This is a continuously updated list of our reviews of the best personal finance and investment books. The original list of 15 is presented in order of our favorites.
How do you read 15 books in 12 months?
I Don’t Have Time to Read
“I never have time to read,” I told myself.
This was a personal validation I used after I spent hours doing nothing. You might be like me, and you’re not wrong. It’s hard to find time to read (not really, but it feels like it is). So, what changed?
On our Behind the Brilliance episode, Lisa Nicole Bell simplified the “challenge” by recommending we “just read 10 pages a day.” A few months after the episode, I read four books. This was four more books than I read in the previous four years.
It is hard to find a (good) excuse not to read 10-pages a day. Can’t read 10-pages a day? Try these other options:
- 10-minutes a day;
- 5-pages when you wake up and 5-pages before you go to sleep;
- 3-pages every commercial break; or
- 1-page every time Netflix pauses to annoyingly ask, “are you still watching?”
It took some habit-breaking and building, but in my new reality, it is now harder to not read 10-pages. This is not an invite to the Paychecks & Balances balances glass of red wine and a “book club” on the side. Aint nobody got time for that.
We simply challenge you to try to read 10-pages a day from one of these books.
The Best Personal Finance and Investment Books Reviewed
I picked some books because they were highly recommended. I chose others because I’m cheap and I already owned them. Either way, I summarized what I learned from each book and the action items to make you rich
The Original Fifteen
- D.E.B.T. Free or Die Trying: How I Buried Myself $30,000 in Debt and Dug My Way Out by Marcus Garrett
- The Millionaire Next Door: The Surprising Secrets of America’s Wealthy by Thomas J. Stanley
- The Automatic Millionaire by David Bach
- I Will Teach You To Be Rich by Ramit Sethi
- A Random Walk Down Wall Street by Burton Malkiel
- The Two-Income Trap: Why Middle-Class Parents are Going Broke by Elizabeth Warren
- Dollars and Sense by Dan Ariely and Jeff Kreisler
- The Dos and Donts of Money: Easy Solutions for Everyday Problems by Suze Orman
- The Total Money Makeover by Dave Ramsey
- Your Credit Score: How to Improve the 3-Digit Number That Shapes Your Financial Future by PB56: The Truth About Credit guest Liz Weston
- Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki
- Your Money or Your Life by Vicki Robin, Joe Dominguez, Monique Tilford
- The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham
- The Richest Man in Babylon by George Samuel Clason
- Irrational Exuberance by Robert Shiller
Other Paychecks and Balances Reads
With the remaining free time you and I don’t have, I recommend, read, and reviewed these books to further round out your library.
- Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Others Don’t by James C. Collins
- The Behavioral Investor by psychologist and asset manager, Dr. Daniel Crosby
- Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed by Lori Gottlieb
- Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones by James Clear
- Key Person of Influence: How to Implement the 5P System
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Robert Allen – Multiple Streams of Income
Thanks for posting. There are a lot of good books here. I’ll need to add a few of these to my reading list.
I’d recommend these investing books:
The Simple Path to Wealth by J L Collins
The Bogleheads’ Guide to Investing by Taylor Larimore
The Little Book of Common Sense Investing by John C. Bogle
If you have already read these, what did you think?
Just wanted to follow up with my last comment.
I really recommend The Simple Path to Wealth by J L Collins.
You can see a review that I did for the book here:
https://www.simplicityandfreedom.com/2019/03/the-simple-path-to-wealth-book-review.html