Any recommend reading for a finance newbie?

I am about to graduate from college and close to getting a real job, but am totally clueless about how to invest for my retirement. I know that 401k and roths are good things, but it stops right there. Are there any books that you investing gurus can recommend that is easy to read just so that i can get my feet wet? I prefer something that isn't too overwhelming to the point that it would be a chore to read.

I can also provide pics for the help, but I don't think anyone wants to see a guy. I can show you my feet if you want. Thanks in advance!

edit: Just to be clear. What I am looking for is a book that you guys highly recommend. I am not looking for any specific advice at this time.

Bogleheads Guide to Investing
Bogleheads Guide to Retirement
CommonSense on Mutual Funds

these are my top 3 for beginners at the present time.

If you are just getting out of college, the best advice at this time is to learn to live within your means and stay out of debt.

0AfterRebates said: Rich Dad, Poor Dad.
This is one of the more popular self help books. IMHO, there are far better books about financial parables..

Three that I would read "for motivation and Career" would be:
The Gold Ring : Jim Fisk, Jay Gould, and Black Friday, 1869
A historical tale of how several speculators got to President Grant's family to fix the price of gold. (He who sells what isn't his'n, must buy it back or go to prison.)

Liars Poker
The story of a Bond Salesman from Salomon Brothers during the early 80s. He describes the birth of the mortgage backed security, and has excellent advice for how to live life satisfied. (For most there is no such thing as wealth, only new levels of relative poverty.) This book allowed me to negotiate a much better salary.

Barbarians at the Gates
How do you merge the biggest health food company Nabisco with the Reynolds Tobacco? Another book of the dangers of corporations with too much cash flow.

FW threads

The best book on personal finance I ever read was Your Money or Your Life. Before you can invest for retirement you have to build off a foundation of savings... The investment advice is pretty weak however.

Richest Man in Babylon is a fun, quick and informative read about basic principles of growing wealth... Highly recommended.

IMO, early in your career frugality is much, much more important than investing.

If you're new to the whole personal finance realm, I wouldn't recommend an investment book, but a personal finance book.

If you can get over the title and the fact that there are bits that are geared toward women (like when he discusses how women need more for retirement because they live longer and often take time off for pregnancy/raising kids), I really like "Smart Women Finish Rich" by David Bach. You can skip over the values part in the first part of the book; he quickly goes into practical stuff.

A second choice would be Suze Orman's "The Money Book for the Young, Fabulous & Broke." If you can get over how annoying Suze Orman is, it's got some solid advice, including a very helpful chart that shows you how to priortize your money when you have student loan, credit card, retirement hopes and/or a house hopes.

There is also "I will teach you to be rich" who I think is helpful and maybe more paltable for a guy.

Please don't post feet pictures!

Bogleheads Book List

Thank you for all of your input. I will purchase some of the books above and read them while I am exercising. I will be back in 6 months when I am spiraling out of control.

Or read it at Border's and Barnes and Noble's at the coffee shop. Get a good cup of coffee and read along for the day.

InsuranceExpert said:

To keep things as simple as is humanly possible:
1) Invest 10% of your money if you want to retire some day.
2) Invest 20% of your money if you want to retire well off.
3) Invest 30% of your money if you want to become wealthy.
4) If you can't pay cash, you can't afford the item.
5) Bad things will happen at some point, so make sure that you are properly insured.

With a screen name like that I expected number 5 on your list to take top priority.

Thanks for the library advice! I have not step foot into a public library in eons let alone have a library card.

silverfishva said: Or read it at Border's and Barnes and Noble's at the coffee shop. Get a good cup of coffee and read along for the day.

ive done this but ive always felt kind of bad (especially when i would get my drink from coffee bean and then walk next door to the borders). also, the one i would always go to closed down at the end of january
they were always doing well (seemingly). they seemed to always have people in line to purchase items and the place was never empty. i guess its just a sign of the times-theres just not enough people buying printed anything anymore

BostonOne said: jetsfan92588 said: Intelligent Investor by Graham
I would have given this multiple greens if I could. Even if you end up only buying funds or ETFs, there is great wisdom in this book about buying for value.

it was the first finance book i read, and is probably the best investing book i have read to this date. (granted i haven't read that many compared to the amount out there, but im still workin on it)

i also thought "the tipping point" and "freakonomics" were good reads, though not really about investing per say. there were some problems with some of the logic in the books, and the tipping point got kind of repetitive, but overall they were good books that could be read pretty quickly

jetsfan92588 said: silverfishva said: Or read it at Border's and Barnes and Noble's at the coffee shop. Get a good cup of coffee and read along for the day.

ive done this but ive always felt kind of bad (especially when i would get my drink from coffee bean and then walk next door to the borders). also, the one i would always go to closed down at the end of january
they were always doing well (seemingly). they seemed to always have people in line to purchase items and the place was never empty. i guess its just a sign of the times-theres just not enough people buying printed anything anymore
It's perfectly fine. Most people who go into Border's read the books. They make money off of people reading books and get a cup of coffee anyway.

0AfterRebates said: Rich Dad, Poor Dad.

This is a joke, right? This book is written by a charlatan who has blatantly misrepresented his past and who has no idea what he is talking about. More important, the book is full of incorrect facts and contradictory and generally misleading advice. Link

I think FWF should really have a financial reading sticky, because there are many threads like this and the answers are almost always the same.

0AfterRebates said: Rich Dad, Poor Dad.

Honestly, Kiyosaki's book is not all that bad. I know some small-time guy named John T. Reed did a big expose on it and all, but that was also just a ruse to sell you his book instead.

I think Kiyosaki's book provides horrible investment advice and would definitely look elsewhere, but still little nuggets of gold can be found in it. For one, I really like the way Kiyosaki helps his readers get out of the lifetime employee/wage slave consumerist mentality. He challenges them to become financially independent and break the middle class cycle of leading a maxed-out lifestyle.

This was the first book that I read on the subject and it was at age 16. I eventually outgrew it and moved on to more serious, more complex investing books and I am better off for it today.

I know a lot of people will trash this guru's book for it's imperfections and see it as just a lame attempt to sell some expensive crap board game, but it was on the New York Times best seller list for a reason. The guy does have some valid stuff to say.

Also, if you look around on the web (I don't have the link), I heard from a relative that he's now giving out free copies of it. So, you don't even have to come out of pocket to see what it is that he has to say.

Financial guru people like Robert Kiyoski, Suze Orman, Dave Ramsey, etc. serve a purpose. They teach people to crawl. I mean, you'd be surprised just how many people don't even know what a stock is. Once you've gotten them out of the way, then you can learn to walk and subscribe to Money Magazine and Kiplinger's Personal Finance. From then on, once you have the basics, you can pick up more advanced stuff like "Security Analysis" by Graham & Dodd and "Technical Analysis of Stock Trends" by Edwars & Magee.

i3ighead said: Any recommend reading for a finance newbie?
Yep.

Understand that stocks, despite so-called conventional wisdom, have underperformed bonds over the short, medium, and long term:

Bonds: Why Bother?

The ‘Millionaire Next Door’ is a scam.

As has been previously delineated in these forums, the "authors" books were derived from a self-selected SURVEY of millionaires they chose, nothing whatsoever to do with reality.

For the average Barnes and Noble Bottomfeeders.

The ultimate question OP is how good to you want to be? Do you want just a basic cursory knowledge, or do you want the unique and more detailed work that will make you all but a pro?

Better put. Do you want to just learn about debt, saving, insurance, and tax favored vehicles or do you also want to learn about arbitrage, investment theory, asset and business valuation, valuing a stream of income, etc.