Finance Library Starter Pack

A good personal finance connoisseur, that is, someone who’s savvy in personal finance, should make sure to gather as much information as possible on a topic in order to make informed decisions. If you don’t know, research! And one of the best ways to do this is with an ol’ stack of paper we call a book.

So what’s my starter pack? Here’s the list…

The Richest Man in Babylon

This book left a great impression upon me in high school. I was assigned reading this book in order to obtain a college scholarship from a friend-of-a-friend. My assignment? Read this book and another (the next one!) and then write a statement on how it affected me. That statement has been lost to time, but this book has not.

While technically it’s a fiction book, it aims to educate people on savings and investing through vignettes of a man who starts out having fallen on tough times, only to save his money, bit by bit, and ultimately begin lending it to others and making his money work for him.

Furthermore, it has been around for ages and many people have been moved to save and improve their finances because of it. I felt the same after I first read it and upon rereads of it – let’s save some more!

The language in the book can be a bit difficult at times to read (think King James Version of the bible, if you know what I mean) but the wisdom is timeless and fully worthwhile.

I highly recommend picking it up.

The Millionaire Next Door

This was the other book my scholarship required. However, this one is an interesting book because it’s actually the results of a study of millionaires. Two gentlemen, Thomas Stanley and William Danko, went around and surveyed millionaires around the country and detailed their habits.

Some of the things that stuck out to me: Many were business owners. Many were extremely frugal. Many drove used cars. And their favorite store? Target.

What was eye-opening to me is that many had a grandiose feel of millionaires: they must live opulent lives! Wine and caviar, every day!

And yet, in reality, they didn’t. Sure, some did, but most were simply just good at accumulating wealth.

This was another great book at helping to put things in perspective and further encouraging savings and investing and to try to become a “prodigious accumulator of wealth.”

I highly recommend picking this one up too.

What’s next?

I think I’ll stop here for now. I still have many more books to share, but I think I’ll span them out over the course of several posts. Don’t want to overwhelm you all at once!

But what books have you particularly enjoyed? What classics? What new releases? Let me know in the comments!