Hello Reader,

We know there’s nothing like finding your next great book. That’s why each month, Team CGF shares our favorite reads; from personal finance and career growth to self-care and page-turning fiction you'll want to get lost in.

Here is our list of June book recommendations!

• Note: This book list contains affiliate links from Amazon. Clever Girl Finance is an Amazon Associate which means we may earn commissions from qualifying purchases. These commissions help us keep our resources free!
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Finance pick: Stacked: Your Super-Serious Guide to Modern Money Management

A lot of money books out there are serious, and some are even a little dry. This is because a lot of the world looks at finances as something rigid and strict. As a result, there are many financial books that are written in a tone that can come off as rather dense and boring.

However, Stacked is a financial book that doesn’t read like the average financial book.

Written by Joe Saul-Sehy and Emily Guy Birken, Stacked is an action-packed and humorous book that will help you truly understand the basics of money management.

If you're looking to better manage your money in today’s unsettling economic times, then this book will give you practical advice you can apply to your life without feeling overwhelmed or confused.

Non-fiction pick: Strangers: A Memoir of Marriage

Although nothing lasts forever, we all hope that marriage will. Yet year after year, thousands of couples find themselves filing for divorce. just like Author Belle Burden. In fact, after 20 years of marriage, she never doubted the love she her and her husband had for one another.

Until one day, her whole world collapsed when her husband decided to leave her without any warning or explanation. Like someone taking a sledgehammer to her dreams, her life came crashing down into a million pieces. In the depths of her devastation, she began putting together the shattered pieces of her broken marriage to understand what exactly went wrong.

In her book Strangers, Burden takes you on an emotional journey of healing and transformation, sharing her honest reflections on what went wrong while highlighting her strength to become a woman who isn’t complacent, but bold in facing her troubles.

If you're looking for a story of triumph from tragedy, this is the memoir for you.

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Business pick: Power Moves: Profit First: Transform Your Business from a Cash-Eating Monster to a Money-Making Machine

If you're a business owner, you've probably heard the formula: Sales - Expenses = Profit. The problem with this very logical equation is that it doesn’t always account for human behavior.

Serial entrepreneur Mike Michalowicz takes a behavioral approach to accounting and flips the formula. By putting profit first and using only what remains for expenses, entrepreneurs can turn their businesses from cash-eating monsters into profitable cash cows.

In Michalowicz’s book Profit First, you’ll learn that:

• Following four simple principles can simplify accounting and make it easier to manage a profitable business.
• A small, profitable business can be worth far more than a larger business that survives only on its top line.
• Businesses that achieve early and sustained profitability have a better chance of long-term growth.

With dozens of case studies, practical step-by-step advice, and his signature sense of humor, Michalowicz offers a game-changing roadmap for any entrepreneur who wants to make the money they’ve always dreamed of.

Non-Fiction Pick: Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism

The lives of CEOs, executives, and the highly wealthy are often a mystery to those of us working regular jobs. We can imagine that many wealthy business owners spend their days in grand boardrooms, jetting off from one side of the country to the next to meet with investors.

However, the world of the powerful and influential is a lot darker than we might perceive. Author Sarah Wynn-Williams is someone who experienced firsthand the pressures, misogyny, and unsettling truths behind major companies such as Facebook.

In her memoir Careless People, she reveals how the leaders of major social media platforms like Facebook have gained immense power—not just in the business world, but in the influence they have over our daily lives.

Through its pages, Wynn-Williams highlights how the consequences of their actions are affecting all of us.

Self-help pick: It's Not Always Depression: Working the Change Triangle to Listen to the Body, Discover Core Emotions, and Connect to Your Authentic Self

From the title, you can tell this book isn’t just about helping you overcome depression. Instead, it’s about helping you identify your trauma and connect with those uncomfortable emotions so you can feel truly liberated.

In It’s Not Always Depression, Hilary Jacobs Hendel shares stories of patients who have overcome debilitating social anxiety and now lead happy, fulfilling lives. She also introduces a unique and practical tool called the Change Triangle—a guide to help you move from a place of disconnection back to your true self.

In these pages, she teaches you:

• Why all emotions, even the most painful, have value.
• How to identify emotions and the defenses we put up against them.
• How to get to the root of anxiety; the most common mental health struggle of our time.
• How to have compassion for both the child you were and the adult you are.

This book will help you navigate your emotions, heal your trauma, and find a place where you feel safe and at happy with yourself.

Which summer reads will you choose?

Which book are you considering? Let us know in the comments!

Don’t forget you can stay motivated and learn other financial tips and tricks from our completely free financial courses.​

Happy reading! ❤️
Team CGF