BEST PERSONAL FINANCE BOOKS

FINANCIAL LITERACY BOOKS

Welcome, here you will find the best personal finance books to help increase your financial IQ. For the more you learn, the more you earn. My # 1 recommendation is that you read both the “The Richest Man in Babylon” book and the “Rich Dad, Poor Dad”  book prior to reading any other financial literacy books. Then I suggest that you read all the other books with regards to your best interests. According to a 5-year study by Tom Corley, about 88 percent of wealthy respondents reported that they spent at least 30 minutes every day on reading books and self-education. Therefore, I highly recommend you include this daily habit and read up on numerous money topics in order to further develop the financial skills necessary to earn and manage money like the rich.

• “The Richest Man in Babylon” by George S. Clason
• “Rich Dad, Poor Dad: What the Rich Teach Their Kids About Money — That  the Poor and Middle Class Do Not!” by Robert T. Kiyosaki.
• “Principles” by Ray Dalio
• “The Success System That Never Fails” by W. Clement Stone
• “Unlock It” by Dan Lok
• “Poor Charlie’s Almanack” by Charlie Munger
• “How To Be Rich” by J. Paul Getty
• “The Latte Factor” by David Bach and John David Mann
• “The One Week Budget: Learn to Create Your Money Management System in 7 Days or Less!” by Tiffany Aliche
• “10 Ways to Guarantee Your Prosperity” by Grant Cardone
• “Why We Want You To Be Rich” by Robert T. Kiyosaki and Donald J. Trump
• “Rich Dad’s Cashflow Quadrant: Guide to Financial Freedom” by Robert T. Kiyosaki
• “F. U. Money” by Dan Lok
• “The Circle of Profit: How to Turn Your Passion into $1 Million, Edition # 2” by Anik Singal
• “Rich Dad’s Real Estate Advantages: Tax and Legal Secrets of Successful Real Estate Investors” by Sharon L. Lechter, C.P.A. and Garrett Sutton, ESQ.

BEST INVESTMENT BOOKS FOR BEGINNERS

• “The Little Book of Common Sense Investing” by John C. Bogle
• “Rich Dad’s Guide to Investing: What the Rich Invest In, That the Poor and Middle Class Do Not!” by Robert T. Kiyosaki with Sharon L. Lechter, C.P.A.
• “The Motley Fool Investment Guide: How the Fool Beats Wall Street’s Wise Men and How You Can Too” by David & Tom Gardner.
• “Rich Dad’s How to Buy Your First Investment Property” by Robert T. Kiyosaki

BOOKS ON WEALTH

• “Why the Rich Are Getting Richer: What is Financial Education…Really?” by Robert T. Kiyosaki with Tom Wheelwright, C.P.A.
• “What Would Billionaires Do?” by Garrett Gunderson
• “The Intelligent Investor: The Definitive Book on Value Investing, Revised Edition” by Benjamin Graham

TOP 10 LIST OF BILLIONAIRES 2019

Jeff Bezos # 1

• Source of Wealth: Amazon.com, Self Made, Net Worth of $131 Billion (as of 3/5/19)
• CEO and Founder, Amazon.com
• 55 years old. A United States citizen who came from a middle or upper-middle class background.
• Growing up, Jeff Bezos worked summers on a ranch repairing Caterpillar tractors.
• Education: Bachelor of Arts/Science, Princeton University
• Bezos attended Princeton and worked at a hedge fund before quitting to sell books online.
• He owns 16% of e-commerce colossus Amazon, which he founded in a garage in Seattle in 1994.
• Bezos met Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin in 1998 and managed to become one of the company’s first angel investors, putting in $250,000.
• Bezos purchased The Washington Post in 2013 for $250 million.

Resource: Richest People in the World

Bill Gates # 2

• Source of Wealth: Microsoft, Self Made, Net Worth of 96.5 Billion (as of 3/5/19)
• Cofounder, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
• 63 years old. A United States citizen who came from a middle or upper-middle class background.
• When Gates was a kid, he spent so much time reading that his parents finally forbid him to bring books to the dinner table.
• Gates took a break from classes his senior year in high school to do programming with his friend Paul Allen at a power plant in North Bonneville, Washington.
• Education: Drop Out, Harvard University
• Gates has sold or given away much of his stake in Microsoft — he owns just over 1% of shares — and invested in a mix of stocks and other assets.
• He remains a board member of Microsoft, the software firm he founded with Paul Allen in 1975.
• With his wife Melinda, Bill Gates chairs the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the world’s largest private charitable foundation.
• The foundation works to save lives and improve global health, and is working with Rotary International to eliminate polio.
• In late 2016, Gates announced the launch of a $1 billion Breakthrough Energy investment fund with about 20 other people.

Warren Buffett # 3

• Source of Wealth: Berkshire Hathaway, Self Made, Net Worth of $82.5 Billion (as of 3/5/19)
• CEO, Berkshire Hathaway
• 88 years old. A United States citizen who came from a middle or upper-middle class background.
• Education: Bachelor of Arts/Science, University of Nebraska-Lincoln; Master of Science, Columbia University
• Buffett was rejected for admission to Harvard Business School. He got a master’s in economics from Columbia University instead.
• Buffett still lives in the same Omaha, Nebraska home he purchased in 1958 for $31,500.
• The son of a U.S. congressman, he first bought stock at age 11 and first filed taxes at age 13.
• Known as the “Oracle of Omaha,” Warren Buffett is one of the most successful investors of all time.
• He runs Berkshire Hathaway, which owns more than 60 companies, including insurer Geico, battery maker Duracell and restaurant chain Dairy Queen.
• He has committed to giving more than 99% of his fortune to charity. So far he has given away nearly $32 billion, much of it to the Gates Foundation.
• With friend Bill Gates he launched The Giving Pledge in 2010, asking billionaires to donate half their wealth to charitable causes.

Bernard Arnault and family # 4

• Source of Wealth: Louis Vuitton and Moet Hennessy (LVMH), Net Worth of $76 Billion (as of 3/5/19)
• Chairman and CEO, LVMH
• 70 years old. A citizen of France. His father made a small fortune in construction; Arnault put up $15 million from that business to buy Christian Dior in 1985.
• Education: Bachelor of Arts/Science, Ecole Polytechnique de Paris
• One of the world’s ultimate taste-makers, Bernard Arnault oversees an empire of 70 brands including Louis Vuitton and Sephora.
• Record results at LVMH and a megadeal to buy out nearly all of Christian Dior helped boost Arnault’s fortune by $30.5 billion in one year.

Carlos Slim Helu & family # 5

• Source of Wealth: Telecom, Self Made, Net Worth of $64 Billion (as of 3/5/19)
• Honorary Chairman, America Movil SAB de CV (ADR)
• 79 years old. A citizen of Mexico. Every Sunday his father would give Carlos a 5-peso allowance, requiring him to record his purchases in a ledger.
• Education: Bachelor of Arts/Science, Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico
• Before going into business, Slim taught algebra at UNAM, a university in Mexico City.
• Mexico’s richest man, Carlos Slim Helu and his family control America Movil, Latin America’s biggest mobile telecom firm.
• With foreign telecom partners, Slim bought a stake in Telmex, Mexico’s only phone company, in 1990. Telmex is now part of America Movil.
• He also owns stakes in Mexican construction, consumer goods, mining and real estate companies and 17% of The New York Times.

Amancio Ortega # 6

• Source of Wealth: Zara, Self Made, Net Worth of $62.7 Billion (as of 3/5/19)
• 83 years old. A citizen of Spain.
• Ortega first began his career manufacturing textiles through a small family company in 1963.
• Amancio Ortega is one of the richest men in Europe and the wealthiest retailer in the world.
• A pioneer in fast fashion, he cofounded Inditex, known for its Zara fashion chain, with his ex-wife Rosalia Mera (d. 2013) in 1975.
• He owns about 60% of Madrid-listed Inditex, which has 8 brands, including Massimo Dutti and Pull & Bear, and 7,500 stores around the world.
• He is the owner of Spanish soccer team Deportivo La Coruna.
• Ortega typically earns more than $400 million in dividends a year via the stock market.
• He has invested his dividends primarily into real estate in Madrid, Barcelona, London, Chicago, Miami and New York.

Larry Ellison # 7

• Source of Wealth: Software, Self Made, Net Worth of $62.5 Billion (as of 3/5/19)
• Chief Technology Officer (CTO) and Founder, Oracle
• 74 years old. A United States citizen who came from a largely working-class background; rose from little to nothing.
• Education: Drop Out, University of Chicago; Drop Out, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
• Ellison never finished college. He started out building databases for the CIA.
• Larry Ellison cofounded software firm Oracle in 1977 to tap into the growing need for customer relationship management databases.
• He gave up the Oracle CEO role in 2014 but still serves as chairman of the board and chief technology officer.
• Oracle moved into hardware with its 2010 acquisition of Sun Microsystems for $7.4 billion.
• As part of Oracle’s push into cloud computing, it acquired cloud-software firm Netsuite for $9.3 billion in 2016.
• In 2016, Ellison pledged to give $200 million to the University of Southern California for a cancer treatment center.

Mark Zuckerberg # 8

• Source of Wealth: Facebook, Self Made, Net Worth of $62.3 Billion (as of 3/5/19)
• Cofounder, Chairman and CEO, Facebook
• 34 years old. A United States citizen who came from a middle or upper-middle class background.
• Education: Drop Out, Harvard University
• Zuckerberg started Facebook at Harvard in 2004 at the age of 19 for students to match names with faces in class.
• He took Facebook public in May 2012 and still owns nearly 17% of the stock.
• Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s CEO, has seen his net worth soar as the social network’s stock price has skyrocketed.
• Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, have pledged to give away 99% of their Facebook stake over their lifetimes.
• Zuckerberg and his wife are spending $3 billion in an attempt to end, cure or manage all disease by the year 2100.

Michael Bloomberg # 9

• Source of Wealth: Bloomberg LP, Self Made, Net Worth of $55.5 Billion (as of 3/5/19)
• CEO, Bloomberg
• 77 years old. A United States citizen who came from a middle or upper-middle class background.
• Education: Bachelor of Arts/Science, Johns Hopkins University; Master of Business Administration, Harvard Business School
• Michael Bloomberg cofounded financial information and media company Bloomberg LP in 1981.
• He put in the seed funding for the company and now owns 88% of the business, which has revenues north of $9 billion.
• Bloomberg got his start on Wall Street in 1966 with an entry level job at investment bank Salomon Brothers. He was fired 15 years later.
• An active philanthropist, he has donated more than $5 billion to gun control, climate change and other causes.
• He plans to spend at least $500 million to defeat Donald Trump in 2020.

Larry Page # 10

• Source of Wealth: Google, Self Made, Net Worth of $50.8 Billion (as of 3/5/19)
• CEO, Alphabet
• 46 years old. A United States citizen who came from a middle or upper-middle class background.
• Education: Bachelor of Arts/Science, University of Michigan; Master of Science, Stanford University
• Larry Page sits at the helm of Alphabet, the parent company of Google, healthcare division Calico, smart home appliance division Nest and more.
• He cofounded Google in 1998 with fellow Stanford Ph.D. student Sergey Brin.
• With Brin, Page invented Google’s PageRank algorithm, which powers the search engine.
• Page was Google’s first CEO until 2001. After serving as president of products, he took the CEO job again in 2011.

TOP 30 MOST VALUABLE BRANDS IN 2019

Resource: What Is Money