A 150-page personal-finance book for 16–24 year-olds that teaches money from a first paycheck all the way to retirement. It reads at an 8th-grade level and never drops jargon without explaining it. Roth IRA and 401(k) get full step-by-step walkthroughs, and three recurring characters keep the lessons grounded in real situations.
The problem
Most beginner finance content assumes you already get jargon, charts, and tax brackets. So the people who need the basics most, teens and young adults staring down a first paycheck, lose the thread early and quit. This book starts from zero and stays readable the whole way through.
What I built
Complete and built. 26 chapters and 99k+ words, with EPUB and PDF production builds ready to go. The full manuscript, the charts, and both editions are finished and generated from a single source.
How it works
I wrote the manuscript in Markdown at an 8th-grade reading level, then built clean EPUB3 and PDF editions from that one source. The charts (tax brackets, compounding, market history) are generated with Matplotlib, so the visuals match the text and rebuild straight from the data. A Python toolchain holds the manuscript, charts, and outputs together. Three recurring characters and documented real stories, Ronald Read, Buffett, the 2008 crash, give the financial concepts a narrative spine rather than a pile of isolated definitions.
Highlights
- 26 chapters, 99k+ words, fully written and built
- EPUB + PDF production builds ready from a single source
- Teaches how to read charts, tax brackets and compounding visually
- Step-by-step Roth IRA and 401(k) walkthroughs from zero
- Three recurring characters anchor concepts in real situations
- Real documented stories: Ronald Read, Buffett, the 2008 crash
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