Accounting Game
“Fantastic Learning Tool...Don’t let this book title fool you. It is not an oversimplification of accounting and financial principles. It is, however, a serious and very effective examination of a very small but progressively complex business. There are not many books available on the market that make a complex and dry subject understandable and even fun. This book successfully does just that.” —Amazon ReviewerThe Clearest Explanation Ever of the Key Accounting BasicsThe world of accounting can be intimidating. Whether you’re a manager, business owner or aspiring entrepreneur, you’ve likely found yourself needing to know basic accounting…but baffled by complicated accounting books. What if learning accounting could be as simple and fun as running a child’s lemonade stand? It can.The Accounting Game presents financial information in a format so simple and so unlike a common accounting textbook, you may forget you’re learning key skills that will help you get ahead! Using the world of a child’s lemonade stand to teach the basics of managing your finances, this book makes a dry subject fun and understandable.
Stats for nerds
7recommend
10mentions
9people
2010–2025years
80% recommend20% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Question is a bit broad, but out of all the concepts under the financial engineering umbrella you're bound to explore the concept of ledgering eventually.
I've written a bit about it on my own co's product blog in an attempt to demystify some core concepts [1], [2], [3].
Still on ledgering and expanding into less mathematical and more applied concepts, I can also recommend a book called "The Accounting Game: basic accounting fresh from the lemonade stand" [4].
[1]: https://www.formance.com/blog/engineering/how-not-to-build-a... [2]: https://www.formance.com/blog/engineering/debits-and-credits... [3]: https://www.formance.com/blog/engineering/ledgering-all-the-... [4]: https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Accounting_Game.htm...
- Read this book: https://www.amazon.com/Accounting-Game-Basic-Fresh-Lemonade-...
I have introduced countless people who never though they would need to understand bookkeeping and accounting with this awesome tool.
- Don’t know if he’ll think it’s too childish, but I continually recommend The Accounting Game: Accounting Fresh from the Lemonade Stand for a simple but thorough introduction to basic accounting concepts.
Good video overview: https://youtu.be/oNw4guzrzG4
Also, not sure if there is a book on this, but: I learned a lot about markets, auctions, supply and demand, etc. by playing EverQuest while growing up. Other MMOs have similar economic dynamics, I imagine.
- One of the best "personal finance for kids" books I've come across is The Accounting Game: Basic Accounting Fresh from the Lemonade Stand. It teaches basic concepts like a balance sheet, income statements, profit, and more. I really recommend it, even for adults that want a more fun approach to a notoriously boring topic.
I hope that the new Georgian curriculum takes this approach and not a dry textbook one.
- [Accounting && Finance/Investing]
Not my current job, but understanding the basics of accounting was related to technical jobs I previously held (in ERP) and finance/investing is useful in general.
I'd highly recommend "The Accounting Game" for anyone that quickly wants to understand accounting basics (U.S. accounting) and how everything fits together. It basically walks you through being a child with a lemonade stand and doing the accounting for it. Similarly if you want a quick overview of some of the multiples and what they mean for finance/investing, I'd recommend "Visual Finance".
The most fascinating book that I've read in the accounting/finance domain is "Financial Shenanigans" which outline different ways to manipulate financial statements. It would be my recommended goto book for the field of financial fraud.
For personal investing, my goto is "Quantitative Value" which methodically walks through different value investment strategies and backtesting them. I think the overall recommendation of buying companies that have low acquisition costs relative to their operational profits is good and it's how I screen stuff I buy, but the general mindset and systematic approach is what makes this book very valuable. This is not a book that will "attract anyone" but I'm pretty sure it's the one investment book I'd recommend to an analytical/scientific kind of person which I'd say is what the HN crowd is for the most part.
- The Accounting Game: Basic Accounting Fresh from the Lemonade Stand by Darrell Mullis
With this book you a build a business from nothing, and in the process you learn: The mechanics of Balance Sheet, P/L Statement and Cash flow Statement. (My initial motivation was to understand these statements, inorder to have a better understanding of the companies I want to invest in)
