Personal Finance Book Recommendations

The following table is a growing list of books I recommend. If I had to give you a smaller list and order to start, I would suggest the following:

  • The Simple Path to Wealth – Title explains it
  • Your Money or Your Life – Puts your time into perspective (i.e. is that bigger house or nicer car worth X number of hours of my life wasted paying off the debt)
  • Financial Freedom – I like this one as it builds on all of the possibilities and I find it to bring energy into personal finances
  • Everyday Millionaires – Example stories of people like me and you

You will notice a “coming soon” for the Book Review. I have decided to go back and write a quick book review on my perspective of each book.

TitleFavorite Quotes
Entrepreneurial You: Monetize Your Expertise, Create Multiple Income Streams, and Thrive

By Dorie Clark

My Rating: Coming Soon
Book Review: Coming Soon		Coming Soon… Currently reading
The Automatic Millionaire, Expanded and Updated: A Powerful One-Step Plan to Live and Finish Rich

By David Bach

My Rating: 3 out of 5
My Book Review		“According to the American Savings Education Council, 57 percent of all American workers have less than $25,000 in savings.”

“10,000 baby boomers reach retirement age every day, yet according to a study by the American Association of Retired Persons, the ‘typical boomer’ has only $1,000 worth of financial assets. We might call them boomers, but their finances are busting.”

“Did you know that if you owe $2,000 in credit card debt and are making just the minimum monthly payments, it will take you more than eighteen years – and a total of more than $4,600 – to pay off your balance”

“We could work all of our lives for money and live month to month, paycheck to paycheck, like most people. Or we could learn to make our money work for us and really enjoy our lives. The trick, they said, was simple. Every time you earn a dollar, you should make sure to pay yourself first.”
Set For Life: Dominate Life, Money, and the American Dream

By Scott Trench

My Rating: 4 out of 5
My Book Review		“Early financial freedom should be a powerful motivator. The result of attaining financial freedom is a life lived on your terms. A life of impact. A life of growth. That motivation should be the driving force behind many of the most important financial decisions you make.”

“Once assets generate returns in excess of the spending needed to fund your lifestyle, then the financial freedom equation is satisfied.”

Your Money or Your Life: 9 Steps to Transforming Your Relationship with Money and Achieving Financial Independence (fully revised and updated for 2018)

By Vicki Robin and Joe Dominguez

My Rating: 4 out of 5
Book Review: Coming Soon		“The only real asset you have is your time. The hours of your life. You’re born. You have about eighty-eight hundred hours in a year. Maybe six hundred and fifty thousand hours before you die. You’ll easily spend half of them sleeping and keeping your body fed, clothed, and reasonably comfortable. Maybe you’re already halfway through your life, meaning you’re down to a hundred and fifty thousand hours left to spend. This is your treasure.”
The Simple Path to Wealth – Your road map to financial independence, and a rich, free life

By JL Collins

My Rating: 4.5 out of 5
Book Review: My Book Review		“If your lifestyle matches – or god forbid exceeds – your income, you are no more than a gilded slave.”

“Avoid investment advisors. Too many have only their own interests at heart. By the time you know enough to pick a good one, you know enough to handle your finances yourself. It’s your money and no one will care for it better than you.”

“When you can live on 4% of your investments per year, you are financially independent.”

The Parable: The Monk and the Minister on page 6.
Financial Freedom – A proven path to all the money you will ever need

By Grant Sabatier

My rating: 4.5 out of 5
Book Review: Coming Soon		“I was so worried about money that I started suffering from debilitating anxiety attacks so powerful that my heart felt like it would stop beating and I literally thought I was going to die. I was letting the best hours of my life during the best years of my life burn out with each biweekly paycheck.”

“One of the most profound lessons I’ve learned along the way is that most of the ‘accepted wisdom’ about money, work, and retirement is either incorrect, incomplete, or so old-school it’s obsolete.”

“Every $1 invested today is worth hours, if not days, of your freedom in the future. The more you save today, the more time you buy in the future.”

“If you can become a super saver (the term I use for those who save more than 25 percent of their income each year), you can significantly cut the years you need until you retire… remember that retiring any time before sixty-two (the traditional retirement age) is early retirement, so cutting one, two, five, or ten years off your retirement is an incredible accomplishment.”
Retire Inspired – It’s not an age, it’s a financial number

By Chris Hogan

My Rating: 4 out of 5
Book Review: Coming Soon		“You are responsible for our own retirement. You are responsible for your own pension plan. You have to be concerned. You have to be focused. You have to have a plan. Taking personal responsibility for your own retirement is the first step toward success.”

“Seventy-six percent of American households are living paycheck to paycheck. What happens in retirement when there is no paycheck? That can be terrifying to imagine.”

“The average Social Security benefit is only around $1,194 a month.”

“Retirement should mean wealth, peace, fun, satisfaction, security, and freedom!”

“When you are paralyzed with your money, you totally miss out on the power of compound interest. Every year you put off the decision to invest, you are losing tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars. If you want to be scared of something, be scared of that. Be afraid of retiring broke because you let risk keep you from investing.”
Everyday Millionaires: How Ordinary People Built Extraordinary Wealth – and How You Can Too

By Chris Hogan

My Rating: 4 out of 5
Book Review: Coming Soon		“If you believe you could never become a millionaire, then you will always prove yourself right. You’ll never save enough or work hard enough to overcome that core conviction. However, if you open yourself up to the possibility – the probability – that a $1 million net worth is within you reach, then you’ll already be halfway to the goal.”
Quit like a Millionaire – No Gimmicks, Luck, or Trust Fund Required

By Kristy Shen and Bryce Leung

My Rating: 4 out of 5
Book Review: Coming Soon		“The past doesn’t matter. What do we do now?”

“Index investing beats 85 percent of actively managed mutual funds.”

“Get rich, then follow your dreams. Ge the order wrong and you’re in big trouble.”

“If you understand money, life is incredibly easy. If you don’t understand money, like the vast majority of people, life is incredibly hard.”
Playing with FIRE – Financial Independence, Retire Early

By Scott Rieckens

My Rating: 4 out of 5
Book Review: Coming Soon		“Rather than make the most of what we had, we were squandering it. Instead of maximizing our opportunities, or giving back to the world, [we] were spending our lives working as much as possible so that we could slowly check off a long list of purchases that we thought would make us feel happy and important. What a waste!”

“FIRE is not about saving every last penny and trying to reach retirement as soon as humanly possible. It’s about building a lifestyle that aligns with your larger life purpose, even while you are still working.”
The Next Millionaire Next Door: Enduring Strategies for Building Wealth

By Thomas Stanley, Sarah Stanley Fallaw

My Rating: 4.5 out of 5
My Book Review		“To build and maintain wealth over time, it will be necessary for you to approach all financial management – spending, saving, generating revenue, investing – in a different, more disciplined approach than anyone else around you.”

“The more economically successful you become, the more critics you will attract.”

“Stop Acting Rich, we know the typical balance-sheet affluent millionaire had an annual realized median household income of $89,167 when he first became a millionaire. In other words, one-half of the balance-sheet affluent had incomes that were less than this figure. What does this tell us about building wealth and becoming financially secure? For most Americans one’s desire, discipline, and intellect are more important factors in accumulating wealth than earning a high income.”
Rich Dad, Poor Dad: What the Rich Teach Their Kids About Money That the Poor and Middle Class Do Not

By Robert Kiosoki

My Rating: 5 out of 5
Book Review: Coming Soon		Just a timeless classic

My Virtual Nightstand

The following books have been suggested to me, so I’m putting them on the virtual nightstand:

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