In this life, you cannot possibly face a challenge that many of the 117 billion people who came before you or exist with you, have not faced. You can also be almost absolutely sure, out of those many, one would have documented the ways to solve that challenge in one of the countless books ever written by humankind. So, maybe we could say – “there’s a book for that”. Same is true for any money related heartache that probably might be ailing you right now, which has led you to this documentation of carefully curated books about personal finance. Or it could be mere curiosity. Nonetheless, books seldom fail to have answers for us.
Once you learn to read, you will be forever free.
Fredrick Douglass
There are many great books on personal finance that can open our mind, and broaden our thought process. Here is a list of 5 books, that I feel are relatively recent, are relevant to our world today as much as when these books were first written and hold the potential of sending you down the rabbit hole of seeking ever increasing depth of knowledge.
So, without further ado, here’s the list…
Until you read (and re-read) this book, you wouldn’t be able to escape the thought process ingrained in us by our traditional education system that only prepared us to sit at one place for 8 hours a day to work on pre-defined activities. And our valuable time is traded for a small compensation that is supposed to provide some sense of fulfilment. This book shatters the idea that we can make more money if only we could just get that promotion or a higher paying job. It drives home the fact that rich don’t work for money. They have their money work for them, which in turn generates more money to work for them. It’s a simple concept and this book helps us see it for what it is. Which is why my favorite line from this book is pretty much in the very first chapter –
Most of the time, life does not talk to you. It just sort of pushes you around. Each push is life saying, ‘Wake up. There’s something I want you to learn.’
Robert Kiyosaki in Rich Dad Poor Dad
If you are intrigued and want to read this book, here’s a handy link to grab your copy from Amazon.
This one is a surprisingly quick read and full of easy to digest nuggets of wisdom with regards to personal finance. Most of these would seem like (or should seem like) common sense, yet when it is laid out plain and simple like this – it just clicks. These are the basics of handling money. For example, it intuitively registers in our mind when the book lays out 3 lessons in one of the chapters –
- Live with less and live within means.
- Take advice carefully and from those who lead by example and are knowledgeable in their domains.
- Make money work for you to make more money, and make them work for you too to make more money and so on.
This is definitely a must-read as a simple book of rules of how to make money, and keep it for yourself!
You can grab this book for yourself from Amazon.
This book makes it onto this list simply because it not only helps us understand how money works, but gives us a deeper understanding of why we behave the way we behave individually when it comes to money. No one is crazy for making a money related decision (including you), because everyone is playing a different game with different set or rules and different starting points and different end goals. The sooner we grasp this, the quicker we are on our way to financial success and freedom.
The hardest financial skill is getting the goalpost to stop moving.
Morgan Housel
On your journey to financial freedom, this is a book that you must bring along.
Go ahead and grab your copy from Amazon. It is definitely worth it.
Whether you are just starting out on your journey to financial freedom, or are a hard-core hustler, passive income generator or a seasoned investor – one thing we can all agree upon is that emotions lead to majority of financial mistakes and take down the best of us with it.
This book is a must-read for those who’d like to take emotions out of the equation of investing and financial success. As humans, it is in our nature to run after the latest shiny thing. And not that it’s bad because who can forget those crypto billionaires who became rich overnight by doing just that. There is a time and place for everything. And this book helps us see (with ample evidence and numbers) that how sometimes “seemingly boring” investments can bring the biggest returns. John C. Bogle was a great American investor who popularized the idea of low cost index funds (ETFs) which is a well established investment tool these days. He was also the founder of the Vanguard company. I don’t know about you, but this in itself is enough to make me sit up and listen to his recommendations.
So if you are just starting out with limited capital to invest, or are just curious about safe ways to start investing by detaching from emotions based investing then you should focus on fact based “boring” strategy guaranteed to give you good returns. This book will tell you all about it.
You can grab your copy from Amazon.
If you have been looking for inspiration to get you started on your financial freedom journey (we assume you are, since you have made it this far), then you’d love this book. This book rightfully deserves its spot on the list of top 5 personal finance books. The value of this book lies in the seemingly straightforward, simple and actionable guidance provided throughout. It covers the basics of money management that is helpful to newbies or seasoned financial hawks alike. And since all the suggestions are very actionable, it actually gives you the confidence to get started.
The single most important factor to getting rich is getting started, not being the smartest person in the room.
Ramit Sethi
The hardest part of managing money is to keep that money for yourself and make it work for you. Paying interest to banks on high interest debt is not it. Some might say this book is more suitable for young people in their 20s, but I’m old enough to know that many people fail to learn these basics all the way into their 40s. Which is why no matter if you are a millenial or gen-x’er or a gen-z’er, this is a must read for long term financial success.
You can grab your copy from Amazon.
