Criticizing young people about their pricey avocado toast is so 2017. As housing and food costs skyrocket, insurance premiums rise, and Americans stagger under almost $2 trillion in student loan debt, scolding about individual decisions is giving way to advice on how to stay afloat amid fundamentally altered financial realities.
Beating the odds
Carrie Joy Grimes founded the nonprofit organization WorkMoney in 2020 with the goal of providing average Americans the tools and information to make ends meet and even get ahead. “A lot of folks are asking, If I have credit card debt, should I pay it down, build an emergency fund, fund my retirement?” she notes. “Most of us don’t make enough money to max out tax advantaged accounts.”
Her debut, The Joy of Money (HarperBusiness, May 2026), offers readers advice on budgeting, investing for long-term goals, and other topics to help them “make choices about how to get themselves to financial security and afford to live a good life,” she says. “Shaking your finger and shaming people doesn’t work, and a lot of us have a relationship with money that’s fraught, anxious. But it can be liberating. Money is math and feelings.”
In How to Be a Rich Old Lady (Avid Reader, Jan. 2026)—a “sharp and funny guide,” per PW’s review—Amanda Holden teaches investment strategy and financial basics to readers who “should not be ashamed for not knowing what was purposely designed to confuse them,” she says. Holden, a former investment manager, adds that much of the online personal finance discourse misses the foundational in favor of the flashy. “The algorithm is giving you the advice that’s the most sensational. Personal finance can be pretty boring. Asset allocation is what makes the difference to returns over time, but that’s not going to make a good reel. Super secret hacks go viral, but there aren’t super secret hacks to navigating late-stage capitalism.”
Social media algorithms also serve up a constant junk-food diet of how well everyone else is doing, and content creator Vivian Tu, known to millions of followers as Your Rich BFF, says young people are particularly susceptible. “We feel like we never have enough—we’re on the consumer hamster wheel, and comparison is the thief of joy. I have no business knowing what the inside of Kim Kardashian’s private jet looks like.” Tu follows her 2023 debut financial primer, Rich AF, with the forward-looking Well Endowed (Harper Wave, Feb. 2026), which, she says, spells out “how to set kids up for financial success without turning them into absolute dirtbags, and how to create generational wealth in your family.”
When Tu’s parents immigrated to the U.S., they worked hard and sacrificed but were forced to miss her school events and other childhood milestones, she notes. Her new book focuses on building the kind of financial stability that will allow readers to be present for what matters most to them: “Money buys you the power not to think about money.”
Redefining success
Like Tu, financial educator Maria Melchor has financial legacies on her mind. Her debut, Always Have Enough (Little, Brown Spark, Sept. 2026), is written for young professionals who are the first in their family to build wealth. A first-generation college graduate who got her start in what she calls the “nonprofit industrial complex,” Melchor knew she couldn’t turn to her immigrant family for information and financial advice they didn’t have. “I saw how hard it was for my family to make it in the U.S. Personal finance books made me feel torn between what the books laid out and what I envisioned for myself; traditional financial experts don’t look like me, a brown Mexican woman, and they don’t have the same values. I don’t want to struggle financially like my family did, but I also don’t need to be the wealthiest person in the room. I don’t want to be money obsessed.”
Her advice incorporates nontraditional goals that reflect what Melchor sees as first-generation values: help parents retire, build a safety net for yourself and your siblings, give directly to people in your community rather than to charities. “The book rejects the notion that financial success means financial independence,” she says. “It introduces the idea of financial interdependence: how to balance financial prosperity with sharing that wealth with the people around you.”
Financial adviser Ric Edelman, in The Truth About College (Wiley, Dec.), counters prevailing wisdom about financial success: that a college education is a prerequisite. Increased media attention on the burden of student debt has called the utility of a college degree into question, he says, and parents need to guide their children with an understanding that the world has changed.
To avoid becoming one of the 37 million Americans who have dropped out college—who have the debt but not the income-enhancing degree—Edelman recommends options such as an apprenticeship, starting with community college, applying to a private college that has pledged free tuition for students from families with income under a certain threshold, or a dual-enrollment high school program that allows students to cut a full year off of college. “The cost of college is so high, and the threats from AI and tech are so great; there’s a very real risk that the college path is not correct for their child,” he notes. “If they’re going to choose this path, how they approach the journey is vital to the journey.”
Charged up
Budget advice, no matter how well-researched or well-intentioned, can’t capture the nuances of every financial situation. Kristin Carleton, a coauthor of Care, Protect, Grow (Wiley, May 2026), is one of the three cofounders of All Needs Planning, a firm that develops individualized life strategies and financial plans for special needs families. She points out that a family supporting a child or adult with special needs has to spend an additional 30% annually to achieve the same standard of living as a family who isn’t. And the cost isn’t just financial, she says. “If you’re battling to get an IEP supported, and fighting with insurance, and working a full-time job, and taking your kid to therapies, you don’t necessarily have the space to think about what’s happening tomorrow. You’re just surviving today.”
In the book, Carleton and coauthors Kathy Matthews and Mary McDirmid, all parents of children with special needs, describe how parents can best plan for their own financial futures, as well as who will care for their children once they’re gone. This burden currently falls squarely on families, as government help is both imperiled and insufficient. “We’ve got to continue to advocate for Medicaid and Medicaid waivers,” Carleton says. “A lot of nonprofit supports are federally funded—that funding has to continue and even expand. We need assistance for the ‘in-betweeners’ who can’t take care of themselves completely, who need someone to check in and make sure they’ve got groceries and are getting to work, but don’t need to live in an institution with full-time care. This doesn’t exist today.”
People in the LGBTQ+ community are another cohort who may have added financial considerations, says Out magazine finance columnist Nick Wolny, author of Money Proud (Morrow, Dec.). “Queer people sometimes have to take on additional costs for safety and security—moving to a city, leaving home early,” Wolny notes. Before 2020’s Bostock v. Clayton County decision, when the U.S. Supreme Court held that employees could not be discriminated against on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity, “queer people often had unstable jobs, so their finances could suffer,” he explains.
Many more young people identify as queer—23% of Gen Z, compared with 5% of Gen X, according to Gallup—and traditional finance advice doesn’t always land well. “Personal finance has tones of purity culture,” Wolny says, “which grates with queer culture—it’s more out and proud.” According to PW’s review of the book, “Readers seeking a fresh, culturally aware guide to financial wellness will find this as entertaining as it is instructive.”
Planet Money, like the public radio show of the same name, aims to show how economic forces shape readers’ financial lives. It’s a two-part project, says Norton VP and executive editor Tom Mayer. The book, due from Norton in April 2026, is credited to Alex Mayyasi and the hosts of NPR’s Planet Money, and was written to help readers understand the economy overall; in the lead-up to its publication, an episode of the show will explore the publishing industry, with the book as the use case. In 2026 or 2027, Norton will release a series of courseware modules called Principles of Economics, using examples from the Planet Money podcast that college instructors can assign to their students.
The book, Mayer says, guides readers toward understanding their own finances by getting a better handle on the big picture. As with other titles discussed in this article, the idea is to give readers the information they need to make good decisions, he explains. “Once you understand how the economy works, it gives you more confidence to go into the world and navigate whatever might come.”
Liz Scheier is a writer, editor, and product strategist living in Washington, D.C. She is the author of the memoir Never Simple.
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