If you Google “best personal finance books” or something similar, you will not find an authoritative answer. Sure, plenty of publications and blogs have their lists, but these are highly subjective. So how did we go about choosing the 10 “most popular” books we have summarized?
There are roughly 50 books that are regularly reviewed or referred to in the personal finance blogging world. Each of these books attempts to provide the fundamentals of sound money management, but the variation in advice means there is still no single book that covers the full spectrum of money management. We started to look for the “top ten” by looking at the following sources, each of which has published a list of top personal finance books:
Wall Street Journal: Online coverage of breaking news and current headlines from the US and around the world.
Amazon.com (2014 and 2015): In all book categories (including Kindle paid and free books), there is a number, the Bestseller's rank, calculated hourly according to Amazon and linked to the recent number of sales of the product relative to the other products in that category. Contrary to popular belief, these rankings change significantly from one year to the next, meaning that taken on its own, the bestseller rank is not authoritative.
Lifehacker: Tips, tricks and downloads for getting things done.
Inc.com: Inc magazine, founded in 1979, is a monthly publication which focuses on growing companies. The magazine publishes the “Inc 500” annual list of the 500 fastest-growing companies.
Forbes: A leading source for reliable business news and financial information.
Under 30 CEO: Leading media site covering news, advice, trends and events for the young entrepreneur.
Investopedia: A premiere resource for investing, education, personal finance, market analysis and free trading simulators.
Ebay: E-commerce company providing consumer to consumer & business to consumer sales services via Internet.
Business Insider: American business and technology news website
We picked the 10 personal finance books that featured most frequently across these
sources. They are summarized in this book in alphabetical order. We're the first to summarize these books in one, easy to read ebook:
- A Random Walk Down Wall Street by Burton G. Malkiel
- I Will Teach You to be Rich by Ramit Sethi
- The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham
- The Millionaire Next Door by Thomas J. Stanley and William D. Danko
- The Money Book for the Young, Fabulous & Broke by Suze Orman
- The Richest Man in Babylon by George Clason
- Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki
- Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill
- The Total Money Makeover by Dave Ramsey
- Your Money or Your Life by Vicki Robin and Joe Dominguez
We also provide a "cheatsheet" to help you decide whether it would be worth your while to read the original book.
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