Marc's Blog

Ever since I've been in the working world (starting 2001), I've had an interest in personal finance. After graduating college, once I started working I knew I needed to manage my money wisely, and I also realized that I don't want to work until I'm 65-70 years. Right after college I made it my goal to retire early.

With that in mind, finance and investing have always been interesting to me. My parents raised me to manage money wisely and to avoid debt, but I never learned much about investing.

Regardless of whether you're trying to learn more about investing, budgeting, paying off debt, or ways to advance your career, reading can be extremely helpful.

I learned the basics of personal finance and investing from several different books. Today, I read many personal finance blogs and FIRE blogs (financial independence, retire early) on a daily basis. Reading blogs has helped me to improve my financial knowledge, and blogs also help me to stay up-to-date and on top of current financial news and happenings. 

As much as I love blogs (and I actually have my own finance blog at VitalDollar.com), books are also excellent resources for learning. There are books on every financial topic you can imagine.

My recommendation would be to head to your local library, because you can find plenty of great money-related books that you can borrow for free. Also, don't forget that you can buy used books at many places, including online, for very cheap. And websites like Amazon also sell new books and ebooks for reasonable prices.

A few books that I enjoy are:

• The Total Money Makeover
• The Millionaire Nextdoor
• The Automatic Millionaire