The 25 Top Money Books I've Read (What I Learned)

Ready to enrich your financial knowledge with the top money books that have the power to change your money mindset? 

In this episode, I take you through the key books that have shaped my personal financial journey and that of my clients. From investment principles to mindset and psychology of money, I share the impactful takeaways from the 25 top money books I've read. 

Get ready to transform your relationship with money and gain valuable insights into wealth building, financial freedom, and the behavioral psychology behind financial decisions. 

Ready to build your own money machine and achieve financial liberation? Tune in to the full episode now!

IN TODAY’S EPISODE, I DISCUSS:

• The principles of value investing and the importance of patience and discipline
• The concept of automating your financial life to build wealth effortlessly 
• Key mindset and psychology principles that shape financial habits and attitudes

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If you liked this episode, you'll love these ones:

• Create a Money Machine for Financial Freedom 
• Generate & Scale Your Income to Build Wealth Faster
• 7 Money Excuses That'll Keep You Broke! 
• My Money Planning Process to Achieve Your Goals 

RECOMMENDED VIDEOS FOR YOU 

If you liked this video, you'll love these ones:

• Create a Money Machine for Financial Freedom: https://youtu.be/ZXK7bnqrqcw 
• Generate and Scale Your Income: https://youtu.be/HMYpvK6NaNA 
• 7 Money Excuses That'll Keep You Broke!: https://youtu.be/dMyNonXrxVE 
• My Money Planning  Process to Achieve Your Goals: https://youtu.be/Ip7kLKXNj2Y 

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Transcript

1:56

In the decades of my financial journey. Both as an expert, an entrepreneur, and. Someone who's personally on the journey for financial freedom and building it for myself. As well as my clients, I have read hundreds of books on money, on wealth, on financial management, on entrepreneurship. Well, in this episode, I want to take you through some of the key books and give you a list of the key books that you might want to read and the key takeaways, how. They changed my life. Enjoy this episode. This is the affluent entrepreneur show for entrepreneurs that want to operate at a high level and achieve financial liberation. I'm your host, Mel Abraham and I'll be sharing with you what it takes to create success beyond wealth so you can have a richer, more fulfilling lifestyle. In this show, you'll learn how business and money intersect so you can scale your business, scale your money and scale your life while creating a deeper impact. And living with complete freedom. Because that's what it really means to be an athlete entrepreneur. So this is going to be a. Different kind of episode, but it's going to be a fun one. I started to go back through all the books that I've read around money, around investing, around wealth, around financial management. Entrepreneurship and reflecting on my journey. Now, mind you, don't tell anyone, but I'm over 60, so I have had. Many, many decades and I actually, my very first entrepreneurial endeavor was at eleven years old. So I've had a lot of time understanding the journey to financial freedom. What does it take? Notwithstanding the lessons I got from all. The screw ups I made, the mistakes I made, everything. But there are so many books out. There on personal finance, on money and everything. In fact, my book is going to be one of them out there. It's going to be out the top. Of the list and it's going to. Be at the top of your reading list. It's not on this list because it's not out yet. But I want to give you a. List of 25 books that I think are powerful books that will let you. Understand how you can change your relationship. With money, your journey to financial freedom, the things that are doing. But I'm going to highlight a handful of them. But I've broken down the list for. You into four categories. The books on investing, the books on. Money management and financial planning, the books on wealth building and financial freedom, and the books on mindset and the psychology of money, the stories and the mental stuff that gets in the way. All right. Now, the beautiful thing is, like I. Said, I'm a CPA. As you all know. I am also someone who's valued businesses as a living, buying and selling businesses. I've looked at financials. I've worked with clients, big clients, small clients, startup clients, to help them build their wealth, their path to financial freedom, but also to build a life that's full of richness, that they experience life in a way that's powerful, that's meaningful, that's fulfilling in that way. And these books will lend themselves, some of them will lend themselves to that journey. That's the purpose of everything I do. It's the purpose of my new book. That'S coming out, building your money machine, and it's the purpose of this show. So let's jump in. I'm going to jump to my iPad. We're going to look at some of the books that I think are key, but I'll make sure to hook up this full list for you in the description in the notes so you can download it and you can get ahead and go ahead and get the books for yourself. All right, so I'm going to jump to my iPad. Let's just look at the books. We're going to start with the investing books first. And the first one is a classic. The intelligent investor by Benjamin Graham. And this is something that Warren Buffett. Will cite also, as well as the other one that I'm going to highlight here. And the key takeaway with this is that there's principles to value investing. Value investing is a type and a style of investing where you are finding good companies underpriced that will have substantial growth. Think about this. Your ability to build wealth is going to come from two areas, growth. In other words, appreciation. You buy a stock and it gets more valuable. So you buy it for ten and. It goes to 20 and cash flow. So you buy something that pays you money on a regular basis, rents, dividends. Things like that, or you buy something. That does both at the same time. It goes up in value and it pays you cash flow on a regular basis. Real estate will do that, some companies will do that and everything. This book is really good about understanding value investing, how discipline and patience is. The key to long term investing. I think it's important to realize that we're talking about long term here. This isn't trading. This is investing. This is 1015, 2025 years down the road. How do you set yourself up for that? Upswing, that momentum in wealth creation? And this book is a really good one. It's a classic. It's an older book that leads me. To this second book here, which is. Investing the random walk down Wall street is another one where they're going into understanding how do you build a portfolio. For the long term with the idea. Of growth, appreciation and wealth creation in mind. Now, this one spends a bit more. Time on the buy and hold strategy, but it spends a bit more time looking at index funds as one of the keys to doing that now. So it's a good book, good read. For you to do. Now, it's not highlighted here, but I am going to talk about it real quickly. And that's money master the game with Tony Robbins. Great book, lot of information. Here's my challenge with this one. It's like 700 pages. You don't need 700 pages to do this. It's a lot of detail, I think that, and he has a slimmed down version of it, but it's a good book, but it's long to get through. So it's one of the reasons I. Didn'T highlight it here. And then the last one, you'll see that I have a number of books in here that are by women, for women also, and primarily because 65, 70%. Of my audience is women. And I want to make sure that. I'm speaking to you, that I'm speaking to you, and that I am understanding the nuances that are part of that. Ambola has a couple of books out called clever Girl finance that are really good books. They're fundamental, they're foundational. You'll see her on here a second time. So they're really good books. Now, those are the few in the investing category. Now let's look at money management and financial planning. And when I talk about money management. And financial planning, what do you do with your money? It's not investing, but it's really just managing. You get a check in, what do you do with it? How do you manage debt? How do you get out of debt? What are the things that you should be paying first? All those kinds of things. So these books are going to help facilitate. How do you do things with your. Money when you get. So the first one that I'm going. To touch on is down here, automatic millionaire. This is my good friend David Bach. He is a classic. He's got ten or eleven, I'm not sure, ten or eleven. New York Times bestselling books on personal finance. And he's genius at simplifying concepts and. Giving you a pathway to understand what. It takes to build wealth. He's got a series of books out that will help. This is one of the first ones that I read automatic millionaire and he really introduces the concept of automating your financial life, taking it out of the realm of you having to push the buttons, pull the levers, twist the dials to build wealth. But to turn around and say, how do you take everything from Bill paying to savings to investing, automate it? So it is without thought, it is without temptation, it is without emotion, and it's done automatically, and it can lead. To a ton of wealth. Here's the thing that we need to. Understand if we're truly on this path to financial freedom. No matter what your age or stage. Of life is. It'S about behaviors, it's. About decisions, it's about choices, it's about habits. It's not about the money I get. You might sit back and go, no. You ain't seen my checking account. You ain't seen my financial situation. But I truly believe that our financial. Situations are a sum total of the decisions, choices, behaviors, and habits we made in the past. They're symptoms. Our money situation is a symptom of it. So if we just understand how to change our behaviors, change our habits, change. The decisions and choices, we change the results, it's math, and math will always work out. And what David Bach talks about is. Kind of the math equation. And there are things that we might have to do to change what you're doing to help you out, which that's fine. We can have that conversation. But understand that I think it is. In your control because it's all about the behaviors. And he gets that here. Now, I didn't highlight it here, but it's a great book. I will teach you to be rich by Ramit Sethi. He does the same. It's similar to David Bach. It's more current in managing your investments. And he does hit on the fact that you want to keep your expenses down from a fee standpoint and that. Type of thing in there. So these are some of the books for money management. You'll see down here another David Bach book. Start late, finish rich. So if you sit back, if you're sitting back and saying to yourself, oh. My gosh, I'm late to the game. I'm 40, I'm 50 years old, then you might want to read this one, because this one is really aimed at those that feel like you're starting late. Okay. It gives you the idea that it's never too late to achieve financial success. Here's the thing. I think that it's never too late to get on the train towards financial freedom. Whether you'll get 100% to the destination, I don't know. It depends on your circumstances, your dedication, your discipline. But what I do know is if. You get on the train, you will. Get far closer to it than you would have if you didn't get on the train. All right. This is a good book to work from. A very foundational book is Tiffany Alicia's book here. Get good with money. Ten simple steps to become financially whole. She's got a fun way about her, and she talks about it from a financial wholeness standpoint, and everything from budgeting, insurance, investments. She really hits on some really good stuff. And along with that, I would probably. Put in that same category as Patrice. Washington's book, real money answers for every woman. But look, every woman, every man is the same thing. Her stuff is so good and so straightforward. It doesn't matter whether you're a man or woman, you're going to get something out of it. I know I did. And she actually gives really good practical advice. She covers a bunch of topics, and she's got other books out that bring into things a holistic, a more holistic. View of your life, which I love. That's kind of my message, is that. I don't want you to have a big bank account and a bankrupt life. I want you to have all of it. And she gets it, and she brings those pillars into some of her current teachings. And so she is certainly a then. You know, obviously two classics here. Total money makeover with Dave Ramsey. Dave Ramsey, he's promoting the debt free lifestyle. Now, I will be really frank with you, and I've done some stuff on it. He's got his baby steps. His perspective is, you want to be completely debt free. Debt is the devil in any shape or form. I don't necessarily agree with it. I don't agree with some of his. Processes, but I cannot disagree with his results. He has helped a lot of people. He is good with what he does, and he has helped a lot of people get themselves out of a hole. And to get their life, financial life, right it again. Okay. And so his book can be really valuable, depending what your circumstances are. Now, my job, I look at it and say, I want to get you out of the hole, which is fine, but my job is also to help. You build your mountain. I want you to not just get out of the hole. I want you to build your financial mountain so you have financial freedom. It's about building that money machine to make that happen. But it is a classic text that you may want to read in there. Now, there's another classic text that is. Counter to Dave Ramsey, and that is. Rich dad, poor dad. This one really changed a lot of things for me in the sense of understanding the different ways to make money and the importance of that and his cash flow quadrants. It really started to bring to play the entrepreneurship element of wealth creation. The differences in how he saw assets and liabilities, and the importance of creating income generating assets for your financial freedom. It's not about just accumulating a bunch of trophy assets. If they're not going to produce cash. Flow, you're not going to be able to use it to live. The money machine that you're building is a cash flow machine. It's not an asset machine. Because if we have assets, like having. Collectibles on a shelf, they look great. But they do you no good when it comes to paying the bills. I want something that allows you to pay the bills. Think about this. When they diagnosed me with a cancer and we decided to shut everything down. I had a machine, and we just. Flipped the switch, turn the machine on. It would spit out cash. That's the money machine. That's what you want. That's kind of what Kiyosaki and rich. Dad, poor dad was getting at, is that we want to have income flowing assets in is. These are the books for money management that I think that you could look at. Financial planning that had the biggest impact on me. Then we get to wealth building and financial freedom. Now, this one is an old book, but I love it. It's so good. Richest man in Babylon. Okay, look. Talks about the importance of saving 10%, living within your means, investing to grow your wealth. It's basic, but I love how this is written. It's a parable. It's a story driven book. The lessons. Even though this book was written decades. Ago, the principles hold true today. And I think it's important to realize that true sound financial principles, money principles. Wealth creation principles, the things that I. Teach, the things that I work with. My clients on, the things that we use to build the wealth and the. Path of financial freedom for our clients are time tested. They work in down markets, they work in up markets, they work in down economies, they work in up economies. They are principle based. They work in the US, they work in Canada, they work in Europe, they work wherever because they're principle based. They're not memes, they're not trends, they're not fads. And I think that richest man in. Babylon is one of those classic, classic, easy to read parables that gets kind of the points home in a story. Form with principles that still are sound today. And then if you look at this. Book, the Millionaire fast Lane. The name. Is, I don't like the name, but I get the name when you read the book. So what happens with DeMarco here is he's the one that starts to really bring entrepreneurship and innovation into the wealth creation game. He challenges the traditional path and he. Says, look, you can be on the. Sidewalk, you can be in the slow lane, or you can be in the fast lane. And he explains what each of those. Are and how to navigate that. So if you're looking to start to understand the ways to accelerate your path to financial freedom and you have the entrepreneurial thought process in there, this might be a book for you to read. It was for me to really start to understand that. And then we get to the last category. The last category is mindset and psychology of money. And honestly, this probably should have been the first category because if we don't. Get our head stuff straight, we ain't. Going to get our bank account stuff straight. I thought as a CPA, as a. Left brain, columns and rows, nerdy numbers. Dude, I thought all I had to. Do was go out and teach you. All. The different accounts, what to do. With the accounts, how to invest, how to look at a financial statement, what's a debit, what's a credit? All that stuff. The logical left brain stuff that I thought would matter. But here's what I quickly found out. It didn't matter about the left brain. Stuff until we got the brain stuff worked out itself. The stories, the mindset, the psychology. Okay. Because that got in the way of us doing and taking action and taking. Movement to get in the game, because it just got in the way. And so these books are really good. When it comes to understanding mindset. A classic, obviously, think and grow rich. Napoleon Hill has to be on there. It's positive mindset, clear goals coupled with persistence. He also talks about masterminds and mentoring, which is really important. Masterminds and mentoring. Who's your mentor? I've had some great mentors. I still do. I mentor a lot of people. I have mastermind members and folks that I work with. But it is a way to make sure that we get our head game. Straight so we can get our money game flying. And then you are a badass at making money. Jen Sinceros, she really comes at it from a perspective of getting out of your own way, the mental blocks. And how do you then replace the. Mental blocks with a wealth mindset to. Really bring it forward. And then one of the first books. Actually, that I read and first speakers that I saw in this years and. Years ago is T. Harvecker. And he was really, really instrumental in changing my perspective on my mindset. My money set, the way I looked at things through the whole thermostat analogy and everything, and understanding that we each have a personal money blueprint. And when we understand what that personal money blueprint is, and we see if. That blueprint is consistent, congruent, and in. Alignment with the wealth creation we want, great. If we see it's not, how do we adjust it? How do we tweak it to move us forward in the path that we want to go? It is one of the older texts. But still relevant today, and then one. Of the newer ones, which I absolutely love this book and reading it, Morgan Hausel's psychology of money, probably one of the best written books on the mindset of money, the psychology of financial decision making. He actually talks really about the psychology. Of how we make financial decisions, how we create the behaviors. And if we think about this, if. We don't have money issues, we have money symptoms. They're symptoms of behaviors. We need to change our behaviors. But what drives our behaviors is our psychology. So we need to really change the. Psychology to change the behaviors, to change our money. And he gets it in this book. It's an easy read. It is well put together. I love the way he did this. And when you start to understand and own your financial habits and attitudes, you'll see that this gives you the pathway to a different financial future. Now, I'm going to bring this full circle because I'm going to make sure. That you have this whole list of the 25 books. There's more. I've read probably 100 and 5200 books over my decades of doing this, but these are 25 books that I think can change the dynamic of your financial pathway. Now, there will be a 26 when it gets published. It'll be this one here that I. Want you at the top of the list now. So I hope that you found this helpful. Maybe some guidance here where you might decide, hey, I got to go get some of these books and maybe read more on some of this. But I think that we don't build wealth and we don't find our path to financial freedom in isolation. We don't do it in a silo. We do it with like minded people. Moving in a direction, supporting each other on the journey. All right. And I hope I did a little. Bit of that today. And then I do a little bit. Of that with the show, with this channel, and with the things that I get a chance to do. All right. If you have questions or if you have comments, do me a favor, let me know. And I can't wait to see you on the road or another episode or another show. All right? Until then, always, always strive to live a life that outlives you. Cheers. See ya. Thank you for listening to the affluent entrepreneurship. With me, your host, Mel Abraham. If you want to achieve financial liberation to create an affluent lifestyle, join me in the affluent entrepreneur Facebook group now by going to forward slash group, and. I'll see you there.