WFH only changes things in a small number of professions (hard to wait tables remotely, and sometimes doctors need to see patients in person). A large amount of

WFH only changes things in a small number of professions (hard to wait tables remotely, and sometimes doctors need to see patients in person). A large amount of people in those professions don't want to WFH (thus why a lot of big tech companies are INCREASING their real estate footprint rather than reducing it right now. Google, HubSpot, Spotify. Some of these are very open to WFH, but a lot of folks don't want to). It will make a difference, but it will be small. During that time, the rest of folks will still flok to cities. As to financial literacy, books tend to make things much more complicated than they are, and will be too focused. For a beginner, there's a few things that matter. First, the "flowchart". You can find a bunch of these online, but I like this one: https://u.cubeupload.com/demonlesondledon/FIREFlowChart.png https://u.cubeupload.com/demonlesondledon/FIREFlowChart.png This is so you don't fall in the trap of, let say, having a 5% investment while sitting on a 15% debt, or not use your employer 401k matching and invest the money somewhere worse. Then there's basic investment strategies to get started. Bogglehead gets you pretty far there: https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Three-fund_portfolio https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Three-fund_portfolio The next is understanding how the US market works. It averages 10% a year even if you include the great depression/recession and every other downturn. One day it could do like Japan and never recover/stay flat, but it has never happened in the US so far: https://advisor.visualcapitalist.com/historical-stock-market-returns/ https://advisor.visualcapitalist.com/historical-stock-market... Even for the great depression, while you'll hear that it took 25 years to recover, but that's based on the Nasdaq, which is a very small sample of stocks. The market in aggregate recovered much faster. Finally, you want to understand all the variables when comparing cost/return of home ownership vs renting. It's a LOT more complex than people make it sound. The NYT has a calculator that shows it, alongside a paywalled article: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/upshot/buy-rent-calculator.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/upshot/buy-rent-cal... Bonus: a lot of it just comes down to internalizing the average market return and its risk, and comparing it against all the gains and leverage you can make in other ways. For example, with current interest rates, you probably want to pay your mortgage -as slowly as possible-, which is counterintuitive to most people.