The Bogleheads Guide to Investing is quite good and short. I read it before Graham and it helped my understanding quite a bit.

Their fees will probably cost you more money than the money saved from tax loss harvesting. Betterment is just investing in Vanguard funds (not all of it, but definitely a few). You could spend a few days and research investing using Vanguard, but if you'd rather not do that and are willing to absorb their fees, than Betterment is a brilliant choice.

If you want to understand the basics of passive investing, The Bogleheads Guide To Investing is a brilliant book.

That reminds me! Anyone who cares should read the Bogleheads Guide to Investing: http://www.amazon.com/Bogleheads-Guide-Investing-Taylor-Lari...

It's a quick read and probably tells you a lot of what you already know, but it's well written and explains the basics of the various investment vehicles well.

The standard advice that is recommended for windfall recipients is to stash it in a savings account and sit on it for 3 months. The goal is to avoid making any rash decisions based on euphoria.

You can use that time to read some books on wealth management. Two classics are The Four Pillars of Investing and The Bogleheads' Guide to Investing:

https://www.amazon.com/Four-Pillars-Investing-Building-Portf...

https://www.amazon.com/Bogleheads-Guide-Investing-Taylor-Lar...

It is also a good idea to not tell anyone, unless you want to be bombarded by requests from family and friends for loans, invitations to invest in weird ideas/schemes, and so forth.

I would recommend two books.

1. "In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto", by Michael Pollan.

New graduates are moving from an environment where others took much of the responsibility for choosing their food to one where they will be handling that. If they can establish good eating habits now, that will serve them very well for the rest of their lives. If they get into bad eating habits now, they greatly increase their chances of obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and probably assorted other problems.

2. Something on personal investing. I haven't read this one yet (it's sitting on my Kindle waiting its turn), but based on comments I've seen here and elsewhere, perhaps "The Bogleheads' Guide to Investing" by Taylor Larimore, Mel Lindauer, and Michael Leboeuf.

As with eating well, investing is something for which good habits developed early will pay off (literally!) in the long run. Many people think investing successfully requires that you be some kind of financial genius, or have insider information, or that you have a lot of time to actively manage a portfolio, and this leads them to leave their money in savings accounts, or in CDs, or worse just sitting in a checking account.

* The Bogleheads' Guide to Investing

* The Algorithm Design Manual

* Cracking the code interview

* Some Elixir books

Remember when nearly the entire business media predicted that if Trump was elected the stock market would crash immediately?

Some of my smartest friends (at hedge funds) placed large bets mid to late 2016 that the market would decline. Now here we are.

The lesson isn't that Trump is awesome for the economy (maybe he is, maybe he isn't) or that the market won't crash tomorrow (maybe it will, maybe it won't) but rather that even the so-called experts are relatively clueless when it comes to financial timing. Remember Brexit? Same story. Good lessons for the rest of us trying to invest. If you want to learn more, read 'The Bogleheads Guide to Investing' [http://fave.co/2jpTKmf] which is an excellent place to start.

In typical chicken-egg fashion there is no better teacher than having skin in the game, but just make sure you know what you're doing before you jump in.

Personally I tend to encourage people to read Bogleheads' Guide to Investing first. That should equip you with everything you need in order to get your feet wet.

Then, while you're checking your investments every day (exactly the way the book tells you not to do), start to read as much as you can about Permanent Portfolio. The reason I recommend this is because it allows you to learn the theory of (and indeed watch, if you decide to build your own Permanent Portfolio) different asset classes, and how they move depending on various macroeconomic factors.

Finally, if you want to start stock picking I'd recommend getting started with Peter Lynch's books.

Just a note for OP or others reading that "Bogleheads" are those that follow a certain value investing philosophy from Vanguard founder John Bogle.

For some basic investment literacy, it would not hurt to read "The Bogleheads' Guide to Investing" (https://www.amazon.com/Bogleheads-Guide-Investing-Taylor-Lar...). I've also heard good things about John Bogle's "Little Book of Common Sense Investing" but haven't read it.

Here is a good list:
http://www.bogleheads.org/readbooks.htm

General Investing

# The Four Pillars of Investing - by William ("Bill") Bernstein.

# Wise Investing Made Simple or The Only Guide to a Winning Investment Strategy You'll Ever Need - by Larry Swedroe

# The Bogleheads' Guide to Investing - by Taylor Larimore, Mel Lindauer, and Michael LeBoeuf

# All About Asset Allocation - by Rick Ferri

# The Informed Investor - by Frank Armstrong

# The Little Book of Common Sense Investing - by John "Jack" Bogle

# The Coffeehouse Investor - by Bill Schultheis.

Investor Behavior

# Why Smart People Make Big Money Mistakes And How To Correct Them - by Gary Belsky and Thomas Gilovich

# Your Money and Your Brain: How the New Science of Neuroeconomics Can Help Make You Rich - by Jason Zweig

# Rational Investing in Irrational Times: How to Avoid the Costly Mistakes Even Smart People Make Today - by Larry Swedroe

Financial History

# Against the Gods and Capital Ideas - by Peter L. Bernstein

# Devil Take the Hindmost: A History of Financial Speculation - by Edward Chancellor

# A Random Walk Down Wall Street - by Burton Malkiel

Like others here have mentioned, http://www.bogleheads.org/ is a great forum for Vanguard investors.

Passive (index) funds have grown because they work.

Read "A Random Walk Down Wallstreet" or "The Bogleheads Guide to Investing", you'll see it clearly laid out. For the Cliff's Notes version, turn to YouTube and watch Warren Buffet, Jack Bogle, etc.

Index Funds enrich their investors. Actively managed funds enrich their providers.