full of relevant and interesting personal anecdotes.
I loved reading the quotes at the beginning of each chapter. Typically I skim over quotes like these, but I really enjoyed each of the quotes that Brian Siemens chose.
This novel was published by Brian Siemens LLC on 10/27/2020 and is available on Amazon here.
TL;DR Star Rating: 4.25
Links for more information:
Rachel Author Barnard 