Read Any Good Books Lately? You Know, All These Finance Books Say The Same Thing..

I’m becoming a library junkie, but I’m sort of proud of myself for doing so. Hell, up until a few years ago I barely read anything if it wasn’t on a glossy page with Maxim on the cover. Lately I’ve been picking up a TON of finance books and I have to be honest in saying the best one so far has still been “The Wealthy Barber” in terms of opening my eyes to how to save money and grow wealthy over time. What is interesting however, is how some of the themes are common throughout other books that I’m reading, things such as:

• save 10% of your paychecks, and do it automatically (so you don’t have to do anything)
• growth + saving + time = wealthy (don’t try to get rich overnight or in a year.. it takes time for compounding to work)
• pay yourself first – this one is actuallysimilar to the first bullet, but it’s just pointed out often that it’s important to save first.. pay bills after (odd.. but true)
• pay off debts and stop carrying a balance with your credit card

Anyhow I’m sure there are more that I’m missing, but those are the main themes I see throughout the books. I just finished two books, the first being Pay It Down!: Debt-Free on $10 a Day by Jean Chatzky and truthfully I thought the book was pretty boring. It really didn’t really advise on what to DO with what you’re saving and spent a lot of time talking about credit collections and how to avoid them. Also how to prioritize which bills get paid first, etc. Again, it was an easy read.. but you can pretty much guess from the front page what most of the book is going to be like. “Save $10 a day – Invest it.. be rich”.. yes yes.. we know. The second book which I just finished reading today was called The Automatic Millionaire: A Powerful One-Step Plan to Live and Finish Rich by David Bach. I can tell that I liked this one, as I read it a lot quicker than the previous book. It read a lot like The Wealthy Barber in terms of easy to follow and how it was structured.

Truthfully I enjoyed this book, I think that it’s a lot more relevant (likely a lot newer) to todays society as we tend to utilize things like online banking, bill paying, automatic deposits, etc. Without going too much into it, David writes to also save 10% of your gross salary, and automatically put it into an RRSP. Once there, put it in mutual funds, or something that will generally gain 10% a year. I most enjoyed the automatic part about this book as I find it relevant. You see, as it stands right now I take 10% of my paycheck and it goes into my work stock. They are also nice enough to match a certain percentage, so right there, I’m already gaining the percentage that they give me (even though their contribution is taxed). But, the book I found very relevant to me.. since I already have an automatic savings or deposit system going, I could just concentrate on the parts of the book in which it tells you where to put it and what to do with it.

Certainly an enjoyable read and again, but I’d have to say that it still ranks below ‘the Wealthy Barber’ in terms of my favorites.