Books I'm Reading

rich dad, poor dad, is really good imo. maybe not so much substance but it touches on a really important subject - needing to learn "real" economics (as in personal finances) in school and at home.

I found 'rich dad poor dad' to be very inspiring

I'm reading the blog, I want financial freedom so bad I can taste it.
http://earlyretirementextreme.com/how...ly-independent-in-5-years-part-i.html

rich dad, poor dad is probably a lot like millionaire next door, if you haven't read that one yet, decent read

Rich dad, poor dad? Seriously? I thought you were trying to learn about economics, investing and personal finance. He should of called that book 'How I got rich selling books, tapes and seminars".

Who regards it as one of best personal investing books available? Oprah? Will Smith?

yeah rich dad poor dad is kind of garbage.. well I mean, the story is a work of fiction so decide how you feel about that for yourself.

I don't really understand 'personal finance books', unless they're compendiums of cool money saving tricks and ideas, personal finance is otherwise basic finance.

I agree that basic finance deserves more attention in school.

I've been reading up on similar subjects recently (ever since Emi made a blogpost here actually hehe) so this is of interest to me for sure. I have to admire the earlyretirementextreme guy's ideas especially cause it must be difficult going against the grain of what 'normal people' do and standing up in the face of mass scrutiny.

http://www.amazon.com/About-Asset-Allocation-Richard-Ferri/dp/0071429581
This seems like a pretty solid semi-technical read on how to invest efficiently for the longterm.

The classic work of Benjamin Graham "The Intelligent Investor" is like reading Super System for nlhe, it'll give you some background and drill some fundamental ideas into you, but this book I linked seems to take those ideas further and apply them to the way it should be done today. Also you don't have to learn how to value and pick individual stocks to be successful, just need to pick an efficient portfolio strategy based on your needs and acceptable level of risk, while borrowing some clever tricks from Modern Portfolio Theory (MPT) to make the strategy efficient, then stick to the strategy for a long time with discipline by buying, holding and rebalancing. That book gives a solid guide on those things.



re: Rich dad, poor dad, I haven't read it but am familiar with the message from reading the wikipedia page. Even if you guys think the book contains a lot of fluff and the author is getting too rich off such simple concepts with good marketing (wont mention any names but that happens a lot in poker coaching too lolz), isn't the underlying fundamental idea pretty sound and useful to people who will listen? Cut your costs, cut unnecessary stuff, save and invest as much of what you earn as you can. Or does the book go too far with misleading stuff or junk content? Not that I'll be reading it anytime soon, it seems like the Early Retirement Extreme book that wh00sel has linked seems to have the same message but with much richer content. I'll be checking that one out, thanks for the link Art.

Ket the book looks like a solid starting point. John Bogle thought asset allocation was "the most fundamental decision of investing".

Along the lines of starter books I have this one http://books.google.com.au/books/about/Personal_Finance.html?id=3FRtPwAACAAJ&redir_esc=y except mines 4th edition. This book is more rounded and covers a wider array of topics that you might want to become at least vaguely familiar with ie/ taxation, insurance, obtaining credit as well as the usual topics about managed funds, shares, property etc. Unfortunately it's geared for the Australian market so has limited use to you but it should give you an idea of what could be out there.

I was at the airport a few months ago and found a bunch of books that seemed like really great introductory books. They are mostly market focused but just seemed like really good bridges between the more simple books and text books.
http://www.amazon.com/Guide-Understanding-Finance-no-nonsense-techniques/dp/027373802X/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1346989292&sr=8-3&keywords=understanding+finance

http://www.amazon.com/Key-Financial-Market-Concepts-professional/dp/0273750127/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1346989410&sr=1-1&keywords=key+financial+market+concepts

http://www.amazon.com/Financial-Times-Market-Really-Guides/dp/0273743554/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1346989447&sr=1-2&keywords=how+the+stock+market+really+works

Rich dad is basically wishy washy motivator stuff without much practical advice. Someone can correct me if I'm wrong but isn't most of it property based? Must of been 5 years since I read it so forgive me if I'm not super familiar with it. I can remember thinking it was pretty much utter bollocks and you get more from the first chapter of almost any text book. Most of the people who buy this shit are like Janice Geddes from 'Who wants to be a millionaire'. Ket you might be able to find it on the BBC iplayer thingy whatever it is you guys use http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-15256999. It actually features Kiyosaki and his wife. I've only seen the first episode of it but it was interesting.

I hope this is some what helpful.

Thanks Funktion, that was helpful. Will pick up one of the FT guides after I work my way down more of my existing (long) reading list (not just this subject). Those other subjects u listed that ur aussie-geared book covers are def stuff i'll be doing my own research on from uk-tailored material.

Yeah I also watched the first episode of that show when it first aired, it did indeed include some roflridiculous characters like her. There were only 3 eps in the series, I only watched some of the second and it wasn't so interesting. The third ep looks interesting, the premise is they compare how 3 diff families on £40k spend money differently and how it's plenty for some and barely enough to get by for others - probably relates to similar concepts the extremeearlyretirement guy is on about.

The third episode does sound interesting (second episode is about how money affects relationships, I'll be giving it a miss) like you said. Downloading it now.

Good luck with your reading.

I have Rich Dad, Poor Dad and they do present some interesting ideas that might work, they are just trying to get you to buy there shit. If you are actually interested in learning more about economics and finance I would suggest looking at this

https://www.coursera.org/course/introfinance

Coursera offers a variety of online courses I am currently taking this one and a couple others takes up like 4-5 Hrs a week probably about the same amount you would spend or reading.

I am of the opinion that like poker books 99.999% of personal finance books are complete garbage. I have not really read any though and would definitely not consider myself a personal finance expert so who knows. I always thought personal finance just came down to math problems. The only difficulty in the math comes down to difficulties in valuing personal goals, values, aspirations and trying to quantify the effects of spending/investing on motivation and more intangible assets like knowledge, skills and networks.

With all that said:

I was in a kick ass university bookstore the other day and came across a book "I Will Teach You To Be Rich" by Ramit Sethi. I bought it only on the premise Taylor Caby mentioned Ramit as one of 3 ppl he would recommend following on Twitter. I have only browsed through it but it seems like it gives practical hacks and info in today's world so it might be worth a look.

ps I am always interested in discussions about personal finance and I find your blog fascinating + respect for putting it all out there to improve your (and potentially LP's) personal finance game

Really appreciate all of the personal finance blogs you post!