7 Finance Books that Changed My Life

In today’s post, I will list seven different finance books that may change your life completely if you take the time to read or listen to them. I highly recommend that you do so!

I have paid hundreds of dollars purchasing these books and others in order to broaden my knowledge and understanding of personal finance.

These seven books definitely changed my life and gave me a road map to build a successful future for myself and my family.

These books are not in the order of best to worst but I am going to start with one of my favorites.

1. The Richest Man in Babylon by George S. Clason

This is a fictional story about a king in the city of Babylon trying to make the rest of his subjects or citizens of the city become financially wealthy as the richest man in Babylon.

The king tasked the richest man in Babylon the task of teaching the people of Babylon on how to become as rich as he is. This book is fictional and in a different period of time but it is an engaging story and extremely relatable. This book is suitable for people that are looking for principles of how to acquire money, manage money, and to keep your money and make it grow.

Key Takeaways

1. Pay yourself 1/10 of your income a.k.a. pay yourself first
2. Work hard to improve your skills to improve your value in a society or in other words learns how to get paid more.
3. You cannot succeed until you overcome your own procrastination tendency.

2. The Millionaire Next Door

This book is the brainchild of the research done by two PhDs studying millionaires in America. The authors show you about spending and saving habits of self-made millionaires and mistakes to avoid like buying a new car, accumulating debt, and live above your means.

This book cited that 80% of American’s millionaire are first-generation rich, contrary to a belief that the rich usually inherited the money. Approximately 20 % of millionaires are retired in this country and 50% own a business of some sort.

A lot of these millionaires are blue-collar workers such as a plumber, electricians, contractors, Everyone thinks that to be a millionaire, you make millions a year and drive BMWs and Mercedez.

Who is this book for? This book is for people who are in the middle class who wish to practice stealth wealth. Which is essentially the person that lives next door, drives an old Honda and you’d never guess that they’re a millionaire.

Takeaways:

Millionaires next door live below their means, knows where their money is going, plan investment ahead of time, ask help from professionals when needed, and not make rash or risky investments. Example: not buying a new car or invest in Bitcoin!

3. The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham

You might not know this but he is one of Warren Buffet’s mentor! This book is known as the bible of investing. This book focuses on value investing. Benjamin Grahm explains how value investing works. Essentially, value investing is figuring out if a company is trading below their value or they are worth more (higher intrinsic value) than what they’re trading at. The intelligent investor looking for a diamond in the rough practicing good judgments by ignoring current market conditions and instead focus on long term profits.

Who is this book for? Active investors who is investing in individual companies or under priced companies.

Takeaways. The book helps you learn how to analyze companies focusing on future potential and not immediate market conditions. Additionally, the author will teach you how to protect yourself from losses.

Sticking to your discipline and know what your criteria or formula are and sticking to it when assessing a stock.

4. Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill

This is not necessarily a finance book but kind of fall into this category and is very popular and has sold millions of copies.

Think and Grow Rich is essentially a curation of 13 common habits shared by wealthy and successful people. This book is for people who are looking to get into the right mindset of being successful.

Takeaways

1. Building an unshakable belief in yourself.
2. Be stubborn and stick to your decisions.
3. Joining a mastermind, which is associating with a group of successful people that are like-minded.

5. Dave Ramsey’s Total Money Makeover

This is the book about how to get out of debt and stay out of debt through seven baby steps. This book is for those beginning in their personal finance journey or people looking to get out of debt and overall a way to live your life.

Takeaways

1. Save up $1,000 for an emergency fund.
2. Paying off the smallest amount first then onto larger amounts.
3. Add to the initial $1,000 to cover 3 to 6 months of expenses.

6. The Bogleheads’ Guide to Investing

This is based on Jack Bogle’s philosophy of investing. Jack Bogle is the founder of Vanguard.

This book is focused on index funds and list the reasons why this type of investing works.

The crux of the book is the argument in favor of a broad index fund, buy and hold strategy and asset allocation. The same authors also published a related book on the three-fund portfolio.

Stay the course-Jack Bogle.

This book is for the beginner to the intermediate investor. And particularly, those who prefer passive investing over active investing.

7. Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki

This book is about a kid (Robert) growing up with two dads. The poor dad is college-educated, goes to work with a 9-5 job. Whereas, the rich dad talks about owning assets over liability. This book is perfect for the average consumer that only knows about incurring debt versus owning assets.

One of the assets mentioned is investing in real estate.

Takeaways

1. Real estate is a good way to gain assets, others may be owning a business.
2. Robert Kiyosaki advocates that if you have enough assets through your passive income then you can enjoy the finer things in life.

7 Finance Books that May Change Your Life!

So there you have it, folks, These are the seven finance books that may change your life. This list of personal finance is highly recommended! It will be worth your time. In fact, it may change even change your life! It certainly did to mine.

Of course this is not an exhaustive list of personal finance books out there but this is a good start!

If you’re not a reader, you can download the audible app and listen these books instead.

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