Practical personal finance for the real world.
Volume II of the Money Reality series. Written for the college student living the financial reality the HS edition warned about — first apartment, first real paycheck, first 1099, the Hidden Balance Sheet of campus activities and alumni networks, the no-parental-health-insurance pathway, the Roth as the tax-free lottery the freshman should max out, and the rejection cascade as the actual skill of every career. Direct voice, real math, college-life examples.
Written for the high-school student themselves; bought most often by a parent or a teacher. The voice is direct, the math is real, the examples are familiar (first job, first car, first apartment), and the lessons compound. International edition available for readers outside the US.
| You are… | How to use this book |
|---|---|
| College student (freshman through senior) | Start with Ch 1 and the Hidden Balance Sheet chapter. The chapters on first apartment, first 1099, and the no-parental-health-insurance pathway are the ones you’ll actually use this semester. |
| Parent of a college student | Hand it over. Then have the conversation about the Roth-as-lottery chapter the next time they’re home. |
| Career-services or financial-aid counselor | The Hidden Balance Sheet chapter reframes the conversation about what extracurriculars, internships, and alumni networks are actually worth. |
| Recent grad in first job | Volume III (First Job & Apartment Edition, coming) picks up where this one ends. This volume covers the transition. |
14 chapters plus a companion workbook. Page counts approximate.
Volume II of IV in the Money Reality series. Formatted for adult reader-friendly reading. No condescension. Real math, plain language. The "Hidden Balance Sheet" framework runs through every chapter.
Compound-interest drills, the 40-row housing-creep cascade table, real-return worksheets, the Roth contribution-vs-tax-savings math, an intangibles self-assessment.
Same architecture, currency-agnostic and country-agnostic, for readers outside the US. The Roth-specific content is replaced with the universal mechanism (tax-advantaged savings as it exists in the reader’s country). View the HS edition (prior volume) → · View the HS International edition →
Each tool runs in the browser and produces a personalized result the reader can print or PDF. They’re the same models taught in the guide — available free so the suite works whether the reader buys the book or not.
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Free interactive tools at tools.baratelliinstitute.com for college-bound students and families.
Drop your email and you'll be first in line when the guide ships. launch pricing locks once you're on the list — even if all 50 sell out before you check the launch email. We send the launch announcement, the sample chapter PDF (the Hidden Balance Sheet walk-through), and nothing else.