The Plainspeak / Reading
Reading · 3 min
5 books to become your own financial planner
You do not need to read fifty books on money. If I could keep only five, I could have learned almost everything worth knowing, and skipped a great deal of harmful advice. Here they are, in order.
I have read well over fifty personal-finance books. These five, read in this order, are close to a full personal-finance education, for the price of a single dinner out.
1. Rich Dad Poor Dad, by Robert Kiyosaki
Start here for the mindset. It will change how you see money, assets, liabilities and cash flow. Read it for the frame it gives you, not for its specific tactics.
2. The Psychology of Money, by Morgan Housel
The one line to carry out of it: doing well with money has little to do with how clever you are and a great deal to do with how you behave. Your habits will shape your financial future far more than your intelligence will.
3. The Joys of Compounding, by Gautam Baid
As much a manual for a life as for a portfolio. Compounding is not only about money, it is about knowledge and judgement built patiently over years. In the foreword, Guy Spier calls reading the book itself one more small step in that compounding. He is right.
4. I Will Teach You to Be Rich, by Ramit Sethi
The practical system. It is built on American products and rules, so you translate the specifics to Indian options, but the framework, automate your money and stop feeling guilty about it, travels perfectly.
5. Let's Talk Money, by Monika Halan
The most useful of the five for an Indian reader. It covers the whole ground, from emergency funds to insurance to investing, in plain language and concrete steps. If you want the how, without wading through concepts and psychology first, this is the one to read.
The move
Read these five and you can plan your own money. They cost, together, less than fifteen hundred rupees. Set against a lifetime of money decisions, that is the highest-return investment on this whole site.
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