Learning about your finance is not a day’s job. There are a variety of mediums through which you can learn about your finances. You can learn about your personal finances through online platforms, blogs, school, podcasts, and books.
As regards learning about your personal finance through books, ensure that you read books written by experts on personal finance. You can read about their experiences and learn life-long lessons from them.
By reading advice from experts and learning about others’ experiences, you can gain a deeper understanding of various personal finance topics. This article would teach you why you need to read books that relate to personal finance and the best personal books you can read as a beginner.
What is a Personal Finance Book?
A personal finance book is a book that helps you manage your finances better. They teach you what you need to know through other people’s experiences. In reading a personal finance book, you would learn to manage your money better, avoid debt, plan your retirement, and still have spare money for emergency purposes.
When reading a personal book, you need to pay attention to details and make the best out of what you want from the book.
Once you figure out personal finances, you would know how to manage and pay off debts. You would also become smarter and more confident with how you handle your money.
Below, we will list the best personal finance books for beginners.
Do I need a Personal Finance Book?
In school, you would barely be taught anything about managing your finances. A ‘saving scale’ constructed by the author was the composite of a series of questions asking students about their savings habits.
The mean value of the scale of the savings rose from a mean of 24.28 to 26,78, which was deemed statistically significant.
Finances are one of the major things that you would deal with for the rest of your life. Not knowing how to manage it would be one of the major challenges you would face as a young person if you do not have the proper knowledge and skill required to manage your personal finance.
Research by the Council for Economic Education in a 2020 survey has shown that in the U.S, only 21 states require that high school students pass a personal finance course to graduate.
To properly manage your finances, you need to read the proper books that would enlighten you and help in ensuring you do not spend money you would regret in the next few years.
Read: The Best Personal Finance Blogs: Updated for 2022
What are the best Personal Finance Books For Beginners?
#1. Why Didn’t They Teach Me This in School?
This book is #1 on this list for a reason. Written by Cary Siegel who breaks down the aspect of money you should know into 99 principles and eight money lessons everyone must know.
To handle your personal finances better, you should really read this book.
This book was initially intended for his five children when he realized they didn’t learn important personal finance principles before entering the real world, but it grew into a well-reviewed read full of money lessons, as well as firsthand experience and advice from Siegel.
#2. Rich Dad Poor Dad
This is one of the most popular and good reads that would break down what you need to know about managing your personal finances.
The book has proven to be a great advocate on the importance of financial literacy, financial independence, and building wealth through investing in assets, real estate investing, starting and owning businesses, as well as increasing one’s financial intelligence.
In the book, he carefully taught what he learned growing up from his father and his friend’s father, the latter of which is the “rich dad” in the title.
Those lessons include how you don’t need to make a lot of money to get rich, define assets and liabilities, and explain to parents why schools won’t teach your kids what they need to know about personal finance.
This is one of the best personal finance books for beginners.
#3. The Total Money Makeover
If you are having trouble managing your debt effectively, this book is a must-read.
The book is a New York Times bestseller and you can tell this is worth it because it explains in very clear words, how to get out of debt and improve your financial picture by avoiding common pitfalls like rent-to-own, cash advances, or using credit.
#4. The Automatic Millionaire
This book is another New York Times Best Seller. It is a financial book that includes updated information on taxes, investments, technologies, and apps to automate your financial life.
The book kicks off with the story of a couple earning $55,000 combined annually, and how they achieved their financial dreams.
Can you just imagine owning two homes, putting your children through college, and retiring at 55 with a $1 million retirement nest egg.
This book has been set up to teach you how to do this most effectively.
#5. Broke Millennial
This book is popular not just for the knowledge it passes, but also for the style in which it passes the message. Broke Millennial takes the typical preaching and finger-wagging out of money lessons and replaces them with humor, empathy, and fun.
This feature makes the book not only a fountain of knowledge but also an easy read.
In reading this book, you can get in control of your personal finances. From understanding your relationship with money to managing student loans to sharing the details of your finances with a partner, this book covers the biggest money challenges facing millennials today.
#6. The One-Page Financial Plan
Confused when it comes to your money, whether it’s how to properly invest or how to deal with unexpected financial challenges? Carl Richards’ “The One-Page Financial Plan” takes the mystery out of how to effectively manage your finances.
This book helps you not only figure out what your financial goals are, but also how to get there in a simple, one-page plan. Richards is a Certified Financial Planner and a columnist for The New York Times.
This is another best personal finance books for beginners.
Read: Top Personal Finance Companies Of 2022
#7. I Will Teach You to Be Rich
If you are young and ambitious, but sadly, clueless about better ways to manage your personal finances, this book is a must-read for you.
This book teaches that the goal of being rich is not in not spending your money, but spending the money wisely. The book carefully explains how you can spend your money, guilt-free, as long as you have it invested and allocated properly.
The most recent edition of the book has updated views on technology, money, and psychology, as well as some success stories of readers who have actually gotten rich from reading this particular book.
#8. Clever Girl Finance
There is absolutely no way you would read Clever Girl Finance and not want to achieve financial independence. You would be very ready to turn into a money expert, managing your money like a boss.
This book aims to empower and educate a whole new generation of women, sounding off on things like how to keep an eye on expenses, create and stick to a budget, manage your credit, build a nest egg, and take responsibility for your own financial well-being.
Read: Wealthbar Vs Wealthsimple Review 2022: Best Personal Finance Site
#9. The Psychology of Money
The psychology of money deviates a little from what all other books give. It aims for the mind, targeting how your ego, preconceived notions, and even your pride can affect your decisions around money.
It does not just point out how these affect your finances, but also gives you tips on how best to combat this psychology that affects your mind toward your personal finances.
#10. Your Money or Your Life
With more than a million copies sold, Vicki Robin’s “Your Money or Your Life” lays out an easy-to-follow, nine-step plan to help readers change their relationship with money.
This book explicitly lays out how to get out of debt, how you should start investing and which investments you should look out for, how to save your money and build the saving habit and how all of these tips would help in building your wealth.
This book would help you realize what money means to you, how much is enough, and how to reach financial independence.
#11. The Millionaire Next Door
This book can be incredibly eye-opening, particularly for younger individuals and families just starting out. Combining data and expert insights, “The Millionaire Next Door” uncovers the truth of what a millionaire really looks like and it may not be what you’d expect.
This book would teach you the basics about being a millionaire. In reading it, you would learn to spend less than what you make by living within your means, save money every month, avoid loans you have no plans of how best to pay, and how spending lower can ensure that your taxes are also lower.
This book is a must-read for managing your personal finance if you are a beginner.
#12. Raising Financially Fit Kids.
By giving your children this book, you can ensure you have played a vital role in helping them develop and nurture positive money habits early and understand the complexities of money management as they grow.
“Raising Financially Fit Kids” covers the ways financial education can help children achieve their dreams and become more confident, as well as concepts like financial sustainability and charitable giving.
This book aligns the five developmental stages – children, teens, middle schoolers, high schoolers, and 20-somethings; with financial education benchmarks, so its principles can be useful for parents of children at different ages.
Read: The Best Personal Finance Blogs: Updated for 2022
#13. The Intelligent Investor.
Like the title rightly describes, this book is about investing. It would teach you strategies on how best to successfully value investing in the stock market.
This book is a must-read for you if you are new at investing and trying to figure out the best way to make it work. Benjamin Graham describes in detail his philosophy of value investing, in which investors choose stocks that appear to be trading for less than their intrinsic value.
It is one of the best personal finance books for beginners.
#14. Smart Women Love Money.
Research has shown that women don’t invest as frequently as men, This book carefully but strongly isolates and attacks barriers standing in their way.
Finn’s book provides an overview of the challenges and unique financial circumstances women experience before turning to five steps to successful investing for women.
These include investing in stocks for the long run, allocating assets, and rebalancing a portfolio regularly.
If you are a woman, looking to break the barriers of society and attain financial freedom, this book is a must-read.
#15. Financial Freedom
In this book, Grant Sabatier shares his strategies for going from 24 years old and broke to having a net worth of more than $1.25 million in just five years in his book.
This book provides a step-by-step guide to achieving your financial goals, whatever they may be.
The process will likely involve some creativity and outside-the-box thinking, but his advice is also practical and manageable.
He covers topics like side hustles, employer negotiations, and investment strategy, with the ultimate goal of creating more time to do what you love.
Frequently Asked Questions Best Personal Finance Books For Beginners
No. you can learn to manage your finances through other ways like online blogs and listening to experts teach on podcasts. If you can properly utilize these other means, you do not need to read a book to properly manage your finance.
Why Didn’t They Teach Me This in School? and Rich Dad, Poor Dad is the best personal finance book you can read in 2022.
You are a beginner. They would probably not make sense to you at first. After you are to put them in theory, everything would be clearer to you.
No. In amassing knowledge on personal finance, you would need to read more than one book
This depends entirely on you and how willing you are to learn. It also depends on how much of a fast reader you are
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Conclusion
Even if you think you know most of what there is to know about personal finances, there is always something new to learn. It is important that you keep your knowledge base in this field constantly growing.
The key is to take that first step. Knowledge is power and can help you make wiser financial decisions. Money probably doesn’t tackle all the issues of life but it certainly does tackle a majority of them.
I hope these best personal finance books would help you get the knowledge you need on your personal finances and take more charge over your life.
References
- www.thebalance.com/
- https://money.usnews.com/
- www.annuity.org/
- www.outlookindia.com/
- financialeducatorscouncil.org/
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