Financial Adulting: Everything You Need to Be a Financially Confident and Conscious Adult - Hardcover

by Ashley Feinstein Gerstley (Author)

Perfect for anyone seeking to get a firm handle on their personal finances, Financial Adulting is a must-have resource that demystifies and simplifies complex topics and makes understanding personal finance fun

From the founder of The Fiscal Femme, a popular feminist money platform, and author of The 30-Day Money Cleanse, Ashley Feinstein Gerstley's Financial Adulting: Everything You Need to be a Financially Confident and Conscious Adult delivers an easy-to-follow, informative, and fun financial guide. From budgeting and consumer activism to retirement investing and paying down debt, you'll learn everything you need to know and do to be a financially savvy adult.

In this important book, you'll:

• Master fundamental concepts, including dealing with student loans, maximizing your 401(k), and preparing for salary negotiations
• Use a racial and feminist justice lens to tackle rarely discussed topics in money and equity and better understand deep-seated historic and systemic obstacles
• Recognize that your circumstances, goals, and values are unique and require a custom approach in order to succeed financially
• Receive a simple step-by-step guide to reaching your financial goals while living a big, exciting, and meaningful life

Front Jacket

Despite its critical importance, many of us move into adulthood without receiving any meaningful education in personal finance. That deficit is invisible until its consequences, including credit card bills, student loan defaults, empty retirement accounts, and more, begin to mount.

In Financial Adulting, celebrated personal finance expert Ashley Feinstein Gerstley delivers an accessible, informative, and fun guide to becoming a confident and competent financial adult. The book offers all the personal finance education most of us wish we'd received when we were younger, but didn't. It's filled with step-by-step guidance that allows readers to take concrete action and create systems that set themselves up for success in the months and years to follow.

From budgeting and building a rainy-day fund to retirement investing, understanding insurance, filing taxes, improving credit scores, and planning for student loan repayment, the author explores every aspect of personal finance that's relevant to modern adults. Rather than insist that readers give up the things they love, Gerstley provides practical, commonsense advice real-world adults can actually follow.

The book is told from a feminist and systemic perspective, acknowledging the reality that personal finance cannot be decoupled from principles of equity. Whether that means encouraging the reader to use their position of privilege to help close racial and gender wealth gaps or recognizing a historical disadvantage stemming from systemic oppression, Gerstley's realism emphasizes the "personal" in personal finance.

Providing readers with everything they need to know to become financially savvy adults, Financial Adulting offers the opportunity to transform their lives and realize meaningful wealth, one attainable and practical step at a time.

Back Jacket

Praise for Financial Adulting

"Financial Adulting is the step-by-step guide we all wish we had when we graduated college. Although most of us start 'financial adulting' much later, wherever you are in your journey, Ashley provides the perfect toolkit for uncovering a lifelong financial planning strategy while also investing in a more equitable world."
--Farnoosh Torabi, host of the So Money podcast and author of When She Makes More

"In Financial Adulting, Ashley provides an engaging and inclusive path towards becoming a money savvy grown-up. She also brings in rarely talked about lessons from history and ways we can better align our spending with our values."
--Erin Lowry, author of the BROKE MILLENNIAL series

"A must-read! Ashley covers the important and often complex financial topics in a way that even a reader with no financial background can understand."
--Tiffany Aliche, New York Times bestselling author of Get Good with Money

"Most of us didn't learn about money in school. Financial Adulting is a crash course on what women really need to know to be the boss of their financial lives. This book perfectly pairs the 'why' behind important money moves and the 'how' with helpful exercises, so you can get. it. done."
--Elyse Steinhaus, head of financial content at theSkimm

"Financial Adulting is a must-read for anyone who wants to build their financial foundation while also making the world a better place. Ashley demystifies even the most complex topics and provides critical context on some of the big problems with our financial systems. She gives readers an action plan for each area of their finances and a recipe to maintain their financial prowess going forward."
--Stacey Tisdale, CEO of Mind Money Media, Inc. and author of The True Cost of Happiness

"Financial Adulting is the most comprehensive, real-world guide out there to master your financial life. No more pretending everyone starts from the same place or has equal opportunity--Ashley breaks down all the ways our financial system advantages some and disadvantages others, and she does it with empathy and humor. This book will make you angry about how unfair our system is, but also give you the confidence to navigate that system like a pro, no matter your starting point."
--Tanja Hester, author of Wallet Activism and Work Optional

Author Biography

ASHLEY FEINSTEIN GERSTLEY is an author, speaker, and personal finance expert. In 2012, she created The Fiscal Femme, a feminist money platform on a mission to end inequality through financial well-being, and has helped thousands of people feel financially confident, achieve major financial goals, and destress their relationships with money.