HOW TO MONEY

Financial advice and guidelines for young people taking their first hesitant steps into “Adultville.”

Personal finance experts, including the host of the HerMoney podcast, squire readers through the basics of goal setting, budgeting, banking, choosing credit and debit cards, managing student loans and other debt, health and other insurance, and job hunting. The advice is sensible and presented in positive, upbeat tones, if sometimes imprecise and overly generalized. It includes frank acknowledgment of continuing salary gaps based on gender, race, sexual orientation, and gender identity; cumulative intergenerational inequalities; and the effects on individuals who have more than one marginalized identity. The vital importance of developing a habit of saving as early as possible gets proper stress. The authors give stock market investing an equally hard sell, assuring readers that it’s easy money with, over the long term at least, guaranteed profits. The work opens with a quote from Jane Bryant Quinn that “money isn’t pink or blue; it’s green,” explaining that a primary goal of both the book and the HerMoney organization is redressing the long-standing gender gap in the world of finance by centering women while offering advice that readers of all genders can utilize. The work contains interviews with over a dozen individuals, many of them women business owners or leaders of women-centered initiatives, and youth-targeted sample lists of income sources and budget items. Cosford’s small, color illustrations break up and brighten the text and portray racially diverse individuals.

Encouraging, empowering, and up to date.