BOOK RECOMMENDATIONS

Personal Finance And Self Development Book Recommendations

Below is a collection of books that I’ve read and taken great value from over the last decade or so. From personal finance and investing to business and productivity, these book recommendations have delivered various benefits, entertainment and impacted my life in a positive manner.

The recommendations fall under these categories:

• Personal Finance
• Investing 
• Tim Ferriss
• Entrepreneurship
• Business & Productivity
• Other Topics

Some of the books were included in my 2018 reading list post 25 Books On Personal And Professional Development.

I will continually update this page with new book recommendations as I read them. If you have any recommendations for me, please contact me via email or hit me up on Twitter.

Note: Making Momentum is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program and this page contains affiliate links. Check my disclosure page for more information.

The Simple Path To Wealth: Your Road Map To Financial Independence and a Rich, Free Life [by JL Collins]

Since money is the single most powerful tool we have for navigating this complex world we’ve created, understanding it is critical. Here’s an important truth: Complex investments exist only to profit those who create and sell them. Not only are they more costly to the investor, they are less effective.

The simple approach JL Collins created and presents now to us in this book is not only easy to understand and implement, it is more powerful than any other.

The Millionaire Next Door: The Surprising Secrets of America’s Wealthy [by Thomas J. Stanley & William Danko]

A classic and must read for anyone looking to better understand building wealth and money management. The bestselling The Millionaire Next Door identifies seven common traits that show up again and again among those who have accumulated wealth.

Most of the truly wealthy in this country don’t live in Beverly Hills or on Park Avenue-they live next door.

Your Money or Your Life: 9 Steps To Transforming Your Relationship With Money and Achieving Financial Independence: Fully Revised and Updated [by Vicki Robin & Joe Dominguez]

Your Money or Your Life is a stalwart of the personal finance community. Originally released in 1992 and it has since been updated in 2018 to better fit the modern world of money. Whether you’re just beginning your financial life or heading towards retirement, this book will show you how to:

• Get out of debt and develop savings
• Save money through mindfulness and good habits, rather than strict budgeting
• Declutter your life and live well for less
• Invest your savings and begin creating wealth
• Save the planet while saving money

Millionaire Teacher: The Nine Rules of Wealth You Should Have Learned in School [by Andrew Hallam]

Millionaire Teacher shows you how to achieve financial independence through smart investing — without being a financial wizard. Author Andrew Hallam was a high school English teacher. He became a debt-free millionaire by following a few simple rules.

In this book, he teaches you the financial fundamentals you need to follow in his tracks. You can spend just an hour per year on your investments, never think about the stock market’s direction — and still beat most professional investors.

I Will Teach You To Be Rich [by Ramit Sethi]

A straight to the point, matter of fact book on personal finance by Ramit Sethi. While the title, I Will Teach You To Be Rich, is a little click baity, the content inside is not and the advice shared is rooted in taking action.

A completely practical approach delivered with a nonjudgmental style that makes readers want to do what Sethi says, it is based around the four pillars of personal finance- banking, saving, budgeting, and investing-and the wealth-building ideas of personal entrepreneurship.

You Are a Badass at Making Money: Master the Mindset of Wealth [by Jen Sincero]

You Are a Badass at Making Money will launch you past the fears and stumbling blocks that have kept financial success beyond your reach.

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 the book a bestseller. She combines hilarious personal essays with bite-size, aha concepts that unlock earning potential and get real results.

Rich Dad Poor Dad: What the Rich Teach Their Kids About Money That the Poor and Middle Class Do Not! [by Robert T. Kiyosaki]

Rich Dad Poor Dad is Robert’s story of growing up with two dads — his real father and the father of his best friend, his rich dad — and the ways in which both men shaped his thoughts about money and investing.

The book explodes the myth that you need to earn a high income to be rich and explains the difference between working for money and having your money work for you.

The Little Book of Common Sense Investing: The Only Way to Guarantee Your Fair Share of Stock Market Returns [by John C. Bogle]

The Little Book of Common Sense Investing is the classic guide to getting smart about the market. Legendary mutual fund  pioneer John C. Bogle reveals his key to getting more out of investing: low-cost index funds. Bogle describes the simplest and most effective investment strategy for building wealth over the long term: buy and hold, at very low cost, a mutual fund that tracks a broad stock market Index such as the S&P 500.

This tenth anniversary edition includes updated data and new information but maintains the same long-term perspective as in its predecessor.

The Value of Simple: A Practical Guide to Taking the Complexity Out of Investing [by John Robertson]

The Value of Simple is a plain-language how-to guide to investing for Canadians by John Robertson. Canada has the highest investment fees in the world, as well as a confusing tax system that features four-letter words like RRSP and TFSA.

Fortunately there are low-cost index funds that make it easy and rewarding for you to become a do-it-yourself “couch potato” investor. With a focus on developing good processes to minimize the room for human error and step-by-step instructions, the book will walk you through the elements of managing your finances for the long term.

The Bogleheads’ Guide to Investing [by Mel Lindauer, Michael LeBoeuf & Taylor Larimore]

The Boglehead’s Guide to Investing is a DIY handbook that espouses the sage investment wisdom of John C. Bogle. This witty and wonderful book offers contrarian advice that provides the first step on the road to investment success, illustrating how relying on typical “common sense” promoted by Wall Street is destined to leave you poorer.

This updated edition includes new information on backdoor Roth IRAs and ETFs as mainstream buy and hold investments, estate taxes and gifting, plus changes to the laws regarding Traditional and Roth IRAs, and 401k and 403b retirement plans.

The Book on Rental Property Investing: How to Create Wealth and Passive Income Through Intelligent Buy & Hold Real Estate Investing! [by Brandon Turner]

In The Book on Rental Property Investing, real estate investor and co-host of the BiggerPockets Podcast Brandon Turner has one goal in mind: to give you every strategy, tool, tip, and technique needed to become a millionaire rental property investor―while helping you avoid the junk that pulls down so many wannabes!

Written for both new and experienced investors, this book will impart years of experience through the informative and entertaining lessons contained within. You’ll find practical, up-to-date, exciting strategies that investors across the world are using to build wealth and significant cash flow through rental properties.

The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich [by Tim Ferriss]

Forget the old concept of retirement and the rest of the deferred-life plan–there is no need to wait and every reason not to, especially in unpredictable economic times.

Whether your dream is escaping the rat race, experiencing high-end world travel, or earning a monthly five-figure income with zero management, The 4-Hour Workweek is the blueprint.

Tribe of Mentors: Short Life Advice from the Best in the World [by Tim Ferriss]

In Tribe of Mentors Tim shares the ultimate choose-your-own-adventure book—a compilation of tools, tactics, and habits from 130+ of the world’s top performers.

From iconic entrepreneurs to elite athletes, from artists to billionaire investors, their short profiles can help you answer life’s most challenging questions, achieve extraordinary results, and transform your life.

The $100 Startup: Reinvent the Way You Make a Living, Do What You Love, and Create a New Future [by Chris Guillebeau]

In The $100 Startup, Chris Guillebeau shows you how to lead of life of adventure, meaning and purpose – and earn a good living.

In preparing to write this book, Chris identified 1,500 individuals who have built businesses earning $50,000 or more from a modest investment (in many cases, $100 or less), and from that group he’s chosen to focus on the 50 most intriguing case studies.

The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses [by Eric Ries]

Most startups fail. But many of those failures are preventable. The Lean Startup is a new approach being adopted across the globe, changing the way companies are built and new products are launched.

The Lean Startup approach fosters companies that are both more capital efficient and that leverage human creativity more effectively.

Zero to One: Notes on Start Ups, or How to Build the Future [by Peter Thiel & Blake Masters]

The great secret of our time is that there are still uncharted frontiers to explore and new inventions to create. In Zero to One, legendary entrepreneur and investor Peter Thiel shows how we can find singular ways to create those new things.

Thiel begins with the contrarian premise that we live in an age of technological stagnation, even if we’re too distracted by shiny mobile devices to notice. Information technology has improved rapidly, but there is no reason why progress should be limited to computers or Silicon Valley. Progress can be achieved in any industry or area of business. It comes from the most important skill that every leader must master: learning to think for yourself.

Principles: Life and Work [by Ray Dalio]

Ray Dalio, one of the world’s most successful investors and entrepreneurs, shares the unconventional principles that he’s developed, refined, and used over the past forty years to create unique results in both life and business—and which any person or organization can adopt to help achieve their goals.

In Principles, Dalio shares what he’s learned over the course of his remarkable career. He argues that life, management, economics, and investing can all be systemized into rules and understood like machines.

Smarter Faster Better: The Secrets of Being Productive in Life and Business [by Charles Duhigg]

At the core of Smarter Faster Better are eight key productivity concepts—from motivation and goal setting to focus and decision making—that explain why some people and companies get so much done.

Drawing on the latest findings in neuroscience, psychology, and behavioral economics—as well as the experiences of CEOs, educational reformers, four-star generals, FBI agents, airplane pilots, and Broadway songwriters—this painstakingly researched book explains that the most productive people, companies, and organizations don’t merely act differently.

The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business [by Charles Duhigg]

In The Power of Habit, award-winning business reporter Charles Duhigg takes us to the thrilling edge of scientific discoveries that explain why habits exist and how they can be changed.

Distilling vast amounts of information into engrossing narratives that take us from the boardrooms of Procter & Gamble to the sidelines of the NFL to the front lines of the civil rights movement. At its core, The Power of Habit contains an exhilarating argument: The key to exercising regularly, losing weight, being more productive, and achieving success is understanding how habits work.

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change [by Stephen R. Covey]

One of the most inspiring and impactful books ever written, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People has captivated readers for 25 years. It has transformed the lives of Presidents and CEOs, educators and parents— in short, millions of people of all ages and occupations.

Into the Wild [by Jon Krakauer]

In April 1992 a young man from a well-to-do family hitchhiked to Alaska and walked alone into the wilderness north of Mt. McKinley. His name was Christopher Johnson McCandless. He had given $25,000 in savings to charity, abandoned his car and most of his possessions, burned all the cash in his wallet, and invented a new life for himself.

Four months later, his decomposed body was found by a moose hunter.  How McCandless came to die is the unforgettable story of Into the Wild.

The Last Lecture [by Randy Pausch]

When Randy Pausch, a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon, was asked to give such a lecture, he didn’t have to imagine it as his last, since he had recently been diagnosed with terminal cancer. But the lecture he gave, Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams, wasn’t about dying.

It was about the importance of overcoming obstacles, of enabling the dreams of others, of seizing every moment (because time is all you have and you may find one day that you have less than you think). It was about living. In this book, Randy Pausch has combined the humour, inspiration, and intelligence that made his lecture such a phenomenon and given it an indelible form.

The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life [by Alice Schroeder]

Here is the book recounting the life and times of one of the most respected men in the world, Warren Buffett. The legendary Omaha investor has never written a memoir, but now he has allowed one writer, Alice Schroeder, unprecedented access to explore directly with him and with those closest to him his work, opinions, struggles, triumphs, follies, and wisdom.

Man’s Search for Meaning [by Viktor E. Frankl]

Psychiatrist Viktor Frankl‘s memoir has riveted generations of readers with its descriptions of life in Nazi death camps and its lessons for spiritual survival. Between 1942 and 1945 Frankl labored in four different camps, including Auschwitz, while his parents, brother, and pregnant wife perished.

Based on his own experience and the experiences of others he treated later in his practice, Frankl argues that we cannot avoid suffering but we can choose how to cope with it, find meaning in it, and move forward with renewed purpose.