📚 Four finance books for 2021
Hey folks 👋
Happy belated New Year! 🎉
With 2020 behind us and the start of a what we can only hope will be a better year to look forward too, I thought now would be the perfect time to share four personal finance books that I've read that helped me get better with my finances and that might help you as well!
TL;DR - Here are four personal finance books that I think are useful 👇
The Richest Man in Babylon
The book was originally written by George S. Clason and published in 1926. Almost 100 years later it still stands the test of time! Out of all the personal finance books that I have read, I think this one that I found the most interesting, because despite the different time period, a lot of the things covered in the story of this book about the ancient and forgotten city are still relevant and the personal finance concepts explained can still be applied to how we treat our finances today. The best part is that you can grab a digital copy of this for less than a pound from the Amazon Kindle store!
You can also buy it from Hive instead here.
The Little Book of Common Sense Investing
Written by John C Bogle, the founder of the Vanguard Group and the creator of index funds. In this book, John explains the benefits of low-cost index funds as opposed to actively managed funds that underperform the market, the fees that can eat into any profits you make and why you should consider investing for the long term instead of looking for short term gains.
Overall this book is great! It's easy to read compared to some of the other books around investing. Some of the technical details might not be clear at first but with some further research.
You could say it that investing in this book is....common sense 😏
Buy it from Amazon / Buy it from Hive
The Investing Guide For Beginners
A lot of personal finance books are written from the perspective of someone living in the US or are targeted towards a US audience. This ebook is written by Curtis Davies (or @financepapi_ to those that follow him on Twitter) and is targeted towards a more UK centric audience.
It covers ISA's in-depth, ETF's, index funds, investing terminology, fees and a lot more, in less than 100 pages and is sprinkled with a dash of humour throughout it. I was personally surprised at how useful and insightful this ebook is and even wrote a small thread of my thoughts about it shortly after it was released (Yes I speed read it in a day to write that). I think it is a great modern day resource for those that want to get started with investing but aren't too sure where to begin.
While being priced a bit more compared to the other books suggested here, it does provide a lot of information that is quite easy to digest and is a bit more tailored to a UK audience.
You can buy a copy using my affiliate link here
The Intelligent Investor
This is a book that I'm currently reading because it was recommended by many others that have taken an interest in personal finance and investing.
Originally, written by Benjamin Graham in 1949, this book covers the concepts around value investing, not getting emotional with your investments and my favourite topic, dollar-cost averaging.
It's a bit more on the technical side and you'll likely need to re-read it a few times to fully understand it. The other three books are a lot more beginner-friendly in my opinion so I'd treat this as an additional book to go over if you have already read over the three above or any other personal finance books first.
Buy it from Amazon / Buy it from Hive
Wrapping up
I'm planning on reading more books this year so I'm expecting this list to be different in a year's time and I might consider making an updated version in the future to reflect that.
These four books are a great starting point but reading these alone will not change the future of your financial life. As well as reading you need to take action as well. It could be as small as saving a little bit more each month or cutting back on a subscription you no longer use. These small actions will help you make progress to where you want to be financially and you don't need any of these books to make those changes!
If you are planning on picking up one or more of these books, then I hope you learn a lot from them like I did and take action to make progress to improve your personal financial life.
Adiós for now amigos 👋
Got a suggestion on something I should add/improve or cover in the future? Send me a tweet or email me back - info@akashandmoney.com