There’s a ton of personal finance and investing advice out there, written by people with relevant degrees who do this full time. I’m just a tenured professor in an unrelated field writing a blog I hope other academics will find helpful that’s tailored more to their specific decisions, based on the principles I’ve encountered elsewhere. For basic principles, I’d rather refer you elsewhere than try to reproduce others’ excellent work.
I’ll add to this list as I think of new things. Feel free to make suggestions in the comments. All of these are listed in no particular order.
Good Books
- The John C. Bogle reader: If you think you can consistently beat the market with your superior intellect, read this to learn why you’re almost certainly wrong.
- I Will Teach You to be Rich by Ramit Sehti. Covers a lot of common errors, key concepts, and helpful/practical tips for managing your finances well. Also useful for reminding us that the point of all this is to live a great life, not die the richest person in the graveyard.
- Your Money or Your Life by Vicki Robin and Joe Dominguez. Reminds you that money is your life force in exchangeable form, that your job costs you more than just the official hours and that the sooner you get your spending in line, the sooner you can reach financial freedom and stop making all your decisions based on a paycheck. Especially recommended for academics.
- A Random Walk Down Wall Street by Burton Malkiel: A classic guide to the history of investing, how to understand the investment options available to you, and why buying the market beats trying to beat it. Regularly updated.
Good Websites
- Investopedia: Great reference site for financial basics and intermediate topics. You’ll often end up here if you google different types of investment accounts and their relevant tax rules, for instance.
- Bogleheads wiki: Great resource for implementing the Bogleheads philosophy also advocated here. Great place to start when looking for a low-stress market-based portfolio design you can stick with.
- PFforPhDs.com: The only other website I can find targeted at academics interested in learning more about personal finance. The blog is just transcriptions of the podcast. Core specialty seems to be taxes for grad students and postdocs.
Good Blogs
- White Coat Investor: The blog that inspired this one. Many personal finance issues have more/less relevance and specific applications to specific professions. Plus, doctors’ financial lifecycle is a far more extreme version of non-physician academics’, with access to similar tax-protected accounts and similar delays in onset of wealth accumulation. This blog may have the best advice out there on rich people problems and how to navigate the tax code’s intricacies.
Good Forums
- Bogleheads forum: Argue with nerds who all fundamentally agree with each other. It’s awesome.
- r/PersonalFinance: Great place for discussing personal finance issues. The wiki is also a great resource — I especially recommend the personal finance flowchart as a way to think through your spending and prioritizing your goals.
Good Podcasts
- The Rational Reminder podcast: Great, nerdy personal finance podcast that speaks to both beginners and more experienced personal finance listeners. Especially appealing to academics because they often interview the academics who produced the relevant research!
- I Will Teach You to be Rich (the podcast): Part personal finance, part couple’s therapy. Worth a listen for issues related to romantic partners’ finances.
- White Coat Investor (the podcast): Lots of great information here. Probably skip the first half of the Milestones to Millionaire episodes; he covers core personal finance concepts in the back half. Also skip the interview episodes where they try to sell you on investing in various things you probably don’t have the cash for. The rest is great and often relevant to academics.