7 Best Personal Finance Books To Read

As a non-fiction book reader, I have come across a few books that I believe are the best in teaching a specific topic. Here are my top pics for the best personal finance books that you can pick up while you are at home during these unprecedented times. Can’t get to a bookstore? You can get these digitally as well and read on an app, your browser, or an e-reader, if you have any.

I wish posts like these were here when I was starting my journey to learn financial education. It happened while I was working in a call center in 2006, and I was earning money but was not really saving anything. I wanted to dig myself out of that hole that I was in and use the money I earned to travel, see the world, take care of my family, and also take care of my retirement needs.

And so I started searching. Some of these books may be a bit older, and some may be a bit newer. Note that this post will be updated every time I come across a new book that deserves to be added to the list. If you want to see a list of the books that I have read (with some anecdotes on what I thought about them), feel free to browse my book page.

Best Personal Finance Books

Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki

Very wordy and a bit old, but I really have to include this in the list. This is the book that propelled me to the start of my financial education. Told in a story-form of a rich dad (the writer’s friend’s fictional father), and a poor dad (the writer’s fictional biological father), the book tells the tale of business and mindset changes.

Change your mindset about what you can and can’t afford, and change your thinking about life. Change your mindset about money and your circumstances and you’ll end up being more financially secure. The book also discusses the differences between an employed person, a self-employed person, a business person, and an investor. Ideally, you would want to be in the investor and the business buckets, as that will be where most of the money can be made. If you are in the employed and self-employed buckets, your income is only limited by the amount you are earning from your employers. More of this will be discussed in Cashflow Quadrant, another book by Robert Kiyosaki.

You can pick this book up pretty cheaply from used bookstores since this is an ‘older’ book, but this book is what got Robert Kiyosaki notoriety in the financial world. I may not agree with what he’s posting or writing currently, but this oldie is a goodie.

Good for beginners to personal finance books – it’s not technical nor too boring to pick up and actually read, nor too long to actually get bored reading.

Your Money or Your Life by Vicki Robins

This book revolutionizes the time is money argument. The book emphasizes that you should think about your money spending in terms of time that you’re exerting in your job or other means of income. If you want to buy or spend on something, how many minutes of your life will you spend working in order to buy that said something?

The book teaches you to be more cognizant to be more mindful of the work-time-money conundrum and that before you buy one more thing that you don’t need, think of how much time in minutes (minutes of working) it will cost you. This concept does not just apply to people who would want to retire early, but it teaches you to only pay for things that you will derive genuine happiness from, and not just a passing folly. The longer amount of time you are

While I picked up the older version of the book, it has been updated in 2018 to be more updated with the times in terms of investments that you can put your money to hard work in, as well as new technologies that are available.

If you are trying to seek Financial Independence, this book is an eye-opener and is widely sought after in the FIRE community. If you can find this in used bookstores, then kudos, but otherwise, this should be available in your library (digital or print).

Financial Freedom by Grant Sabatier

A book that came out in 2019, so a fairly recent addition to the list. This is from one of the more famous FIRE bloggers, and the premise is to become financially free, you will have to focus on ways to earn more.

The book guides you through how to come up with a target retirement number based on your yearly expenses, and what are the steps you can take to reach that number quickly. The book dabbles into investments like real estate, index funds, and stocks, as well as for you to pick up side hustles to get more income coming in. If you have multiple streams of income, then you can get to retire early.

There are a lot of anecdotes in this book about how the author made $1 million in 5 years, but a lot of it involves a lot of sacrifice. His way in becoming financially independent was a bit more extreme, since it involved cutting out most things that made him happy like travel, and just putting the money in his savings and investments. If you value time over money, then a healthy balance of leisure vs chasing money to invest would be the best.

However, the book has a few ideas on how to generate income to have multiple income streams coming in, which is what every person should do, especially in the case of an economic crisis that may arise. The book also talks about diversification of your investments so as you won’t have all your hard earned cash in one basket.

Quit Like A Millionaire by Kristy Shen and Bryce Leung

Another book from a well-known personal finance blogger (authors of Millennial-Revolution). This book has personal anecdotes from the authors as well, except with a twist: Shen is an immigrant to the US who has experienced poverty as a child in rural China.

This book is absolutely relatable for immigrants (like me), and for people who want to lift themselves from poverty. This book is also backed with a lot of math (which I loved), and the concepts are explained in a civilian way – meaning, no technical finance mumbo-jumbo.

The book is a step-by-step book which teaches techniques on how not to panic in a crisis. Things you’re more prone to do like pulling your money out when the stock market is down, rather, treating the down market like a sale. I also love that the techniques the authors put in for their early retirement can be replicated by most people: save your hard-earned cash, invest it in the stock or bond market, let the dividends roll in, reinvest said dividends, and just watch it grow. Within a few years, you’ll find that you have enough to live off on.

The authors started their road to financial freedom during the Great Recession (2007-2011) so they definitely know what it’s like to invest during a down market and during uncertain times.

What I don’t agree with the author is about owning a house vs renting. It is up to you to decide which path you are in: to be a renter forever, or to own a house. Having no mortgage gave the authors a far easier time to reach their financial freedom and be able to travel the world as they please, so this situation may not be what you want in your own path.

Work Optional by Tanja Hester

Available in trade paperback only – but another book by a popular personal finance blogger (author of Our Next Life). Her methods to financial independence and saving money are spot-on. Some techniques in the book include hiding money from yourself, which I use personally.

An actual example of this was automating investments from my paycheck direct to my 401k, HSA and savings accounts, and living off the rest of the money, which goes straight to a separate bank account. This method also involves having at least 2 separate bank accounts: a checking account which should ‘house’ whatever’s left from the paycheck, and a savings account for the amount of money I want to direct emergency funds for.

It may be complicated to have multiple accounts but it is one of the ways that I can keep things more organized. Emergency funds go in a separate account that I can’t touch easily, while the day to day funds go into the checking account. Side hustle income comes into a separate account, as well as business income.

Back to the book – what I love about Tanja’s method is that she is entirely conservative in her calculations for early retirement (if this is what you seek). Most blogs and articles out there tell you to multiply your yearly expenses by 25 to get your retirement number (otherwise called the 4% rule). If you are conservative, multiply your yearly expenses by 33 if you believe a ~3% return is more likely (which I believe).

Four Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss

Tim Ferriss is a superstar in the online world as someone who runs crazy, multiple experiments and a lot of them actually work! He’s a blogger, a podcaster, and is an influencer. This book, The Four Hour Work Week, is the book that pretty much shot him to fame.

The premise of the book is if you can automate systems to businesses that you have (or will build), then you may not need to work 40+ hour work weeks nor spend a lot of your life energy actually working. You can actually use the spare time that you have to doing things you’re passionate about, hence the 4 Hour Work Week.

Very inspirational yet quite hard to change the mindset to implement, the premise is good, though! Even if you don’t have a business, you can try and negotiate a remote working agreement in order to become more free from the cubicle.

Dollars and Sense by Dan Ariely

If you’re looking for a more psychological explanation on why we act the way we act when it comes to money, this book is just the answer. We are irrational with money in more ways than one, and it’s intrinsic to every one of us, and this book exposes these irrationalities so we can make conscious decisions.

This is not actually a personal finance-heavy book in terms of numbers, theories, and techniques, but a more psychological-mental state book. Having variety on the books you read can help with your learning, so mixing it up does you well!

Personal Finance Book Suggestions Welcome

These are a list of books that I personally believe are the best in personal finance. However, I may not have read a lot of the books available out there. Feel free to suggest a book that I can pick up in the comments below. To see a list of what I’ve read so far, you can also check out my Goodreads page.

If you suggested a book that I may have already read (see Goodreads list above) but is not on this list, then sorry, I don’t consider that book one of the best personal finance books. I’m open to reviewing your book if you are a self-published author if need be as well. Contact us on this page and we can discuss more.

Hopefully this list helps you on your path to learning more about financial education and financial freedom. I’m not a particularly fast reader, but to reiterate what I said above, if I find any other books that are deserving of this list, I will add them and update this post.

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