Pound Foolish: Exposing the Dark Side of the Personal Finance Industry


Helaine Olen - 2012
    There’s just one problem: those and many simi­lar statements are false. For the past few decades, Americans have spent billions of dollars on personal finance products. As salaries have stagnated and companies have cut back on benefits, we’ve taken matters into our own hands, embracing the can-do attitude that if we’re smart enough, we can overcome even daunting financial obstacles. But that’s not true. In this meticulously reported and shocking book, journalist and former financial columnist Helaine Olen goes behind the curtain of the personal finance industry to expose the myths, contradictions, and outright lies it has perpetuated. She shows how an industry that started as a response to the Great Depression morphed into a behemoth that thrives by selling us products and services that offer little if any help. Olen calls out some of the biggest names in the business, revealing how even the most respected gurus have engaged in dubious, even deceitful, prac­tices—from accepting payments from banks and corporations in exchange for promoting certain prod­ucts to blaming the victims of economic catastrophe for their own financial misfortune. Pound Foolish also disproves many myths about spending and saving, including:Small pleasures can bankrupt you: Gurus popular­ized the idea that cutting out lattes and other small expenditures could make us millionaires. But reduc­ing our caffeine consumption will not offset our biggest expenses: housing, education, health care, and retirement.Disciplined investing will make you rich: Gurus also love to show how steady investing can turn modest savings into a huge nest egg at retirement. But these calculations assume a healthy market and a lifetime without any setbacks—two conditions that have no connection to the real world.Women need extra help managing money: Product pushers often target women, whose alleged financial ignorance supposedly leaves them especially at risk. In reality, women and men are both terrible at handling finances.Financial literacy classes will prevent future eco­nomic crises: Experts like to claim mandatory sessions on personal finance in school will cure many of our money ills. Not only is there little evidence this is true, the entire movement is largely funded and promoted by the financial services sector.  Weaving together original reporting, interviews with experts, and studies from disciplines ranging from behavioral economics to retirement planning, Pound Foolish is a compassionate and compelling book that will change the way we think and talk about our money.

You Are a Badass at Making Money: Master the Mindset of Wealth


Jen Sincero - 2017
    Drawing on her own transformation—over just a few years—from a woman living in a converted garage with tumbleweeds blowing through her bank account to a woman who travels the world in style, Jen Sincero channels the inimitable sass and practicality that made You Are a Badass an indomitable bestseller. She combines hilarious personal essays with bite-size, aha concepts that unlock earning potential and get real results. Learn to: • Uncover what's holding you back from making money • Give your doubts, fears, and excuses the heave-ho • Relate to money in a new (and lucrative) way • Shake up the cocktail of creation • Tap into your natural ability to grow rich • Shape your reality—stop playing victim to circumstance • Get as wealthy as you wanna be“This book truly crystallizes the concept that financial abundance is an inside job—in that it all begins with your mindset—and Sincero gets serious (in the funniest ways possible) about helping you identify your particular limiting beliefs surrounding money.” —PopSugar

Man vs. Markets: Economics Explained (Plain and Simple)


Paddy Hirsch - 2012
    Markets by Paddy Hirsch of NPR's "Marketplace" is economics explained, pure and simple, for the layperson who wouldn't know a "bond" from an "option," and who believes that a "future" is when we'll all have flying cars. Here is an illuminating, insightful, and wonderfully witty journey of discovery through the often confusing financial markets, offering clear, relatable explanations and definitions of the system's various instruments, yet less simplistically than the popular ...for Dummies series. Man Vs. Markets is a must-read handbook for everyday investors, serious students of finance and economics, and everyone who wants to understand what they're reading when they open their newspapers to the business section.

365 Ways to Live Cheap: Your Everyday Guide to Saving Money


Trent Hamm - 2008
    Minimize your carload and reduce your gas mileage by as much as 5 percent. Invest in a deep freezer and fill it up with meat discounted at 30 percent or more.Take a look at your life and you'll realize that there's almost always a way to make do on less. This book offers up a bevy of ways to cut down on costs and still enjoy a satisfying lifestyle in any situation. From practicing good gas conservation habits to learning to love leftovers, this book will help every aspiring penny pincher stop the unnecessary spending and find the fun in frugality!

Secrets of the Millionaire Mind: Mastering the Inner Game of Wealth


T. Harv Eker - 1999
    Harv Eker states: "Give me five minutes, and I can predict your financial future for the rest of your life!" Eker does this by identifying your "money and success blueprint." We all have a personal money blueprint ingrained in our subconscious minds, and it is this blueprint, more than anything, that will determine our financial lives. You can know everything about marketing, sales, negotiations, stocks, real estate, and the world of finance, but if your money blueprint is not set for a high level of success, you will never have a lot of money—and if somehow you do, you will most likely lose it! The good news is that now you can actually reset your money blueprint to create natural and automatic success.Secrets of the Millionaire Mind is two books in one. Part I explains how your money blueprint works. Through Eker's rare combination of street smarts, humor, and heart, you will learn how your childhood influences have shaped your financial destiny. You will also learn how to identify your own money blueprint and "revise" it to not only create success but, more important, to keep and continually grow it.In Part II you will be introduced to seventeen "Wealth Files," which describe exactly how rich people think and act differently than most poor and middle-class people. Each Wealth File includes action steps for you to practice in the real world in order to dramatically increase your income and accumulate wealth.If you are not doing as well financially as you would like, you will have to change your money blueprint. Unfortunately your current money blueprint will tend to stay with you for the rest of your life, unless you identify and revise it, and that's exactly what you will do with the help of this extraordinary book. According to T. Harv Eker, it's simple. If you think like rich people think and do what rich people do, chances are you'll get rich too!

21 Habits of Highly Broke People: Break Free From Destructive Habits With Practical Steps To Turn Your Finances Around


Dipo Adesina - 2018
    It is a direct result of bad choices made overtime that eventually turned into habits that masters you. Like a thermostat, once these habits are set, it becomes nearly impossible to break them without deliberate and intentional effort. 21 Habits of Highly Broke People dives into details on the habits that keeps people poor, and practical action steps you can take to break free from these habits. 21 Habits of Highly Broke People shows you: 1. How your choices about money is keeping you broke. 2. What the rich do differently from the poor. 3. How to break bad habits and replace them with positive habits.

Why Didn't They Teach Me This in School?


Cary Siegel - 2013
    As it developed, the author realized that personal money management skills were rarely taught in high schools, colleges and even in MBA programs. Unfortunately, books on the subject tend to be complicated, lengthy reads. The book includes eight important lessons focusing on 99 principles that will quickly and memorably enhance any individual's money management acumen. Unlike many of the personal money management books out there, this book is a quick, easily digested read that focuses more on the qualitative side than the quantitative side of personal money management. The principles are not from a text book. Rather, they are practical principles learned by the author as he navigated through his financial life. Many are unorthodox in order to be memorable and provoke deeper thought by the reader. Not only an excellent graduation gift for high school and college students but also a great read for any adult!

The Debt-Free Spending Plan


JoAnneh Nagler - 2012
    It’s overwhelming— and the more complicated the proposed solution, the harder it is to stick with it.That’s why The Debt-Free Spending Plan is SIMPLE. It doesn’t require sifting through chapters of high-minded financial advice or digging up your past spend ing history. It assumes you need help RIGHT NOW, and gives it to you. You will learn to:• Downsize expenses without feeling deprived• Allocate money as it comes in and put together an easy-to-manage bill-paying plan• Adjust for inevitable overspending• Pay off debt without gouging expenses and (believe it or not) start savingThe plan is clear, easy, and takes just five minutes a day—and it doesn’t matter if you make $14,000 or $14 million. With straightforward daily spending strategies and effortless expense tracking tools, you will soon find yourself on the road to financial freedom—all before the next billing cycle.

Wealth Made Easy: Millionaires and Billionaires Help You Crack the Code to Getting Rich


Greg S. Reid - 2019
    You need to win and keep winning. To get there you need great connections and insider advice.But it's not as simple as tracking down the elite few - the wealth hackers of the world - and getting them to spill their secrets. . . Or is it?©2019 Dr. Greg Reid (P)2019 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.

The Psychology of Money


Morgan Housel - 2020
    It’s about how you behave. And behavior is hard to teach, even to really smart people. How to manage money, invest it, and make business decisions are typically considered to involve a lot of mathematical calculations, where data and formulae tell us exactly what to do. But in the real world, people don’t make financial decisions on a spreadsheet. They make them at the dinner table, or in a meeting room, where personal history, your unique view of the world, ego, pride, marketing, and odd incentives are scrambled together. In the psychology of money, the author shares 19 short stories exploring the strange ways people think about money and teaches you how to make better sense of one of life’s most important matters.

Girl, Make Your Money Grow!: A Sister's Guide to Protecting Your Future and Enriching Your Life


Glinda Bridgforth - 2003
    Girl, Make Your Money Grow! presents their step-by-step plan to help you clear away debt, create new streams of income, buy prime real estate, map out a personalized plan for retirement, and build an investment portfolio that’s right for you using bonds, mutual funds, and blue-chip stocks to lower your risk without sacrificing profits. Filled with Bridgforth and Perry-Mason’s warmhearted wisdom, and complete with exercises, affirmations, and inspiring stories of African American women who’ve successfully grown their financial gardens, Girl, Make Your Money Grow! is a fresh, fun, and eminently practical guide to achieving the next level of financial security and funding the future of your dreams.

LOADED: Money, psychology, and how to get ahead without leaving your values behind


Sarah Newcomb - 2016
    Your views – and actions – with money will be much improved after reading the wonderful advice in LOADED."- James Grubman, PhD. Author of Strangers in Paradise: How Families Adapt to Wealth Across Generations and co-author of Cross Cultures: How Global Families Negotiate Change Across GenerationsDeeply researched, yet written in an approachable, conversational tone, this book offers insight into how the reader's personal experiences have shaped their financial attitudes, and how they can have a healthier relationship with their own money. The book first examines the roots and consequences of core money beliefs and then presents a practical budgeting method that blends economics with psychology to create a healthy and sustainable money management method. Worksheets and personal money psychology assessments supplement the text.

Miserly Moms: Living Well on Less in a Tough Economy


Jonni McCoy - 2009
    Jonni shares the money-saving strategies that allowed her family to transition from two incomes to one. These practical, proven strategies, tips, and recipes will help anyone live frugally without feeling deprived. Real-life examples show how anyone can learn to live more carefully and reach their financial goals. Now in its fourth edition, Miserly Moms is packed with even more ways to reduce a family's expenses and expose hidden living costs.

The Power of Passive Investing: More Wealth with Less Work


Richard A. Ferri - 2010
    The alternative lies with index funds. This passive form of investing allows you to participate in the markets relatively cheaply while prospering all the more because the money saved on investment expenses stays in your pocket.In his latest book, investment expert Richard Ferri shows you how easy and accessible index investing is. Along the way, he highlights how successful you can be by using this passive approach to allocate funds to stocks, bonds, and other prudent asset classes.Addresses the advantages of index funds over portfolios that are actively managed Offers insights on index-based funds that provide exposure to designated broad markets and don't make bets on individual securities Ferri is also author of the Wiley title: The ETF Book and co-author of The Bogleheads' Guide to Retirement PlanningIf you're looking for a productive investment approach that won't take all of your time to implement, then The Power of Passive Investing is the book you need to read.

Financial Freedom: A Proven Path to All the Money You Will Ever Need


Grant Sabatier - 2019
    Time is not. Become financially independent as fast as possible.In 2010, 24-year old Grant Sabatier woke up to find he had $2.26 in his bank account. Five years later, he had a net worth of over $1.25 million, and CNBC began calling him "the Millennial Millionaire." By age 30, he had reached financial independence. Along the way he uncovered that most of the accepted wisdom about money, work, and retirement is either incorrect, incomplete, or so old-school it's obsolete.Financial Freedom is a step-by-step path to make more money in less time, so you have more time for the things you love. It challenges the accepted narrative of spending decades working a traditional 9 to 5 job, pinching pennies, and finally earning the right to retirement at age 65, and instead offers readers an alternative: forget everything you've ever learned about money so that you can actually live the life you want.Sabatier offers surprising, counter-intuitive advice on topics such as how to:*  Create profitable side hustles that you can turn into passive income streams or full-time businesses*  Save money without giving up what makes you happy*  Negotiate more out of your employer than you thought possible*  Travel the world for less*  Live for free--or better yet, make money on your living situation*  Create a simple, money-making portfolio that only needs minor adjustments*  Think creatively--there are so many ways to make money, but we don't see them.But most importantly, Sabatier highlights that, while one's ability to make money is limitless, one's time is not. There's also a limit to how much you can save, but not to how much money you can make. No one should spend precious years working at a job they dislike or worrying about how to make ends meet. Perhaps the biggest surprise: You need less money to "retire" at age 30 than you do at age 65.Financial Freedom is not merely a laundry list of advice to follow to get rich quick--it's a practical roadmap to living life on one's own terms, as soon as possible.