Please recommend a great personal finance book for someone who knows very little about how money works.
Money: Master The Game, by Tony Robbins is fantastic.
Otherwise, are you looking for making money? investing? budgeting? a general idea of how financial systems work?
For the latter, here’s a great primer: How The Economic Machine Works by Ray Dalio - YouTube
Oh I completely forgot about this one. That’s the one I’m starting with!
Budgeting and investing is what I’m looking for.
2 books. “The Slight Edge” by Jeff Olson. “The Compound Effect” by Darren Hardy
These will help with anything.
Nice. It’s good.
Check out Playing with FIRE and Quit Like a Millionaire, and I Will Teach You To Be Rich also has some good stuff.
What most personal finance books tend to ignore is… generating additional income. Trimming a budget is important, as is investing, but building up additional income streams greatly accelerates both debt reduction and investing. Even an extra $1k/mo is quite substantial for many people.
I Will Teach You To Be Rich by Ramit Sethi is my personal favorite.
Ramit covers the basics everyone needs to get started. His approach with automating your finances was a game changer for me. I don’t need to worry about ever missing a bill because my money goes to specific accounts and is automatically taken out when the bill is due.
I’ve been following that system for a couple of years now.
Which edition have you got? I’ve got the original one; I’ve heard the newer versions have been changed quite a bit.
Automating finances = essential.
I have the latest one. I don’t know what the differences are between the first edition and the current one. I’m glad I committed to following the program. It’s made a huge difference.
I’m getting it. That one and Tony Robbins’ book are going to be what I’ll read this spring.
The only part I’d suggest adding is something about additional income. There are some great “side hustle” books by Chris Guillebeau, and I particularly like " Financial Freedom: A Proven Path to All the Money You Will Ever Need" by Grant Sabatier as an intro.
Great choices! IWTYTBR by Ramit Sethi is pretty much the perfect introductory to personal finance. Robbin’s Money book is on my list also.