Best way for for soon to turn 18 to learn about money?
"Excellent questions!  Asking such questions indicates something special about yourself.  The desire to learn and adjust your beliefs will increase your chance of success in your life.  I would use a wide variety of authors to increase your education.  Myself I prefer Dave Ramsey to Clark Howard, but I think Clark is very good. The first thing you should focus on is learning how to do and live by a budget.  Often times, adults will assume that you are on a budget because you are broke.  It happens with my friends and my youngest child is older than you.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  A budget is simply a plan on how you will spend your income so you don't run out of money before you run out of month. Along with budgeting I would also focus on goal setting.  This is the type of ""investing"" you should be doing at your age.  For example if your primary goal was to become an engineer, my recommendation is to hold off buying stocks/mutual funds and using your current income to get through school with little or no student loans.   Another example might be to open your own HVAC business.  Your best bet might be to learn the trade, working for someone else, and take night classes for business management. Most 18 year olds have very little earning power.  Your focus at this point should be increasing your income and learning how to manage the income you have.   Please keep in mind that most debt is bad.  It robs you of your income which is your greatest wealth building tool.  Car loans and credit card debt is just plain stupid.  Often times a business case can be made for reasonable student loans.  However, why not challenge yourself to take none.  How much further ahead could you be if you graduate, with a degree, when your peers are strapped with a 40K loan? Keep up the good work and keep asking questions." Do you have a smart phone?  Check out the Clark Howard Podcast.  I listen every day.   Of course you can listen from your computer but its far easier to consume from a pod catcher
"The most common way to handle this in the US is with a UTMA account. UTMA is the Uniform Transfers / Gifts to Minors Act (""UTMA"" or ""UGMA"") which is a standard model law that most states have passed for special kinds of accounts. Once you open an account, anyone can contribute. Usually parents and grandparents will contribute $13,000 or less per year to make it a tax free transfer, but you can transfer more. The account itself would just be a standard brokerage account of any sort, but the title of the account would include your son's name, the applicable law depending on your state, and the name of the custodian who would control the account until your son turned 18. When your son does turn 18, the money is his. Until then, the money is his, but you control how it's invested. I'm a huge fan of Vanguard for UTMA/UGMAs. You may prefer to diversify a bit away from one company by selling the GE shares and buying an index mutual fund so that your child's education is not jeopardized by a rogue trader bringing down General Electric sometime in the next decade..." To me, the most important thing for young people to learn about personal finance is the connection between service and income.  Most, rightly look for a way to earn money and advance the lifestyle of their home life.  How does one do that?  Grinding it out in a 9-5 does not seem attractive while living the lifestyles of those on TV would be awesome.   The temptation is to try all these tricks to get money, but absent from their plan is how they serve their fellow man in order to receive that money. Stars, like the Kardashians are a marketing machine despite the carefree life displayed on the TV.  They have served many budding companies well by selling their products to certain demographics.  Most young people do not make that connection.   So they try things like trading Forex, gold or whatever the latest thing is.  It does not work as there is no service to their fellow man.  They get a job at a fast food chain and complain about their pay in accordance with their work.  Well sure, but again they are serving such few people that one can only expect a small income.   The better and more people one can serve, in general, the higher a person's income. "Just speaking from my experience here. When I was younger (lol only 23 now), I didn't really get pocket money. If I wanted something I had to work for this, luckily at 13 I scored a paper round gaining £10 per week. I would personally say to encourage children to do some ""work"", whether its a paper round, or even just house chores. I learned early on, that to get money you have to work for it. I've always had a job since 13, most of my college years I held 2 jobs at a time, even 3 at 1 point. Many of my friends didn't work for their pocket money, they relied on handouts, quite a few of these friends have later on in life taken the easy route, not working and rely on state (pocket money), or still have mummy and daddy pay for everything So my moral is; don't just give out willy-nilly, teach some value to money and it will go a long way ;) /2 cents" If you have no immediate need for the money you can apply the Rule of 72 to that money.  Ask your parent's financial advisor to invest the money.  Based on the rate of return your money will double like clockwork. At 8% interest your money will double every 9 years.  45 years from now that initial investment will have doubled 5 times.  That adds up pretty fast.  Time is your best friend when investing at your age. Odds are you'll want to be saving for a college education though.  Graduating debt free is by far the best plan. "This Stack Exchange site is a nice place to find answers and ask questions. Good start! Moving away from the recursive answer... Simply distilling personal finance down to ""I have money, I'll need money in the future, what do I do"", an easily digestible book with how-to, multi-step guidelines is ""I Will Teach You To Be Rich"". The author talks about setting up the accounts you should have, making sure all your bills are paid automatically, saving on the big things and tips to increase your take home pay. That link goes to a compilation page on the blog with many of the most fundamental articles. However, ""The World’s Easiest Guide To Understanding Retirement Accounts"" is a particularly key article. While all the information is on the free blog, the book is well organized and concise.  The Simple Dollar is a nice blog with frugal living tips, lifestyle assessments, financial thoughts and reader questions. The author also reviews about a book a week. Investing - hoping to get better returns than savings can provide while minimizing risk. This thread is an excellent list of books to learn about investing. I highly recommend ""The Bogleheads' Guide to Investing"" and ""The Only Investment Guide You'll Ever Need"". The world of investment vehicles is huge but it doesn't have to be complicated once you ignore all the fads and risky stuff. Index mutual funds are the place to start (and maybe end). Asset allocation and diversification are themes to guide you. The books on that list will teach you." As AskAboutGadgets notes, there's no lower age limit.  You current age (24) is a pretty good one; you'll have four decades or so for your money to grow and compound, allowing it to become a veritable fortune when you're ready to retire if you invest it fairly aggressively. Pre-finance major here and new to this sub. Quick background, I’m 18 and I’m starting school at the University of Iowa in January.  My question is: what resources are out there that you would recommend to help me get introduced to the world of finance? Could be books, online courses, videos, etc. and could be on any subject within the umbrella of finance.  Thanks in advance for any recommendations! Also, my wealth manager doesn't like to discuss my money with me. To some extent, I understand this because finances are not my forte This is akin to porn surfing all day at your job instead of writing code, fire him ASAP. For now I would stick it in a bank account until you are comfortable and understand the investments you are purchasing.   Here are some options to consider: The last one is tricky.  You might have to interview several in order to find that one gem.  With you being so young it is unlikely any of your friends have a need for such a service.  I would concentrate on asking older work colleagues or friends of your parents for recommendations.  Ask if they are educated by their adviser.   In the end it would really pay for you to educate yourself about finances.  No one can quite do as good as a job as you can in this area.  You recognize that there was a problem with your current guy, that shows wisdom.  If you have an interest in this area, I would recommend attending a Financial Peace University class.  All my kids (about your age and older) are required to take it.  It will help you navigate debt, mortgages, insurance, and investing and will cost you about $100.  If you don't learn enough the first time, and you won't, you can repeat the course as many times as you wish for no additional cost. As a young investor, you should know that the big secret is that profitable long term investing is boring.  It is is not buying one day and selling the next and keeping very close tabs on your investments and jumping on the computer and going 'Buy!' , 'Sell'. That makes brokers rich, but not you. So look at investments but not everyday and find something else that's exciting, whether it's dirt biking or WOW or competitive python coding.  As a 19 year old, you have a ton of time and you don't need to swing for the fences and make 50% or 30% or even 20% returns every year to do well. And you don't have to pick the best performing stocks, and if you do, you don;t have to buy them at their lowest or sell them at their highest.  Go read A Random Walk's guide to Investing by Burton Malkiel and The only Investment Guide you'll ever need by Andrew Tobias. Buy them at used bookstores because it's cheaper that way.  And if you want more excitement read You Can Be  a Stock Market Genius by Joel GreenBlatt, One up On Wall Street By Peter Lynch, something by Warren Buffet and if you want to be really whacked, read Fooled By Randomness by Nassim Nicholas Talib, But never forget about Tobias and Malkiel, invest a regular amount of money every month from 19 to 65 according to what they write and you'll be a wealthy guy by 65. At this stage of the game your best investment is yourself. Rather than putting it in stocks, use any spare money you have to get yourself the best education you can. See if you can drop that part-time job and give yourself more time to study. Or maybe you can go to a better, more expensive college. Or maybe college will give you some opportunity to travel and learn more that way. You don't want to exclude yourself from those opportunities by not having enough spare cash. So in short, spend what you need to get yourself the best education you can, and keep any spare money you have somewhere you can use it to take advantage of any opportunities that come your way. If you're trying to teach them the value of money and quantifying the dollar difference between prices, one very effective way to do this is by using bar charts. For instance, if a toy is $5, and movie they really want to see is $10, and a vacation they want to go on costs $2000, it can be a useful tool to help explain how the relative costs work. "Although my kid just turned 5, he's learning the value of money now, which should help him in the future. First thing, teach him that you exchange money for goods and services. Let him see the bills, and explain what they're for (i.e. ""I pay ISP Co to give us Internet; that lets us watch Youtube and Netflix, as well as play games with Grandma on your GameStation""). After a little while, they will see where it goes, and why. Then you have your automatic bills, such as mortgage payments. I make a habit of taking out the cash after I get paid, and my son comes with me to the bank where I deposit it again (I get paid monthly, so it's only one extra withdraw). He can physically see the money, and understand that if the stack is gone, it's gone. Now that he is understanding things cost money, he wants to make money himself. He volunteers to help clean up the kitchen and vacuum rooms in the house, usually without being asked. I give him a dollar or two for the simple chores like that. Things like cleaning his room or his own mess, he does not get paid for. He puts all his money into his piggy bank, and he has some goals in mind: a big fire truck, a police helicopter, a pool, a monster truck, a boat. Remember he's only 5. He has his goals, and we have the money he's been saving up. We calculate how many times he needs to vacuum the living room, or clean up dishes, to get there, and he realizes it takes a long time. He looks for other ways to make money around the house, and we come up with solutions together. I am hoping in a year or two that I can show him my investments and get him to understand why they make or lose money. I want to get him in to the habit of investing a little bit every few months, then every month, to help his income grow, even if he can't touch the money quite yet." https://www.google.ca/amp/s/amp.businessinsider.com/most-important-finance-books-2017-1  Bloomberg, finacial times, chat with traders, calculated risk, reuters, wsj, cnbc(sucks), bnn (if canadian)  Audio books on youtube helped me read a lot of finance books in a short amount of time, listen while working out.  One thing that helped me stand out at my student terms (4th year here) was learning outside of the classroom and joining an investment club. Learning programming can help if thats a strength, but its really not needed and  it can waste time if yoi wont reach a point to build tools.  Other than that at 18 you have more direction than i did, good luck! Establish good saving and spending habits. Build up your savings so that when you do buy a car, you can pay cash. Make spending decisions, especially for housing, transportation and entertainment, that allow you to save a substantial portion of your income. The goal is to get yourself to a place where you have enough net worth that the return on your assets is greater than the amount you can earn by working. (BTW, this is basically what I did. I put my two sons through top colleges on my dime and retired six years ago at the age of 56). "Everyone buys different kinds of goods. For example I don't smoke tobacco so I'm not affected by increased tobacco prices. I also don't have a car so I'm not affected by the reduced oil prices either. But my landlord increased the monthly fee of the apartment so my cost of living per month suddenly increased more than 10% relative to the same month a year before.  This is well known, also by the statistical offices. As you say, the niveau of the rent is not only time- but also location specific, so there are separate rent indices (German: Mietspiegel). But also for the general consumer price indices at least in my country (Germany) statistics are kept for different categories of things as well.  So, the German Federal Statistical Office (Statistisches Bundesamt) not only publishes ""the"" consumer price index for the standard consumer basket, but also consumer price indices  for oil, gas, rents, food, public transport, ... Nowadays, they even have a web site where you can put in your personal weighting for these topics and look at ""your"" inflation:  https://www.destatis.de/DE/Service/InteraktiveAnwendungen/InflationsrechnerSVG.svg Maybe something similar is available for your country?"