National Financial Literacy Month is recognized each year in April to raise public awareness of the importance of financial literacy and maintaining smart money management habits. Financial literacy is having both the knowledge and the competence to manage your personal and household finances in order to set and reach meaningful goals.
Library Programs
We are offering two insightful lectures in April for your financial empowerment and education:
To understand the evolving world of finance, join us on April 2 at 7pm for The Future of Finance that will offer an introduction to Cryptocurrency, Blockchain, and Decentralized Finance.
Have you wanted to better understand what the talk about Bitcoin, Ether and other digital currencies is all about? Or why experts are saying distributed ledger technology will usher in a new stage of financial transparency? This presentation will offer you a basic understanding of what cryptocurrency is, how blockchain technology underwrites this new financial ecosystem, and how decentralized finance, or DeFi, can empower a person’s financial goals.
This class will focus on the theory and application of these new concepts. Retirement and investment planning are essential to ensuring financial security in your later years. By starting early and making informed decisions, you can build a strong foundation that will allow you to maintain your lifestyle and achieve your financial goals long after your working years.
Join us for Securing Your Future: Smart Strategies for Retirement and Investment Planning, on April 22 at 7pm. This seminar will explore proven strategies for securing your financial future with a focus on retirement planning, investment tax strategies, and the importance of a disciplined, long-term approach.
Financial Advisor Peter Dizdar will guide you through navigating the stock market’s complexities, helping you understand how to balance risk and reward, optimize your portfolio for tax efficiency, and position yourself for sustainable growth. Whether you’re just beginning to plan for retirement or looking to refine your investment strategy, this session will equip you with the knowledge and tools to make confident, informed decisions for your financial future.
New Reads
Personal finance books can help you sharpen up on basics—how to manage and pay off debt, paying for college, planning for retirement, how to invest, budgeting tips and more—and can help you become savvier, more directed, and more confident in handling your finances and making your money work to meet your goals.
Here are some of the latest titles in our collection covering a wide gamut of personal finance topics, which impart the latest advice, tips and information to help you with your money management skills.
Ask Questions, Save Money, Make More : How to Take Control of Your Financial Life by Matt Schulz
Schulz empowers you to ask 45 fiscal questions in seven key areas of life: credit and debt, healthcare, housing, shopping, travel, work, and relationships. The questions feature decision trees, success stories, potential risks, and other practical tools that skillfully guide you through the pros and cons and explain the relevant data. Every request also comes with an easy-to-follow, fill-in-the-blank script. Gain the confidence to request a lower rate on your rent or mortgage, better financing for an auto loan, a higher salary, a refund on a cancelled flight, a lower phone bill, and even a fair split for that group dinner. You are the lifeblood of every company that you pay, and you have more power over your money than you realize. Put more of it in your pocket and keep it there. Sometimes all you have to do is ask.
Buy What You Love Without Going Broke: Transform Your Spending and Get More of What Money Can’t Buy by Jen Smith
There’s a lot of noise out there about how to spend (and not spend) your money. But what if you made financial decisions based on what you value, instead of what others are telling you to value. This is the empowering approach the hosts of the Frugal Friends podcast want you to take to improve your spending habits. They believe you can value anything, but you can’t value everything.
Feel-Good Finance : Untangle Your Relationship with Money for Better Mental, Emotional, and Financial Well-Being by Aja Evans
While basic budget planning and money management advice are incorporated into the content, the primary focus is on understanding mental health and how it is affected by individual financial wellness. As an exploration of the impact of living with financially challenging experiences, an absence of financial literacy, and the influence of intergenerational financial trauma, this will be relevant to all readers. However, Evans also details the devastating impact of financial anxiety, stress, and mismanagement as it specifically impacts individuals from racially diverse backgrounds.
With this accessible guide, you can navigate the current uncertainty of pre-retirement and plan effectively so that you gain the most out of your retirement. Updated for the new financial year, and presented with an online directory of useful organizations and contacts, this new edition covers the latest guidance on new pension rules, finance (green energy investments, budgeting, benefits, tax and charitable giving), starting your own business, employment (hybrid and flexi-working systems), returning to work and NHS tips on staying healthy.
The Holy Grail of Investing : The World’s Greatest Investors Reveal their Ultimate Strategies for Financial Freedom by Anthony Robbins
Robbins returns with the final book in his financial freedom trilogy by unveiling the power of alternative investments. Robbins, and renowned investor Christopher Zook, take you on a journey to interview a dozen of the world’s most successful investors in private equity, private credit, private real estate, and venture capital. They share their favorite strategies and insights in this practical guidebook.
Invest Like a Girl : Jump into the Stock Market, Reach Your Money Goals, and Build Wealth by Jessica Spangler
An approachable, empowering guide to investing that helps you level the financial playing field, move toward financial independence, and grow your money, from one of the internet’s favorite personal finance educators.
Keeping Finance Personal : Ditch the “Shoulds” and the Shame and Rewrite Your Money Story by Ellyce Fulmore
With chapters focusing on the importance of safe spaces when dealing with your finances, personal values, couple dynamics (for any couple), vices and coping mechanisms, this is not your typical financial advice book. Ellyce asks readers to engage with how their upbringing, gender identity, and mental health impact their decisions, and guides them through self-exploration exercises that will lead them to a financial plan tailored to work for them.
Make Money Easy : Create Financial Freedom and Live a Richer Life by Lewis Howes
Your relationship with money begins with having the right mindset. Until you learn how to shift your thoughts, feelings, and behaviors around money, you’ll keep doing what you’ve always done. And get the same results. Leveraging insight gleaned from the many financial experts on the School of Greatness show, the latest research around the psychology of money, and his own journey to success, Howes offers the practical advice and mindset reframing to make the peace and fulfillment you desire a day-to-day reality.
Millionaire Habits : How to Achieve Financial Independence, Retire Early, and Make a Difference by Focusing on Yourself First by Steve Adcock
This book is divided into two parts. Part 1 discusses each of the ten millionaire habits and the millionaire wealth-building timeline. These habits are the building blocks for everything you do inside and outside your workplace. Millionaires use these habits to build money-making careers and live a life that’s so satisfying that they can’t wait to get up in the morning and start their day. Part 2 dives into FIRE, or Financial Independence Retire Early. Younger people use these millionaire habits to work hard for several years and then quit their jobs in their 30s or 40s.
Money for Couples : No More Stress, No More Fights, Just a 10-step Plan to Create Your Rich Life Together by Ramit Sethi
Ramit’s 10-step program addresses the common money issues in relationships: how to stop fighting over money; how to get both partners to participate in the finances; how to handle the situation when one partner is a saver and the other a spender; and how to take control of too much debt. Packed with juicy, enlightening real-world stories, answers to the most common questions (how much to invest, how to teach children about money, whether to sign a prenup), and step-by-step scripts for navigating tricky conversations, this book helps readers become competent both as financial managers and as kind, caring, and open communicators with their partners.
The Money School : 12 Simple Lessons to Master Financial Markets and Investing by Nicole Lapin
Lapin gets into the nitty gritty of stocks and bonds, touching on how people talk about them and how they can invest in them as part of their investment portfolio.
Money Talks : A Lifestyle Guide for Financial Wellbeing by Ellie Austin-Williams
A feminist take on financial wellbeing which alleviates financial anxiety in millennials by tackling the areas in life where money and wellbeing intersect. How can we handle the impact of comparison culture on our bank accounts? Should we want an engagement ring, or is that anti-feminist? How can we say no to events we can’t afford but we feel obliged to attend to please others? Money has the power to shape, make or even break our lives, and can have a significant impact on our mental health – so why aren’t we treating it as an important part of our wellbeing? In each chapter of this book, financial influencer Austin-Williams tackles a major area in our life that might bring us financial anxiety, from friendship to love.
Moving Beyond Broke : The Power of Perseverance in Personal Finance by Dasha Kennedy
Kennedy started the website The Broke Black Girl and discovered an entire community of people who were desperate for money advice and understanding. Now, Kennedy provides the ultimate user-friendly resource, featuring engaging and relatable stories from her own personal finance journey. With actionable advice and an engaging voice, she helps us take control, move past shame and anxiety, build family wealth in a single generation, and become financially independent forever.
The New Rules of Investing : Essential Wealth Strategies for Turbulent Times by Mark H. Haefele
The Chief Investment Officer of UBS offers a comprehensive playbook for contemporary investing strategies, moving beyond traditional stock picking to address modern complexities, sharing insights gained from advising diverse investors, and equipping readers with practical tools for long-term wealth protection and growth amidst market fluctuations.
Personal Finance (For Dummies) by Eric Tyson
Get familiar with the financial pillars of earning, saving, investing, borrowing, budgeting, and protecting your assets. Dig into modern concerns like navigating the housing market, weathering the highs and lows of an unpredictable market, evaluating new stuff like cryptocurrency, and budgeting to achieve your financial goals. Take the anxiety out of money matters by building a solid financial plan, learning to spend and invest wisely, and managing your debt.
Slott shows you in clear-cut layman’s terms how to take control over your retirement savings plan. This easy-to-follow plan helps you place your assets to avoid the latest traps set out by Congress in addition to any that might be set down the road, so you can keep your hard-earned money no matter what.
You Deserve to be Rich : Step into your Power and Claim Your Financial Future by Rashad Bilal
A revolutionary playbook for achieving financial freedom within a broken system, from the founders of the explosively popular educational platform Earn Your Leisure. The key is to see money as a strategic tool for wealth development rather than an end in and of itself. You Deserve to Be Rich breaks down strategies for: Understanding the psychological toll of growing up living paycheck to paycheck, healing from financial trauma, and reframing your relationship with money Exploring income-building strategies outside of your 9-5, from long-term and short-term investing in often-overlooked sectors to side hustles with passive income potential Mastering the complexities of the tax and insurance systems and identifying the (legal) loopholes you need to maximize wealth Navigating the family expectations that can complicate financial planning and finding sustainable ways to support your community.
Your Best Financial Life : Save Smart Now for the Future You Want by Anne Lester
Drawing on her own personal experience, the latest research and case studies, the former head of retirement solutions for JPMorgan Asset Management provides actionable solutions for the unique challenges Millennials and Gen Z face while saving for their future to help them achieve their biggest life goals.
—Archana, Adult Services & Acquisitions Librarian