My Books
Coming April 9
For Teens
How Not to Lose a Million Dollars
When I was young, I made my share of money mistakes. (Didn’t we all?). Later, as a financial regulator, I saw how millions of young people made the same kinds of mistakes, and worse. No one ever told them how to navigate our complex, sometimes bewildering, financial system. I want to do my part to change that. This book covers every aspect of financial decision-making young people will confront as young adults, from opening their first bank account to getting their first job and setting up a retirement account. Each chapter describes common financial mistakes and provides easy-to-follow “Helpful Hacks” on how to avoid them. Teens are shown losing money from bad financial choices and (spoiler alert) the final chapter adds up those costs and calculates the returns if instead the money had been invested in well-diversified stock fund.
In writing this book, I have drawn on my 40 years of experience in financial services, not only as Chair of the FDIC, but as a derivatives regulator, senior US Treasury official, NYSE executive, insurance and finance professor, college president, and corporate board member. It’s my effort to bring a financial insider's knowledge to America’s Main Street teens. I am eager to get this book into the hands of as many young adults as possible. This is my contribution to protecting their financial futures.
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Latest Release
Princess Persephone and the Money Wizards
Inflation Comes to Ganymede
Princess Persephone wants her friends to come along on the summer vacation of her dreams, but they can’t afford tickets. No problem! She just tells Ganymede’s Money Wizards to print more Ganymede dollars for all of her subjects, even though a wizard explains that doing so could lead to price hikes. Then her royal subjects go on a spending spree, creating a shortage of almost everything, including the tickets her friends need for their trip. What’s a princess to do? Persephone learns the basics of what causes inflation and how too much of a good thing can end badly, even with money.
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Daisy Bubble
A Price Crash on Galapagos
Arlene, the giant tortoise, is the fashion queen of Galapagos. When she gets married wearing a crown of rare Floreana daisies, everyone wants some of the beautiful blooms for themselves. Florists sell out quickly, as Sly Seal has bought up a secret daisy stash that allows him to drive up the price. Soon his customers start buying flowers from each other at even higher markups, hoping to sell them later for a profit. By the time word spreads that more daisies are on the way, this bubble is ready to burst. The animals learn the big dangers of investing in something just because everyone else is and that bubbly prices almost always crash.
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Shark Scam
A giant tortoise learns that if something sounds too good to be true, it usually is.
Whitey and Cahoots, two sharks, convince giant tortoise Arlene to invest in their sure-fire, money-making scheme. Arlene takes the bait. So do all her friends, and they discover the hard way what a Ponzi scheme is.
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Princess Persephone’s Dragon Ride Stand
Princess Persephone wants to travel to warm and sunny Earth, but she needs money to buy a shiny new spaceship for the trip. Her father won’t give her the money she needs for her dream vacation, so Persephone comes up with a great idea to earn cash: sell rides on her pet dragon! She earns the money, but her trip to Earth has some unpleasant surprises. Learn the ups and downs of entrepreneurship in this amusing story about working hard and spending wisely.
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Princess Persephone Loses the Castle
Princess Persephone is freezing in her castle on the ice moon of Ganymede. When Aluminum Jim comes calling to sell her tin sheets to nail onto the walls to keep out the cold, Persephone eagerly agrees to a loan and signs the contract without reading it. What can she do when the tin sheets don't work, she can't repay the loan, and Jim claims the castle? Persephone learns the danger of dealing with strangers and not understanding the risks when it comes to money matters.
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Billy the Borrowing Blue-Footed Booby
Billy, the Blue-Footed Booby, lives on the Galápagos and wants to buy an umbrella. He goes shopping at Selling Seal's store, but the umbrellas cost more than he can afford. Seal tells him he can have the umbrella right away if he agrees to pay double the price in a month. But then, instead of paying this debt, Billy decides he wants a fan like Arlene the tortoise’s, a purple-striped wig like Ig the iguana’s, neon-green shoes like Niels the lizard’s, and Seal’s anchovy grill. All his friends and his twin sister Bess try to help as Billy's unpaid debt keeps doubling. Billy learns the perils of unaffordable debt and the foolishness of borrowing for things you want but don't really need.
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Isabel’s Car Wash
The Nelly Longhair doll, the object of Isabel’s desire, is on sale at Murphy’s Toys for ten dollars. But Isabel has only fifty cents. Isabel decides to start a car wash business; she’s sure she can make money. But at the hardware store she learns that her supplies will cost five dollars! She thinks long and hard and comes up with a plan. If five of her friends will give her one dollar each, she’ll have enough. She tells her friends she’ll work very hard and believes she’ll be able to pay them back, plus extra. Her friends agree. Will Isabel be able pay them back and have enough left over for the Nelly doll? Isabel and her friends learn about the risks and rewards of investing in a business.
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Rock, Brock, and the Savings Shock
Rock and Brock may be twins, but they are as different as two twins can be. One day, their grandpa offers them a plan—for ten straight weeks on Saturday he will give them each one dollar. But there is a catch!
“Listen now, for here’s the trick, each buck you save, I’ll match it quick. But spend it, there’s no extra dough,so save your cash, and watch it grow.”
Rock is excited—there are all sorts of things he can buy for one dollar! So each week he spends his money on something different—an inflatable moose head, green hair goo, white peppermint wax fangs. But while Rock is spending his money, Brock is saving his. And each week when Rock gets just one dollar, Brock’s savings get matched. By the end of summer, Brock has five hundred and twelve dollars, while Rock has none. When Rock sees what his brother has saved, he realizes he has made a mistake. But Brock shows him that it is never too late to start saving.
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For Teens
The Bullies of Wall Street
Can knowing how a financial crisis happened keep it from happening again? Sheila explains to teens how the 2008 financial crisis and Great Recession that followed impacted families on a personal level using language that everyone can understand.
As the former head of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, Sheila worked to protect families during the crisis and keep their bank deposits safe. In this book, she describes the many ways in which a broken system led families into financial trouble, and also explains the decisions being made at the time by the most powerful people in the country—from CEOs of multinational banks, to heads of government regulatory committees—that led to the recession.
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