Frum Finance Bookshelf: 3 Must-Read Money Books

January 7, 2026

Planning & Saving

After I got married, I took my new role as man of the house seriously. My favorite bein hasedorim trip was to Home Depot, where I stocked up on a wide variety of cool tools, gadgets, and gizmos. While this was fun, I soon realized that a simple toolbox (hammer, screwdriver, drill etc.) covers most of the endless, basic odd jobs that most yungeleit-wannabe-handymen will face.

Similarly, while there are myriad financial education resources and tools, the most essential knowledge that every family needs is pretty basic. While financial headlines like to talk about the exciting, unique, and bizarre, it’s the everyday foundational stuff that’s the most vital and will help you the most. The following three classic books cover must-know personal finance—the hammers, drills, and screwdrivers in the world of money. And like those basic tools, they are easy to learn and utilize.

1. Personal Finance for Dummies

Don’t let the name fool you. This best-selling book, written by Eric Tyson, covers the gamut of financial topics—financial goals, managing credit and debt, home buying, investing, taxes, insurance, and much more. Each volume in the popular “For Dummies” series assumes that readers are beginners who require obvious guidance on a new topic. Personal Finance for Dummies is therefore very logically organized, speaks in simple language, and provides the most important core of financial knowledge.

Tyson isn’t just spouting theory; his know-how stems both from his extensive education and lengthy experience as a financial advisor to everyday people. Tyson’s book is importantly unbiased—there are no sales leads or hidden agendas in the book. On the contrary, readers learn how to avoid industry pitfalls and seek good advice and investment products without getting ripped off.

As an investment guy, I also like that the book’s section on growing wealth doesn’t pigeonhole readers—stocks, bonds, mutual funds, real estate, and even small business are all covered in this comprehensive guide.

You can read this excellent book cover to cover, do a deep dive on just a relevant chapter, or keep it as a reference guide via its detailed index.

2. Your Money and Your Life

Reading just the aforementioned book will provide an outstanding overview of personal finance. However, it is difficult, bordering on impossible, for someone outside of our community to fathom the unique circumstances and perspectives of frum life: large extended families, tight communities with extensive chessed networks, simchos, yeshivah tuition, Shabbos, seminary, kollel, our bitachon and attitudes about what’s important in life.

This isn’t a criticism of Tyson or the other authors in the field. But clearly, the frum world needs its own foundational book about personal finance. That’s where another classic book, Your Money and Your Life, comes in.

I love this book, put out by Mesila, an organization whose mission is helping frum families achieve financial stability. The volume touches on everything financial, but from the perspective of a frum family—balancing bitachon and hishtadlus, budgeting for kollel families, saving for simchos, shalom bayis and money, and much more.

The book’s format is similar to that of this column, with each chapter answering about half a dozen related questions, making it an easy and engaging read. While I don’t agree with every single word, this book is a masterpiece. Count on it to flesh out the nuance missing from Tyson’s expert but secular perspective.

3. The Millionaire Next Door

The final, crucial financial book in the “toolbox” is any volume that pounds home the message that thriving financially requires discipline and planning. Many need a real knock in the head to deprogram from a culture of debt and conspicuous consumption. Some books focus more on the asei t —building a drive to gain financial independence, and others on the sor mei ra—avoiding excessive, unsustainable consumption. To a large degree, the message that appeals most will be a matter of taste as the lessons here are primarily attitudinal, not technical. The timeless words of Mishlei and Pirkei Avos on these topics may be enough for you.

One book I found to be a real eye-opener was The Millionaire Next Door and its updated version, The Next Millionaire Next Door. The authors are marketing professors who conducted extensive academic research into the characteristics of America’s wealthiest families. Despite the common misconception, most millionaires are self-made businessmen or professionals who live frugally for years as they build themselves up.

The “Prodigious Accumulators of Wealth” also tend to focus on investing, reducing their tax bills, and educating their children rather than indulging them. The primary determinant of wealth, they found, was frugality in the pursuit of long-term growth, and this thriftiness often carried over long after the subjects became exceedingly wealthy.

Going Deeper?

These three books provide an outstanding financial foundation for any frum family—offering savvy advice that is probably beyond the scope of 80 percent of the American population! Acquiring basic financial knowledge will help you avoid significant pitfalls, itself an important accomplishment. But, of course, within each category covered in basic terms, there’s much more to learn.

GeltGuide of course, is here to help! We have a weekly newsletter with great, timely content, and our website has hundreds of articles!

Click here for an article with great investment book suggestions.

Tyson also spends a lot of time discussing how to find further sources of accurate financial information and includes a short list of other book titles to consider. Morgan Housel’s offerings are a definite read, too.

Become an Educated Consumer

Some may question: “Why do I need to read it at all? I’ll just hire someone else to take care of my financial issues.” Besides the costs involved, finding the right professionals to manage your investments, taxes, and insurance is no easy matter.

What services do you require? Whom should you trust? How do you find, interview, and hire them? Basic financial education includes learning enough to delegate to others appropriately. To paraphrase the now-defunct Syms clothing chain: “An educated consumer is a good customer.”