So today I’m back at one of my favorite topics, money and finances and investments! Woot woot!
While financial management generally sounds like a pretty painfully boring topic, being a debt-free, financially secure and confident person is rather appealing, am I right?! Right!
So first, disclaimer, I’m not a financial advisor and have 0 professional background in finance. But I am a debt-free 28 year old who has been managing a multiple 6 figure business for a couple years now, so I guess I know a thing or two.
And where did I learn these things? Books!
I was just as clueless about money management, paying off debt, saving for retirement, and buying investments as the next person on the street just a couple years ago, but I was determined to get myself into a really financially secure place, and I’m rather proud to say I managed it.
So let’s get into my fav finance/money/investment books so you can get yourself to a similar place as well!
I’ll start with the books everyone needs and then give a recommendation based on a specific situation.
The 3 money books everyone needs:
Personal Finance for Dummies
Before you get into books specific to paying off debt, saving for retirement, investing or buying a house, it’s really worthwhile to have a clear overall financial picture.
Depending on your debt situation, maybe you shouldn’t even be investing at this point at all. Or maybe you shouldn’t be buying a house yet if you don’t have your financial foundation down with a couple specific types of insurance. Or maybe you should be focusing on an emergency fund before paying off certain types of debt.
All of these things are sort of inter-related and this is the best book I’ve found which explains all the different aspects of your financial life and how they relate to each other. This book is just about as clear and easy to understand as you could ask for.
They have different versions of these books specific to different countries. I read the Personal Finance for Canadian Dummies book and my German fiancé read the Personal Finance for German Dummies book.
Here’s the links to the books in the countries that most read this blog:
(All of the book links in this post are affiliate links btw!)
Okay, so once you understand how debt relates to insurance which relates and saving and investing from the Dummies book, here’s a couple more essential books I recommend to everyone!
The Index Card by Helaine Olen & Harold Pollack
This one is another sort of overall financial picture type book, but it also starts giving you introductory information on investing in stocks, which is the perfect lead up to the 3rd book I’ll recommend here.
This book came about because the author Harold was a wee bit lost with the whole finances thing and got stuck into a pretty bad financial situation. So Harold, an academic, did what academics do and started researching, reading books and academic papers on the topic of personal finance.
Through his research, he realized that there were honestly just a few simple, basic rules of financial management that seemed consistent and he mentioned one time that all the rules could easily fit onto a small index card.
People started asking for the ‘index card rules’ he mentioned and he obliged by sharing a literal photo of an index card with the rules scribbled onto it. The index card went viral. People loved the simple, direct-to-the-point rules of finance.
He wrote the book to give a little bit more information and context to the rules mentioned on the index card. There’s 10 rules in the book, explained in the most easy-to-understand terms possible.
This book is a super easy read, and will give you even more confidence in the decisions you’re making, so pop it in your bag and take it to the beach, or take a seat on your front porch and crack it open. You’ll feel more confident and clear on what the heck you should really be doing by the end of it.
You can grab the book on Amazon here:
The Little Book of Common Sense Investing by John Bogel
Alright y’all, we’re going to take on what is generally considered to be the most intimidating of all financial topics, investing! While people often feel intimidated by it because it’s really wandering into unknown territory and is something we learn almost nothing of in school, it’s also so so so important.
If you just save your money and never invest it, due to inflation, you’re likely to end up with LESS money than before just a few years down the line. Sticking your cash under your mattress or even in just a savings account is NOT going to cut it.
(So if that has been your game plan so far, add this book to your Amazon cart ASAP, no if, ands or buts!)
As someone who was in your same clueless shoes a couple years ago I want to share some VERY positive investment news with you! The best, proven investment strategy will take you all of 10 minutes a year to implement, and will NOT require you to be researching and choosing stocks or timing the market. Hallellujah!
You also absolutely do NOT need an expensive investment advisor. It’s something you can do from your bed at 1 AM between Netflix episodes. (At least that’s how I generally end up implementing this strategy.)
From all the investment books I read ( . . . lol, like 8! I went a bit hardcore on the research before I picked an investment strategy if we’re being honest,) ALL of the books ended up recommending the same thing, so I wasn’t stuck debating between multiple different strategies.
I promise you, a couple books on investments and the market, you’re going to be hellah-confident in the decisions you’re making.
I could totally just tell you the investment strategy in this post but I actually decided I don’t want to do that because I don’t want you to just do the right thing, I want you to also understand why you’re doing it and feel confident in it.
Which brings me to John’s book. John Bogel is the founder of Vanguard, one of the world’s largest investment companies, and the creator of the first ever index fund, a type of investment fund that is widely accepted by financial experts to be the best type of investment one can buy.
His book The Little Book Of Common Sense Investing is considered a classic, must-read in the investment community.
This book walks you through understanding actively managed funds and index funds, the differences between them and then follows it up with the proof of why one is proven to produce better returns than the other, by a mile. It provides info on what Registered Investment Advisor (RIA) are actually good for, expense ratios basics and what expense ratios are would be considered ‘good’, as well as the difference between load and no-load funds.
It then follows it up with specific examples of how an investment would grow, depending on which of all the options mentioned above you choose.
This is definitely the first book on investing I suggest you read.
Here’s the link to pop it in your Amazon cart:
By the time you read the 3 books mentioned above, you’ll start to notice that a lot of the recommendations made by all 3 are very similar. I personally found that fact to be pretty relieving to see many experts all giving the same recommendations and not needing to try to decide between recommendations in a field I was pretty new to.
Okay, now we’ve gotten through the essential books for everyone, there’s one other book I’d recommend if you fall into a certain situation.
Bonus: If you travel/live abroad frequently . . .
Millionaire Expat: How To Build Wealth Living Overseas by Andrew Hallam
When your home country isn’t your normal place of residence, finances, investing, setting up retirement savings, etc. gets a HECK of a lot harder.
(As if managing those things in your own country when working for yourself wasn’t hard enough.)
Anyways, while yes this is more complicated for us than for the average person, it’s not impossible. And it’s really important to get this right.
Millionaire Expat is written by a teacher who worked at international schools and switched countries every few years. He quickly learned how to manage his money between countries, and realized that his colleagues were pretty clueless in that department, so he basically became a little financial advisor with his colleagues.
This is the most practical personal finance book I’ve read yet. (A lot of the other books just detail investment theory but don’t talk about how the heck you actually buy an investment - kinda important!) If you live abroad, this is a must-read.
You can grab the book on Amazon here:
There you have it! Those are my highest recommended books on the topic.
Read those and you’ll be a heck of a lot more educated and confident in the financial management world than like 90% of your friends and will be able to actually start making progress with getting a financial game plan in place for yourself, which you know, is kinda important, especially if you work for yourself like I do.
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