5 Best Books for Understanding Money & Controlling Personal Finance

Here is an excellent selection of books that can really help you control money and personal finance, if you are either starting out or looking for improvements they can help in getting finances in order and then positively gleaming.
It is impossible for a man to learn what he thinks he already knows – Epictetus

The Richest Man In Babylon by George S. Clason is easily the best and simplest book I have read about money, life choices, attitudes and behaviours surrounding money. Written in 1926 in a timeless manner that’s still totally relevant with a little personal interpretation. Its also a very short book. An excellent starting point.

John C Bogle or Jack Bogle is the founder of Vanguard, one of the biggest investment banks in the world and the creator of the passive index fund as we know it today.

If you haven’t heard of him you are probably only just catching on to the possibility and options of investing.

The little book of common sense investing is a good lot of conservative advice and comparatively hammers home the simplicity and positive results of long term passive investing in passive index funds. It does repeat itself a bit but is a must read and introduces a lot of key information and advice.

Complete guide to Money by Dave Ramsey.

This has very down to earth, realistic and solid steps to success. It covers a lot of areas of personal finance as you would imagine from the title and makes clear distinctions between different tools for effectively managing of money. Albeit slightly padded but still also well worth the time to read.

It has some useful template budgeting forms if you don’t have any or need inspiration to make your own, but its mostly the principles and order of steps that are gold here.

Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kyosaki has some good realism and ideas for different ways of thinking about your surroundings presented through a load of anecdotes of his early life.

As well as some transferable view points of the world he really gets involved in the differences and pitfalls of working for a company, being self employed and starting your own company.

Slightly conflicting advice when compared to the other books mentioned here but I would still recommend to read it as well as all the others.

Simple Path To Wealth by JL Collins is indeed simple and I would probably go as far as saying in terms of simple saving and investing you could really change your life by just reading this and The Richest Man in Babylon.

However the more information you have, the more power you have to make good decisions so I would recommend reading them all.

The book is sincere and is even said to be laid out as a simple guide to the authors daughter in order for her to learn and apply to her own life.

Definitely recommend reading this for its straight forward down to earth principles and relatively short length (286 pages).

So there you have it a selection of must reads, as with most things (especially money) its really worth gathering as much information as you can from different sources.

Read these for yourself and see what a difference it makes.

If you are looking for a recent in depth book about global investing and markets check out Ray Dalio – Principles for Dealing With The Changing World Order.