Table of Contents
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When I was deep in $30,000 of credit card debt with 16 maxed-out credit cards, who I was learning money tips and tricks from, MATTERED.
A lot.
You might want to read: How I Paid Off $30,000 of Credit Card Debt in 18 Months Without Giving Up Fun.
At first, I was learning from Dave Ramsey, and all I could think was:
That was NEVER possible for me.
He was a man. He was white. And he was coming from a completely different background and life experience than mine.
That doesn’t mean there wasn’t anything I could learn from him. But I remember consuming that kind of money advice and thinking, Okay… but how does this actually work for someone like me?
I grew up low-income. I grew up watching my parents work hard and still have to be extremely careful with money.
Living paycheck to paycheck wasn’t some abstract financial concept to me.
It was what I knew.
So when I was struggling with money as an adult, I started to believe that maybe this was just going to be my life, too.
I remember thinking:
Why would it be different for me?
And honestly, I was almost ready to give up.
But we Latinas don’t give up that easily. 😂
I decided I was going to figure this out.
I was going to break the paycheck-to-paycheck cycle no matter what.
And part of that meant finding people who could teach me about money in a way that actually resonated with me.
People with different backgrounds.
People who understood that money isn’t just about spreadsheets and cutting out your daily coffee.
People who could help me see that building wealth was actually possible for someone like me.
So if I were to go back to that version of myself, the Latina who grew up low-income, had $30K in credit card debt, no savings, and 16 maxed-out credit cards, these are the books I’d read:
1. Financially Lit by Jannese Torres
In many immigrant households, money isn’t often a topic of discussion, so financial education can be minimal—especially when a family is just trying to survive the day-to-day. The Latino community still faces cultural and systemic barriers that prevent them from building wealth. As a first-generation Latina, Jannese Torres knows these unique challenges well. She set out to pursue the traditional American Dream, becoming the first woman in her family to graduate from college, climb the corporate ladder, and secure a six-figure paycheck, only to find herself miserable and unfulfilled.
She soon realized that everything she’d been taught about money and success wasn’t as it seemed. After discovering the true meaning of wealth, Torres resolved to pave her own path, leaving the life she was told she should want for one of entrepreneurship and autonomy.
In Financially Lit! Torres offers you culturally relevant and relatable personal finance advice that will allow you to finally feel seen, heard, and understood.
With the warmth and the no-nonsense wisdom of someone who’s been there before, Torres will teach you how to:
- set boundaries with your dinero
- protect yourself from financial abuse
- navigate the complicated relationship between amor and money
- invest like a white dude
With Financially Lit! at your side, you’ll harness the powerful ways money can be used to create the life of your dreams, and empower you to step into financial freedom.”
2. Cultura and Cash by Giovanna Gonzalez
Money Lessons from the First Gen Mentor
Cultura and Cash is a practical and jargon-free money guide to help you tackle your finances as a First Gen Latina. In this valuable book, The First Gen Mentor, Giovanna “Gigi” González, uncovers cultural and systemic barriers First Gen face in their financial journey and provides actionable solutions on how to overcome them. Through storytelling and real-life examples, she’ll go into depth and explain best practices for creating a solid financial foundation through emergency funds, credit building, budgeting, debt payoff, and investing.
This book will improve your money mindset and give you the information you need to create financial success on your terms with family in mind. You will learn how to balance family expectations while prioritizing your own financial wellness and that money does not control you and limit you. Instead, it’s a powerful self-care tool you use to your advantage to support you and those you care about. Read this book and you will be empowered to take action and start designing a life you love.
3. Cash Libre by Luzy King
You were not born to hustle forever. You deserve to stop worrying about wealth and start building it.
Cash Libre is an unapologetic financial guide for first-generation Latina professionals ready to break free from generational money trauma, cultural guilt, and toxic money myths to redefine prosperity and build a life rooted in purpose and freedom.
Through deeply personal storytelling, cultural truths, and expert insights, award-winning financial educator and international speaker Luzy D. King explains how to unlearn the beliefs that keep you stuck in survival mode. Cash Libre offers clear guidance for simple mindset shifts and practical strategies that will help you tackle debt, invest with confidence, and start building lasting wealth.
Whether you’re navigating student loans, investing for the first time, or trying to feel safe with money, these pages will meet you with both strategy and soul. Cash Libre is a permission slip to heal and reclaim your time, power, and legacy.
Say adiós to shame. Say hola to wealth. Say sí to your liberation.
4. Get Good with Money by Tiffany Aliche
Tiffany Aliche was a successful pre-school teacher with a healthy nest egg when a recession and advice from a shady advisor put her out of a job and into a huge financial hole. As she began to chart the path to her own financial rescue, the outline of her ten-step formula for attaining both financial security and peace of mind began to take shape. These principles have now helped more than one million women worldwide answer their most pressing financial questions: How to pay off debt? How to save money? How to build wealth?
Revealing this practical ten-step process for the first time in its entirety, Get Good with Money introduces the powerful concept of building wealth through financial wholeness: a realistic, achievable, and energizing alternative to get-rich-quick and over-complicated money management systems. With helpful checklists, worksheets, a tool kit of resources, and advanced advice from experts who Tiffany herself relies on (her “Budgetnista Boosters”), Get Good with Money gets crystal clear on the short-term actions that lead to long-term goals, including:
- A simple technique to determine your baseline or “noodle budget,” examine and systemize your expenses, and lay out a plan that allows you to say yes to your dreams.
- An assessment tool that helps you understand whether you have a “don’t make enough” problem or a “spend too much” issue—as well as ways to fix both.
- Best practices for saving for a rainy day (aka job loss), a big-ticket item (a house, a trip, a car), and money that can be invested for your future.
- Detailed advice and action steps for taking charge of your credit score, maximizing bill-paying automation, savings and investing, and calculating your life, disability, and property insurance needs.
- Ways to protect your beneficiaries’ future, and ensure that your financial wishes will stand the test of time.
An invaluable guide to cultivating good financial habits and making your money work for you, Get Good with Money will help you build a solid foundation for your life (and legacy) that’s rich in every way.
5. Moving Beyond Broke by Dasha Kennedy
In the vein of Get Good with Money and The Black Girl’s Guide to Financial Freedom, an accessible, witty, and necessary guide from the beloved creator of The Broke Black Girl that addresses the unique financial issues of Black women and others shut out of traditional finance conversations.
Dasha Kennedy grew up in a family where finances were not discussed. At fifteen, she already had bad money habits that would follow her into adulthood. At nineteen, she realized that the Fortune 500 executives who promote financial literacy did not look or sound anything like her. And she knew she couldn’t be the only person who felt as lost and overlooked as she did when it came to money management. So, she started the website The Broke Black Girl and discovered an entire community of people who were desperate for money advice and understanding.
Now, Kennedy provides the ultimate user-friendly resource, featuring engaging and relatable stories from her own personal finance journey. With actionable advice and an engaging voice, she helps us take control, move past shame and anxiety, build family wealth in a single generation, and become financially independent forever.
6. Rich AF by Vivian Tu
When Vivian Tu started working on Wall Street fresh from undergrad, all she knew was that she was making more money than she had ever seen in her life. But it wasn’t until she found a mentor of her own on the trading floor that she began to understand what wealthy people knew intuitively—the secrets to beating the proverbial financial game that has, for too long, been male, pale, and stale.
Building on the lessons she learned on Wall Street about money and the markets, Vivian now offers her best personal finance tips and tricks to readers of all ages and demographics, so that anyone can get rich, whether you grew up knowing the rules to the game or not. Vivian will be your mentor, dispensing fresh, no-BS advice on how to think like a rich person and create smart money habits.
Throughout the pages of Rich AF,Vivian will break down her best recommendations to help you:
- Maximize your earnings to get more out of your 9-to-5
- Understand the differences between savings accounts, and where you should keep your money
- Identify the tax strategies and (legal) loopholes you need to retire in style
- Overcome investing fears to secure wealth for generations
- And much more!
Rich AF will equip readers with the tools and knowledge to not only understand the financial landscape, but to build a financial strategy of their own. And with Your Rich BFF at your side, you’ll be able to start your financial journey already in an affluent mindset, making the most of your money and growing your wealth for years to come.
7. The Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel
Doing well with money isn’t necessarily about what you know. It’s about how you behave. And behavior is hard to teach, even to really smart people.
Money – investing, personal finance, and business decisions – is typically taught as a math-based field, where data and formulas tell us exactly what to do. But in the real world people don’t make financial decisions on a spreadsheet. They make them at the dinner table, or in a meeting room, where personal history, your own unique view of the world, ego, pride, marketing, and odd incentives are scrambled together.
In The Psychology of Money, award-winning author Morgan Housel shares 19 short stories exploring the strange ways people think about money and teaches you how to make better sense of one of life’s most important topics.
8. I Will Teach You to Be Rich by Ramit Sethi
Personal finance expert Ramit Sethi has been called a “wealth wizard” by Forbes and the “new guru on the block” by Fortune. Now he’s updated and expanded his modern money classic for a new age, delivering a simple, powerful, no-BS 6-week program.
I Will Teach You to Be Rich will show you:
- How to crush your debt and student loans faster than you thought possible
- How to set up no-fee, high-interest bank accounts that won’t gouge you for every penny
- How Ramit automates his finances so his money goes exactly where he wants it to—and how you can do it too
- How to talk your way out of late fees (with word-for-word scripts)
- How to save hundreds or even thousands per month (and still buy what you love)
- And so much more!
Plus, this 10th anniversary edition features over 80 new pages, including:
- New tools
- New tools on money and psychology
- Amazing stories of how previous readers used the book to create their rich lives
Master your money—and then get on with your life.
9. Money Out Loud by Berna Anat
So no one taught you about money, either? Let’s figure this me$$ out together.
In this illustrated, deeply unserious guide to money, Berna Anat—aka the Financial Hype Woman—freaks out her immigrant parents by doing the unthinkable: Talking about money. Loudly.
Because we’re done staying silent, anxious, and ashamed about our money. It’s time to join the party and finally learn about all the financial stuff that always felt too confusing.
Stuff like:
- How to actually budget, save, and invest (but also make it fun)
- How our traumas shape our most toxic money habits, and how to create new patterns
- How to build wealth in a system designed to keep us broke
- How to use money to fund our biggest dreams—and change the world
No more keeping our money on mute. It’s time to grab the mic.
10. Wealth Warrior by Linda Garcia
Financial educator Linda García breaks down one of the most elusive yet effective financial systems in existence. A single mother at a young age, Linda struggled to survive. As bills and eviction notices flowed in, she felt stuck. After getting advice from a work friend, Linda took the leap and invested two hundred dollars. Soon, two hundred dollars a month grew to seven thousand dollars, then that became a high six-figure investment. Now she owns her home and is making more money than she’d ever imagined, and is ready to help other people of color access stock knowledge and achieve financial success.
As a proud Latina, García understands that building wealth can mean more than stepping into financial arenas historically kept from communities of color. It may first require getting to the root of our money wounds—the factors and experiences that limit our capacity to feel deserving of wealth and capable of building it. In this investing playbook, she guides you on how to establish a budget, create your “opportunity fund,” and pay yourself first. She shows you how to analyze a company, choose the right stocks for you, and create a plan to multiply your money.
You’ll learn:
- What it means to invest, where your money goes, and how to read stock charts.
- How to assess companies, pick your first stock, and buy your first shares.
- Tactics to break free from a scarcity mindset and grow your stocks to create life-changing wealth.
Here are more helpful posts to break the paycheck-to-paycheck cycle and keep more of your hard-earned money:
- 10 Steps to pay off debt while living paycheck to paycheck
- How to choose your next job with a salary that is life-changing
- The biggest debt payoff mistake that’s keeping you stuck
- How to pay off debt and save money starting today
- How Latinas can stop living paycheck-to-paycheck in 30 days
- How I stopped the paycheck-to-paycheck cycle and paid off 16 maxed-out credit cards! A total of $30K.
