Solid reading/literature for investment/retirement/income taxes?
For the mechanices/terms of stock investing, I recommend Learn to Earn by Peter Lynch. I also like The Little Book of Common Sense Investing by John Bogle. It explains why indexing is the best choice for most people. For stock picking, a good intro is The Little Book of Value Investing by Chris Brown. And then there is The Intelligent Investor by Ben Graham. IMO, this is the bible of investing. "You bring up some very high level stuff, each of which can be the subject of a life's work.  For taxes, I first read J.K. Lasser's Your Income Tax. I actually read it cover to cover instead of using it as a reference guide. I hit topics that I'd otherwise have never looked up on purpose. Once you familiarize yourself with the current tax code, keeping up on changes to the code goes pretty well.  As far as investing goes, William Bernstein has two titles, “The Four Pillars of Investing” and “The Intelligent Asset Allocator”. Others have liked “Personal Finance for Dummies” by Eric Tyson. These are great introductory books, the classic is “Security Analysis” by Graham & Dodd. Warren Buffet was a student of Benjamin Graham and he did fine applying these principals.  For retirement, The Number by Lee Eisenberg was a good read. I consider retirement an extension of the investing education, only the money flow is reversed, withdrawals, no new deposits. Of course this is an oversimplification.  In my own reading list, I include books such as “Extraordinary Popular Delusions & the Madness of Crowds” by Charles MacKay and “The Great Crash 1929″ by John Kenneth Galbraith. Understanding how these bubbles happen is critical to a complete education. I'm convinced that when it comes to investing if I can teach my daughter to understand the concept of Risk and Reward and to understand there are certain common alerts to such bubbles, the simplest of which is the term ""this time is different"" as though a hundred years of market dynamics can change in a matter of a few years.  Last, there are books like ""Stop Acting Rich"" by Dr Thomas Stanley. Not quite investing, per se, but a good read to get an idea of how we have a distorted view of certain signs of wealth.  Keep reading, no harm in taking books out of the library and returning if the first chapter or two disappoints." Something that introduces the vocabulary and treats the reader like an intelligent individual? It's a bit overkill for 'retirement', but Yale has a free online course in Financial Markets. It's very light on math, but does a good job establishing jargon and its history. It covers most of the things you'd buy or sell in financial markets, and is presented by Nobel Prize winner Robert Schiller. This particular series was filmed in 2007, so it also offers a good historical perspective of the start of the subprime collapse. There's a number of high profile guest speakers as well. I would encourage you to think critically about their speeches though. If you research what's happened to them after that lecture, it's quite entertaining: one IPO'd a 'private equity' firm that underperformed the market as a whole, another hedge fund manager bought an airline with a partner firm that was arrested for running a ponzi scheme six months later.  The reading list in the syllabus make a pretty good introduction to the field, but keep in mind they're for institutional investors not your 401(k).
"I would start with long term data. It would show how 40 years worth of stock investing puts the investor so far ahead of the ""safe"" investor that they can afford to lose half and still be ahead. But - then I would explain about asset allocation, and how the soon to be retired person had better be properly allocated if they weren't all along so that the impact of down years is mitigated. The retiree is still a long term investor as life spans of 90 are common.  Look at the long term charts for the major indexes. So long as you average in, reinvest earnings (dividends) and stay diversified, you will be ahead. The market is still not where it was at the end of 2001, but in the decade, our worth has risen from 5X our income to 12.5X. This was not genius, just a combination of high savings and not panicking." I learned most of this stuff from 3 textbooks in school probably totaling $900 between the 3. I imagine you don't want to spend the cash on that. I would suggest finding a source online. A lot of the surface level stuff you are looking for can be found online on websites like Investopedia. They are a great resource and are free usually. "As foundational material, read ""The Intelligent Investor"" by Benjamin Graham.  It will help prepare you to digest and critically evaluate other investing advice as you form your strategy." I think the IRS doc you want is http://www.irs.gov/publications/p550/ch04.html#en_US_2010_publink100010601 I believe the answers are: Looking at taxes on earned income vs. investment income, you'll see a huge difference. Nearly all super rich people earn most of their income from investments, eg see Buffet - that's why his secretary pays more in taxes.  Plus, there's plenty of other legal ways to legally lower tax obligations, eg deferred carry forwards on losses, etc.  TLDR: duh Just by chance I recently encountered this link - Do It Yourself MFE, which describes an attempt to self-educate to the level of Master of Financial Engineering. It lists books, online courses, etc. which I think may be interesting for you too. I spent a while looking for something similar a few weeks back and ended up getting frustrated and asking to borrow a friend's Bloombterg.   I wish you the best of luck finding something,  but I wasn't able to.   S&amp;P and Morningstar have some stuff on their site,  but I wasn't able to make use of it.  Edit: Also,  Bloomberg allows shared terminals.  Depending on how much you think as a firm,  these questions might come up,  it might be worth the 20k / year "J.K. Lasser's Your Income Tax is, remarkably, a great read. It's a line by line review of the tax forms, and offers commentary and examples for every scenario. Of course, it's updated every year to reflect new rules and numbers.  I actually read it from cover to cover the first year I started working.  It's not going to offer convoluted strategies to use, but, you'll understand your tax return well enough to respond to the advice you encounter elsewhere.  To mhoran's point - ""Don't let the tax tail wag the investing dog.""  Taxes are important, but should take a back step to earning and investing. Those who didn't sell at the height of the dotcon bubble ""to avoid the big tax bill"" only saw in hindsight that paying taxes is part of success not failure." I would always recommend the intelligent investor by Benjamin Graham the mentor of warren buffet once you have a basic knowledge ie what is a share bond guilt etc  In terms of pure investment the UK is fairly similar the major difference is the simpler tax structure, ISA allowance and the more generous CGT regime. Not exactly nonfiction, but [Reminiscences of a Stock Operator](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reminiscences_of_a_Stock_Operator) is a can't-skip portrait of the very early days of Wall Street (early 20th century). It's a narrative memoir, not a work of analysis, which makes it an easy read.   If you're looking for something more analytical and recent (but not too recent), the can't-skip recommendation I would make is Burton Malkiel's [A Random Walk Down Wall Street](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Random_Walk_Down_Wall_Street).   If you're looking for something more in the biographical range, I'd look for a biography of the man who's had the most influence on the theory of portfolio construction, [Harry Markowitz](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Markowitz). I don't have any titles to recommend here, although [this brief biography](http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economic-sciences/laureates/1990/markowitz-bio.html) might help you decide how to proceed. "Thanks!  I came across many books on credit risk in my google searches - what I'm really looking for is which one is the ""industry standard"" reading (does that make sense?). For example, in derivatives, everybody recommends John C. Hull's Options... book. Why of all the CRM books, do you recommend those three in particular?" The book HOLD: How to Find, Buy, and Rent Houses for Wealth by Chader et al. was one of the best I've read on the subject. It has all of the basics, explanations, examples, and gives you real-life assumptions for your inputs when you do your analysis. It does contain some less-relevant information now that was more realistic before 2007, but it's a worthwhile read (or listen). They have some good starter worksheets, as well, on their website to help you do your analysis, which I found useful despite already having my own. "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." "Again, you're welcome.  It's also important to note (it really cannot be overemphasized) is that the taxes that were increased were/are virtually all the REGRESSIVE ones.  The rate of FICA taxation for example on rents, interest, and other ""capital gains"" (i.e. non-payroll income) -- were initially 0%, then later became 0%, and currently are 0%.  Meanwhile the FICA rate on average &amp; median payroll (wages/salaries of ""workers"" and ""mid-level managers"", etc) increased from 1% to 15% -- that's a 15x increase, or put another way, it is an increase of 1,500% during less than a single working career (the cost of absolutely NOTHING ELSE in the history of our society increased at anything like that rate; not even education and health care costs, nor even ""housing"" at the peak of the bubble -- and in actuality, just about everything else {including the notorious ""gasoline"" sold by those ""evil"" petroleum companies} actually DECREASED during the same time frame).  And then, during virtually the SAME time period, those other taxes increased in a similar (if less egregious) fashion. For example in my Midwestern state, there was no sales tax at all circa 1950.  A bit over a decade later, when it was first instituted it was initially set at 3%, but applied only to a select category of goods; subsequently the rate was increased (to 4%, then 5%, then with the addition of various county and municipal ""sales taxes"" to 6% and higher), and more critically, the goods and services that are subject to the tax has increased as well (many of them already with ""hidden/buried"" excise taxes -- so a large portion of the sales tax is actually a ""tax on a tax"").  When you realize that as wealth increases, the average expenditure on taxable goods tends does NOT tend increase in anything like a directly proportional manner (i.e. while a person making $50k a year, may pay more than 2x the total sales tax than someone making $25k a year {simply because a big part of the $25k a year goes to ""basic necessities"" of food, rent, etc}, and it is even possible that the person making $100k a year pays a simple 2x in sales tax of the $50k person... but the $1M a year is HIGHLY unlikely to be paying 10x the sales tax as the $100k a year person) then you begin to realize the way that the ""regressive"" form of those taxes work -- basically ""hobbling"" the middle class and preventing it from reaching ""upper"" middle class status.  Now to be ruthlessly blatantly forthright, it is NOT simply a matter of blaming the ""rich"" -- because the lion's share of those ""taxes"" were and are being used to ""redistribute"" money to an ever increasing number of non-working people (either retirees, or ""disabled"" former workers, etc) -- the vast majority of which were things ""demanded"" by the general population.  Hence the TANSTAAFL reality.  The means that the ""rich/elites"" have used to milk &amp; bilk the system may be *indirectly* linked to those taxes, but in general are actually much more likely to be based on other things (access to leverage/credit &amp; the socialization of bad bets/losses, avoidance of ""wages"" and emphasis on ""capital gains"", etc).  Doesn't mean the elites/wealthy AREN'T gaming/scamming the system (indeed, many of them are) -- but at least a significant part of the ""blame"" for the burdensome tax system lies with the people themselves.  As another example of the same thing, take ""healthcare insurance"" -- people want their ""insurance"" to not only cover the rare, large expenses (cancer treatment, major accident trauma, etc); but also to cover their ""annual checkups"", etc. -- and then are shocked (shocked I say) when their insurance premiums go UP.  Well, what do people expect? If virtually everyone goes for an annual checkup, and that checkup costs per policy are say $300 a year, then how can premiums NOT go up by approximately $300 (+ administration costs)?  Did they expect the money to pay those things to magically appear out of nowhere?  Seriously; you demand something and eventually (one way or another) you are going to pay for it.  ---  So in your father and grandfathers eras, they were able to support a larger family in no small part because they were NOT paying for all of those ""safety net"" things.  In addition, for what little ""safety net"" *did exist* at the time, the people collecting on it were [demographically tiny versus the larger working/paying class](http://www.ssa.gov/history/ratios.html) (i.e. in 1940 each retiree on social security was ""supported"" by nearly 160 workers; by 1950 the ratio was a tenth of that 1 retiree supported by 16 workers; by 1965 it was a quarter of that {1/40th of the 1940 ratio}, 1 retiree to 4 workers; and currently {2009} it is a 1 to 3 ratio {and set to get a LOT worse as the ""Baby Boomer Bulge"" retires en masse in the coming decade+}.)  So basically, your single income job still IS supporting a large ""family"" -- you just aren't supporting them *directly* any more {instead you pay the government, and they get checks ""from the government""}; and the ""family"" you are supporting is probably NOT biologically related to you (i.e. they are someone *else's* kids, parents, etc).  And then, just as importantly, since you are no longer *directly* supporting a large family, YOU have essentially ZERO control over the hows/whens/whys of how the money gets spent (whereas your father and grandfather DID get to decide) -- instead the monies are being tossed as ""entitlements"" to the recipients, who, since they have been told (and certainly WANT to believe) that they are just getting ""what they are due"", don't feel that anyone has any RIGHT to tell them how to spend it.  (Sorta like as if when your father and grandfather were working, as if their wife, and each of their kids {as well as great grandpa Joe in the back bedroom, and maybe the ""disabled neighbor"" Dave} was LEGALLY GRANTED a government mandated ""allowance"" of 1/10th of your dad/grandad's paycheck -- and instead of your dad/grandad getting his full paycheck, the government required his employer to cut several paychecks paying those ""allowances"" directly to the wife, kids {whose checks would go directly to their schools}, grandpa joe, neighbor Dave, etc -- and they {other than the kids} were then able to spend it on whatever they wanted, and your dad/grandad wouldn't have been able to say ""boo"" about it.)  Because when it comes right down to it... that's what has happened; there's just multiple layers of official/bureaucratic ""obfuscation"" in the middle that hide the transfers under various euphemisms." there are several reasons you might want good credit even if you could afford to pay for all your expenses in cash. having pointed out all the above reasons to have good credit, it is probably worth noting that many people with good credit choose to not borrow simply because they are more comfortable with the risks of not borrowing (e.g. inflation risk), than they are with the risks of borrowing (e.g. investment volatility).