I’m very excited to announce our first $50 gift card give away! At the end of February, one lucky reader of Oh Crap, I’m Broke.com will be chosen to receive a $50 Visa gift card! Free money, baby!!! How do you enter, you might ask? Easy, I respond!
Simply comment on this post. In the comment, tell everyone what your favorite personal finance book is. Give us a quick review and tell us why it’s your favorite.
These four awesome bloggers have stepped up to help me judge the contest:
- Gyutae @ Money Crashers – From his about page: “Yeah try pronouncing that. I’m 25 – of Korean descent from dirty Jersey and working as an online marketing professional and Internet entrepreneur. Money is always something that has interested me – mainly as a means to an end. There’s so much you can do if you have the financial resources, and I’d like to make a difference in the world somehow $1 at a time.You can say that the love of money is the root of all evil, and I’m pretty sure it is, but regardless everyone should look to improve their financial fitness and education to get the most out of their resources – and their lives. Money isn’t everything, but you can’t deny that it’s important. I have no idea why they don’t teach personal finance in schools. It baffles me. But hey, at least now you can learn by being a Money Crasher!”
- Twenty Something Money – TSM is a twenty-something year old guy living in Canada, and blogging about his financial journey as he tries to build wealth through budgeting, investing, paying off student loans, and shopping for a home – all while trying to find his purpose in life.
- Punch Debt In The Face – Great BLOG! Stick figure drawings! Hilarious! From his blog: I am a normal, 25 year old bad a$$ mother lover (love ya Mom Ninja). I have a bachelors in Psychology from a very tiny school that none of you will have ever heard of. I live in San Diego, CA. I have worked for the Federal Government for 2 years doing investigations.
- Debt Free Divas – The Money Divas have a bunch of services that they offer to make people more financially intelligent – boot camps and counseling to name a couple. Check them out!
Rules:
- On February 26, 2011, I will choose my favorite 10 reviews. I will then send the reviews to the guest judges. The top 3 will be posted to our blog and the winner will be emailed on or before March 3, 2011(need time to coordinate with the judges and whatnot).
- Giveaway is open to US residents 18 and over.
- Low quality, forged, fake or otherwise crappy comments will not be approved and thus, will not be eligible.
- Winner will be notified through email. If no response is received within 48 hours, the second place winner will receive the prize.
Sign up for our mailing list to receive our weekly updates and first crack at future contest.
Edit 3/3/2011: A winner has been decided!
My favorite finance book is “The Automatic Millionaire.” So many other books use concepts forged by David Bach. While I don’t follow the ideals of the “Latte Factor,” to the letter, his words on setting up automatic investments, savings plans, debt payments, and bill payments has helped me immensely.
It was the last book I read before I started my own finance blog, and I combined many of the theories in Bach’s book with my own experiences and knowledge of automated web applications to make things even better.
Automation is key to financial success without stress, and I got my first real taste from “The Automatic Millionaire.”
My favorite Personal Finance Book isn’t a traditional personal finance book; The 4-Hour Work Week.
The author of this book describes how you he went from working 100 hour weeks and despising his life to working just about four hours a week and making almost as much money. He even goes on to lay out a step-by-step formula of how you can do the exact same thing. He is now independently wealthy and free to pursue almost anything he wants because he wouldn’t give into the idea that you have to work for 45 years before you get to retire and have fun.
This book really got me thinking about all the things I want to do with my life and how I can achieve them. It has driven me to spend less time at work and more time with hobbies, and helped me decide to take a three week vacation to Costa Rica this summer to learn Spanish and surf.
This book is truly a life changer.
@Eric: I’ll have to check out the Automatic Millionaire. I’ve never heard of it but I’m all about automating as much as possible. The less you have to think about the better.
@Kevin: I read this book called Start Small, Stay Small: A Developer’s Guide to Launching a Startup. They mention The 4-Hour Workweek a couple times so it was definitely on my list. Your recommendation might seal the deal! I’m definitely convinced that working 40 hours a week is not what life is supposed to be so I’ve decided to start working on my own ideas in my free time(My first idea is a budgeting website that uses Cash Flow Forecasting over traditional methods). I also saw that the author of that book recently sold his main business. He basically said it’s because he was always thinking about it even though he spent very little time maintaining it. So he wanted to break free from the constant thinking and worrying. Very interesting stuff.
My favorite book on finance hands down is, The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham. Graham is one of the greatest investors that ever lived and shares his strategy for selecting investment opportunities. Graham is widely regarded as the father of value investing and has mentored numerous successful investors. Warren Buffett calls, The Intelligent Investor, “by far the best book ever written on investing”.
Graham gives specific criteria on what to look for when investing and explains how to properly value a stock. This is not a get rich quick book. Graham’s primary focus is the preservation of capital and secondarily to earn an adequate return. He introduces investors to a fictional character known as Mr. Market. Everyday Mr. Market knocks at your door and makes you an offer for your investments. The offer should only be accepted when you feel that your investment has reached its true value.
Graham breaks investors into two distinct classes. There is the enterprising investor and the defensive investor. The enterprising investor is willing to take on additional risk whereas the defensive investor is much more risk averse. The book teaches how to take advantage of market inefficiencies and buy securities that are trading below their true value.
I like the fact that Graham gives investors specific criteria to look for when investing. He explains the importance of ignoring the day to day irrational behavior of the stock market and focusing on the fundamentals of investing. The Intelligent Investor was published in 1949 and is still a classic to this day.
While I enjoy personal finance books like those of Jean Chatzky, Suze Orman and David Bach, I find that much of their advice doesn’t necessarily apply to me (a frugal, female, single, childless solopreneur with neither strangling debt or nor appreciable wealth to manage). I put their advice to great use with my clients — I’m a Professional Organizer — but I have different financial conundrums.
Thus, I’ve been delighted lately by The Money Book for Freelancers, Part-Timers, and the Self-Employed by Joseph D’Agnese and Denise Kiernan. The book focuses on procedural issues for solopreneurs who have unpredictable cash flow but usually predictable (and predictably high) expenses.
There’s certainly advice on saving and wisely resolving debt, but the authors provide a particularly practical (and psychologically satisfying), methodical system for managing irregular (or irregularly-received) revenue and dealing with predictable expenses, retirement savings, taxation and unexpected/emergency expenses.
Advice ranges from the typical on personal finance (debt, savings, health savings accounts, providing for one’s loved ones with wills and insurance, etc.) to what most personal finance books are sadly lacking for self-employed people: structured guidance for pricing, getting paid and handling money when one is both the employer and employee. (Personal finance books often advise one how to set about asking for a raise, a concept rife with complexity when one is both the boss and the (contracted) employee.
D’Agnese and Kiernan’s strategies are simple and logical, but their philosophy of “The Power of Small” is appealing in a way that most “simple” (and easily ignored) advice is not.
My all-time favorite financial book is Your Money or Your Life by Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin. There really is a difference between making a living and making a life. I’m all about being a success but I believe it should be on your own terms and not at the expense of your family.
This book served as a wake-up call for me and caused me to re-evaluate the way that I was living my life. It taught me about the true cost of working so much and how to cut back on expenses so I could spend less time at my job and more time doing the things that I enjoyed.
Your Money or Your Life has inspired me to achieve my goals of becoming a successful freelancer. It challenged me to look within so I could get a clearer picture of my goals as well as my future.
My favorite book related to personal finance is The Millionaire Next Door.
It is very well written and an entertaining read. It helped me to reaffirm my lifestyle/finance choices (such as buying used vehicles for cash, for just one example) really do align with what the super-wealthy are doing. Putting aside hollywood glam, the book puts many myths about the wealthy to rest. With unprecedented access to the top clients of a financial services firm, the book offers a very rare insight in to the mind of a typical millionaire. The data is presented succinctly.
For the record, don’t buy the sequel to the book. It is the same data presented again with nothing new added.
Hi Jaymus. I thought I was the only one that found Millionaire Next Door entertaining. Ha!
My favorite book for investing/personal finance is “Stocks for the Long Run” by Jeremy Siegel. I consider this my “investing bible.” I may even have a problem because I just realized that I have been sleeping with it no less than 2 feet away from me on the book shelf for the past couple of years! haha
In this book, Siegel and his Wharton research team explore pretty much every question you have or could ever wonder about regarding long-term investing in stock, bonds, and cash-based securities.
The book is divided in to five parts.
In part 1, Siegel examines historical data to determine what trends are present to discriminate how the equity and fixed income markets function. In part 2, the research team analyzes different techniques to value securities and to predict the future returns investors can hope to obtain. Unfortunately for us, their findings indicate that future returns will be significantly lower due to the bleak outlook of dividends.
In part 3, which is in my opinion, one of the most interesting sections of the book, Siegel analyzes how stocks and bonds have performed during specific periods in history. For example, he analyzed performance during the Sept. 11, 2001 disaster, during wars, and how they have performed when Republicans vs. Democrats are President of the United States.
Part 4 of the book explores various short-term periods in history in an attempt to discern whether or not patterns are present which can be exploited to profit when incorporated in to one’s investment strategy. Unfortunately, there is no short-term fluctuation that can reliably beat the market averages.
The final section of the book, Part 5, is my favorite portion because it basically summarizes how all of the evidence he presented in the previous Parts can be used to create an intelligent investment strategy.
One thing that I think could be improved upon in this book is to add additional detail showing example portfolios of how asset allocation should change throughout one’s life.
However, for the most part, if you are wondering anything about stocks, bonds, or any security for that matter, this is the book to go to!
My favorite finance book is the The Motley Fool Investment Guide for Teens: 8 Steps to Having More Money Than Your Parents Ever Dreamed Of. It explains the concept of investing, the stock market, and mutual funds in a clear and concise language that is understandable for teens. This book taught me everything that I know about finance. It showed me that credit cards are a necessary evil because the are needed in order to establish credit, and at 18 I had my first credit card with a $1,000 limit and payed about $50 a month as I never exceeded that amount. This helped establish my credit while also keeping me out of the debt trap that so many college students fall into.
At the time I was a fifteen year old who had saved up money through babysitting , life guarding and tutoring that I had about $3,450 in my savings account. I did not want to spend it nor keep it all in a savings account. I decided to bought about a $1,000 worth of stocks through fidelity brokerage
At 19, I continue to be money savvy and while my peers are blowing of their paychecks on beer and ed hardy clothes, I’m depositing funds in my IRA and investing in ETFs such as Spiders and Vipers is that they let you cover various indexes. I am so grateful for this book as it has helped me become financially independent from my parents. It also taught me to hold myself accountable for money rather than just running to daddy at every single opportunity.
Everyone, I’m very happy to anounce that our a winner has been decided! Please check out our announcement to see who it is!