Whether you are a twenty something, a beginner, a young adult, in college, or an experienced budgeting pro, you can always improve your financial IQ.
The average Joe or Jane citizen claims to read one book each year while the average CEO is reported to read sixty books annually. Why is reading more important to improving your financial well-being?
To build a richer life, make more money, and live more comfortably, new habits and knowledge are needed. And it’s for that reason we compiled a list of the best personal finance books to read.
Related: The 7 Books Every Entrepreneur Must Read
1 – Best Finance Book For Entrepreneurs: The 10X Rule
The 10X Rule: The Only Difference Between Success and Failure by Grant Cardone is a book designed for the go-getter who aspires for greater professional and personal wealth.
Cardone explores the habits that lead to mediocrity and the actions needed to create phenomenal success.
If you want to achieve extraordinary results professionally, personally, or physically, you will need to radically alter how you spend your time each day, according to Cardone.
A routine 9-to-5 job won’t translate into enormous riches. To reach phenomenal heights of success, you need to stop underestimating the effort needed and operate by what the author describes as the fourth degree of action: Massive Action.
The 10X Rule is provocative and will prod you to reflect on whether you could be doing more to realize a life of abundance versus an ordinary life which simply meets your needs.
The title of the book offers a hint of what lies within the pages of this bestselling book. You will be asked to think not about how you can increase your salary by 5-10% but how you can find ways to boost your income by 10X.
By aiming ten times higher, your mind is forced to seriously evaluate what it will take to transform your life from its current state to one of significantly more abundance.
In The 10X Rule, Cardone claims you will learn how to:
- Set goals and guarantee they are realized
- Achieve goals you previously imagined were unattainable
- Create happiness professionally, personally, and physically
- Never settle for what you have and understand why that is important
- Be motivated by fear and use it to fuel massive action
- Eliminate procrastination and follow a step-by-step guide to success
2 – Top Finance Book For Adults – Principles: Life and Work
Ray Dalio may not be a household name to the general public but he is an icon in the investment management industry.
As a young, ambitious go-getter, he started a company in his two-bedroom apartment in 1975 and grew it to become one of the most successful private companies in the United States.
That company is called Bridgewater Associates and it made more money for its clients than any other hedge fund in history.
In Principles: Life and Work, Dalio shares a philosophy that he believes can be applied by anyone to create greater wealth and success in life, both professionally and personally.
As an ordinary kid from a middle class neighborhood in Long Island, Dalio claims that what led to his enormous success and that of Bridgewater Associates was a ruleset that anyone can follow.
Dalio believes economics, investing, and life itself can be systemized into rules and understood much like machines.
In this video, for example, he describes how the economy acts like a machine:
The basis of Dalio’s philosophy stems from the importance of what he calls “radical transparency” and “radical truth.”
He applies this philosophy at his firm, where employees receive “baseball cards” that highlight both their strengths and weaknesses. This approach he believes leads to more meaningful relationships and work.
Within the pages of Principles: Life and Work, Dalio shares hundreds of practical lessons to help individuals and companies become more effective and create richer outcomes.
3 – Best Book For Getting Out Of Debt: The Total Money Makeover
The Total Money Makeover: A Proven Plan For Financial Fitness by Dave Ramsey is a must-read for debt-laden consumers who overspend.
If you are saddled with debt from student loans, auto loans, personal loans, or a mortgage, and trying to figure out how to improve your financial health, this is the book for you.
In The Total Money Makeover, Ramsey attacks head-on the idea of “keeping up with the Joneses.” Just because your neighbor bought a new car doesn’t mean you should too in order to keep up appearances.
Instead, Ramsey advocates getting out of debt and shows you how to lower your debt levels through a 4-step process that includes:
- List your debts from smallest to largest
- Make minimum payments on all your debts except the smallest one
- Pay as much of your smallest debt off as you can afford
- Repeat the process until all of your debts have been paid off
If you want an automated way to help you achieve this method, called the Debt Snowball Method, check out this Tiller Money spreadsheet.