Comments on: Your Take: Your Favorite Personal Finance Book

By: BeachBoy

BeachBoy — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 17:42:07 +0000

I enjoyed Suze Orman’s “Money Book for the Young, Fabulous and Broke”.
I’m currently reading Total Money Makeover, and planning on reading Your Money or Your Life after all the praise it has everywhere.

By: Hank

Hank — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 16:07:14 +0000

The Automatic Millionaire by David Bach

It’s definitely the best book he has written. All the others pale in comparison.

By: Mike Piper

Mike Piper — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 20:20:16 +0000

To me, most mainstream personal finance books tend to be rather lacking. David Bach is excellent in terms of readability, but when he gets to mutual fund selection, he seems to suggest simply picking the fund with the highest past performance record that you can find. No mention of expense ratios or asset allocation. Your Money or Your Life is great in many ways, but then the authors go and recommend that investors put everything in bonds. Sure it might make sense for some, but for everybody? I'm not convinced. Things by Kiyosaki tend to be fun to read, but then he recommends things like buying real estate for investment purposes with no money down. 100% leveraged investments may make sense for some people, but for the average investor? Yikes! The Millionaire Next Door has many interesting conclusions, but their survey's methodology was flawed in a serious way. (It's a textbook case of selection bias.) My two favorites to recommend are Bernstein's Four Pillars of Investing and Bogle's Little Book of Common Sense Investing. They each only cover investing, but at least the quality of information is good.

By: Mike Piper

Mike Piper — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 20:09:41 +0000

That book and Four Pillars are my two votes. (Which one I recommend depends upon how interested the person is in the topic.)

By: azphx1972

azphx1972 — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 01:23:06 +0000

I’ve read a lot of personal finance books, and my current favorite is “The Millionaire in You: Ten Things You Need to Do Now to Have Money and Time to Enjoy It” by Michael LeBoeuf. What I love about it is that it’s not just about personal finance, but teaches the strategies that anyone can use to reach overall happiness in life.

By: Damon Day

Damon Day — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 17:48:48 +0000

I don’t really have a personal favorite. I like David Bach quite a bit because of his simple and straight forward style.

I would have to give a nod of course, to “think and grow rich” although not a personal finance book, one of the early influences on how I thought about money.

By: Kaleb

Kaleb — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 13:38:49 +0000

Carmen Wong Ulrich “Generation Debt” Easy read, Good info and examples.

By: Ari Weinberg

Ari Weinberg — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 22:04:32 +0000

I haven’t seen/read a personal finance book that is any different than the next. For this reason, I have no favorites and generally tend to avoid them.

They all depend on tone and style, but impart all impart the same knowledge. This is mostly because there are no NEW developments in personal finance. There haven’t been for decades, centuries, millenia…the only thing is how to adjust to changing situations and laws.

By: ddan7

ddan7 — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 13:07:00 +0000

I think the sequel to The Millionaire Next Door, “The Millionaire Mind” is the best I’ve read. It’s much easier to read than the first book. My Dad made me read it in high school. I’ve never read Dave’s book but I’ve listened to his radio program for years so I definitely recommend anything by him.

By: DDFD at DivorcedDadFrugalDad

DDFD at DivorcedDadFrugalDad — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 06:46:48 +0000

Nice topic. Richest Man in Babylon is a good read. The Millionaire Next Door and the Tightwad Gazzette series are worthy as well.

By: yohbee

yohbee — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 20:59:01 +0000

I haven’t read too many personal finance books. So far The Millionaire Next Door stand out the most.

By: Shawanda

Shawanda — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 06:11:20 +0000

How I wish I could be original. I’d recommend The Total Money Makeover to anyone who’s struggling with their finances. Dave Ramsey fundamentally changed how I viewed debt. Paid off $25K of debt and saved another $7,500 in 13 months by following his advice.

By: AJ

AJ — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 22:43:06 +0000

This is a good question. I need to think about this one.

By: Marlo

Marlo — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 16:37:20 +0000

The Millionaire Next Door
Your Money or Your Life
Simple Prosperity
Dave Ramsey

Dave Ramsey should probably get top billing because he was what motivated hubby and I to come together on finances. We took the Financial Peace class several years ago. After we did that we paid of 70K +/- in debt in a concentrated way and to this day we still apply the monthly zero based budget.

The Millionaire Next Door though was probably the first book that really clicked for me. Love that one.

Also not really personal finance totally but I loved Affluenza.

By: Patrick

Patrick — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 14:44:45 +0000

I actually don’t have a personal favorite as I don’t read financial books that often, but do most of my reading online, especially on financial sites like this one and others.