Are you trying to level up your personal finances? Whether you’re trying to learn how to invest, save, or just want more knowledge about how to manage your finances, I’ve found the best personal finance books to help you achieve your goals.
I’ve personally read each of these books and listed how each book will help you so you don’t waste time reading books that don’t pertain to your situation. Time is money, and we’re all busy, so check out these 11 personal finance books that promise to change your financial trajectory.
11 Best Personal Finance Books for Millennials
Over the past 5 years, I’ve read or listened to over 250 books on money, and here are my all-time top 11 books on saving, wealth building, investing, and real estate investing. All of them changed my life.
- Financial Freedom: A Proven Path to All The Money You Will Ever Need
- Your Money or Your Life: 9 Steps to Transforming Your Relationship with Money and Achieving Financial Independence
- The Millionaire Next Door: The Surprising Secrets of America’s Wealthy
- The Only Investment Guide You’ll Ever Need
- The Bogleheads’ Guide to Investing
- The Intelligent Investor: The Definitive Book on Value Investing. A Book of Practical Counsel
- The Millionaire Real Estate Investor
- The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich
- The Automatic Millionaire
- The Simple Path to Wealth
- I Will Teach You To Be Rich
1. Financial Freedom: A Proven Path to All The Money You Will Ever Need by Grant Sabatier
WHO SHOULD READ IT Anyone interested in leveling up their personal finance game
Yes, this is my book. After reading over 400 books on money I wrote Financial Freedom: A Proven Path To All The Money You Will Ever Need because there is only so much you can put in a blog post.
This is everything I learned and used to go from $2.26 in my bank account to a millionaire in 5 years. While it’s written by a millennial for millennials, readers of all ages from all around the world have gotten value from it.
The book is an equal mixture of personal finance, investing, entrepreneurship, and life strategies. While the book is about how to reach financial independence as quickly as possible, it’s also about how to make more money in less time and a lot more than that. I put my everything into this book and I’m confident you will get value from it.
2. Your Money or Your Life: 9 Steps to Transforming Your Relationship with Money and Achieving Financial Independence: Revised and Updated for the 21st Century by Vicki Robin
WHO SHOULD READ IT Anyone with ‘money problems’
This book is legit – not just a book with a catchy title. If you read just one book on this list, read “Your Money or Your Life” – especially if you have problems saving money. Most of your savings problems are related to your relationship with money and can be easily fixed. This book in 9 simple steps, shares how you can fix them.
It was written by personal finance pioneers Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin and has been updated multiple times. Some of the highlights include the opening discussion on how we all are placing a value on our life energy (time) for money. This book will help you re-examine how you spend your money and time.
3. The Millionaire Next Door: The Surprising Secrets of America’s Wealthy by Thomas Stanley & William Danko
WHO SHOULD READ IT Anyone with goals to be a millionaire
“The Millionaire Next Door” is very eye-opening. I was blown away to learn that most millionaires are the people that you don’t expect – they are more likely to live in modest houses and drive old cars.
The reason that they are millionaires is that they saved, invested, and live below their means. This book analyzes the habits of millionaires so you can learn how to build them, too. This book taught me a lot, and I recently re-read it again almost 20 years later, and it was even better than I remembered.
It has a lot of practical tips that you can start using immediately and will impact the rest of your life.
4. The Only Investment Guide You’ll Ever Need by Andrew Tobias
WHO SHOULD READ IT 20 and 30 year olds looking to invest
Everyone should read “The Only Investment Guide You’ll Ever Need” – especially anyone in their 20’s or 30’s. This is the only book I’ve reread cover to cover because it has so much advice that I wanted to make sure I didn’t miss anything.
Although it was originally written 30 years ago, it gets updated every 3 or 4 years to include up-to-date information – new websites, tools, and recommendations. It teaches you about everything you need to know about investing and making smart money decisions – saving, investing, insurance, taxes, how to save money shopping, and many other topics.
The advice is practical and all of author Andrew Tobias’ ideas are valuable. He’s also super funny, which makes the book easy to read.
5. The Bogleheads’ Guide to Investingby Taylor Larimor, Mel Lindauer, and Michael LeBoeuf
WHO SHOULD READ IT Anyone interested in a new investing strategy
Most investing books are boring – this one isn’t, and it’s full of tons of data-based advice. If you read one book on investing, read “The Bogleheads’ Guide to Investing“.
The Bogleheads are a large group that follow the investment advice of Vanguard founder Jack Bogle – the pioneer of index fund investing. The foundation of the Boglehead strategy is to buy a small piece of every stock in the stock market instead of buying individual stocks.
With this method, you make money when the stock market goes up over time – and it almost always goes up over any 10 year period. In the long term, it is nearly impossible for any individual stock picker to consistently beat the market, so investing in the entire stock market allows your money to grow as the market grows.
6. The Intelligent Investor: The Definitive Book on Value Investing. A Book of Practical Counsel (Revised Edition) by Benjamin Graham
WHO SHOULD READ IT Anyone interested in investing in stocks
This book is a monster (649 pages), but if you want to invest in individual stocks, then you need to read “The Intelligent Investor“.
It is widely regarded as the best book on stock investing ever written and is the book that most influenced Warren Buffett and generations of successful value-based stock investors.
It’s also an easy-to-read book that pretty much teaches you all of the fundamentals of stock investing. Their idea is simple: when you invest in a stock, you invest in a small piece of a business. To increase your chances of earning money, you must fully understand the business and all that it encompasses.
In addition, you must analyze their P/E (price-to-earnings ratio) and look for good values – low P/E ratios, strong fundamentals, and strong future profit opportunities. Originally written in the 1940s and updated regularly, The Intelligent Investor has made me a better and much more profitable individual investor.
The Intelligent Investor
The Definitive Book on Value Investing
by Benjamin Graham
7. The Millionaire Real Estate Investor
WHO SHOULD READ IT Anyone interested in real estate investing
“The Millionaire Real Estate Investor” is by far the best book I have ever read on real estate investing. If you are planning to buy a house, condo, or investment property, then you need to read this book. It is specifically written for new real estate investors and will help you learn the foundations for building and growing a profitable real estate portfolio.
I believe there is a lot of money to be made in real estate if you buy good deals, and this book teaches you how to find them. Written by one of the most successful realtors ever, Keller Williams founder Gary Keller, this book is an easy read with a ton of great tips for evaluating and buying properties.
8. The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich by Timothy Ferriss
WHO SHOULD READ IT Anyone interested in breaking the 9 to 5 habit
If you want to be an entrepreneur, read this book! Tim Ferriss the author of “The 4 Hour Workweek” has single-handedly launched the live anywhere digital nomad lifestyle. He’s the guru, and this is the book that started it all.
Tim lays out how he built a more efficient lifestyle to run a high-income generating drop ship automated business. He made millions of dollars and then wrote this book that made him millions more. Tim Ferris is a generational pioneer, and you should listen to him.
This is a great choice for an audiobook – it’s got a lot of great energy. Learn how to build an online business from one of the field’s masters.
9. The Automatic Millionaire by David Bach
WHO SHOULD READ IT Anyone looking to automate their financial life
In this absolutely groundbreaking finance book, The Automatic Millionaire, David Bach outlines a simple strategy that anyone can follow to automate most of their financial life.
When it comes to managing our finances, we are often our own worst enemies, but it’s never been easier to use technology to do the heavy lifting with your money, saving you both time AND making you more money because you’ll always be investing.
You can essentially put on auto-pilot a vast majority of your money life, which is what Automatic Millionaire shows you exactly how to do. While I personally used and believe that a hybrid automated and manual approach is the best investing strategy, everyone should first set up their “set it and forget it” automated foundation so you can easily save money without thinking about it.
Automatic Millionaire is hands down one of the best personal finance books. There’s a reason it’s sold upwards of 2 million copies.
10. The Simple Path to Wealth by J.L. Collins
WHO SHOULD READ IT Anyone looking to achieve FIRE
As one of the best FIRE (financial independence retire early) books, The Simple Path to Wealth by J.L. Collins does not disappoint. While this is more of an investing strategy than a complete personal finance book, it fits well when read with Your Money or Your Life.
The book is largely based on the stock investing series that J.L. Collins offers on his website and is focused almost exclusively on index fund investing. But there’s also a no-nonsense breakdown of adjusting your investing strategy based on where you are in your career, including how to invest when you’re accumulating versus withdrawing money.
What I like most about the book is how he outlines the investing strategy in three distinct phases, focusing on your accumulation phase (when you are making money), growth phase (when you are growing money), and deployment phase (when you are using the money to live on).
11. I Will Teach You To Be Rich by Ramit Sethi
WHO SHOULD READ IT Anyone looking to transform their money mindset
I Will Teach You To Be Rich is arguably the best personal finance book written in the past 10 years and a second edition of the book was just released. I first read the book a year into my financial independence journey at the age of 25 and immediately started using some of his tips to negotiate more money from my clients.
Ramit can largely be described as the “Tim Ferriss of money.” His accessible writing style and simple and actionable tips are largely focused on making more money. There’s a limit to how much you can cut back, but not a limit to how much money you can make.
What I like best about Ramit’s book is that it helped me shift my mindset from scarcity to abundance.If you really want a Tesla, then save up and buy one. Life is short and money should be enjoyed, not just saved. This was a big shift for me and is something everyone should learn.
How to Get The Most Out of Personal Finance Books
If you just read a few of the books listed, your future life earnings will likely be hundreds of thousands, if not millions of more dollars higher than if you didn’t. The recommendations in these books are that good. Spend 2-4 hours reading or 5-8 hours listening, and your ROI will be exponential.
I’m super busy, but I try to read or listen to 4-5 new money books every month. I try to mix it up – reading both new and classic books on saving, wealth building, investing, and real estate investing.
I can cruise through most books in an hour or two – hitting the intro, reading the first two chapters, and then picking the other chapters that I find more relevant to me.
When I travel and walk the dog, I listen to Audible – so I keep learning while I’m moving around. Audiobooks are actually incredible, and you even learn unconsciously, when you aren’t paying close attention. Audiobooks make you smarter.
About 20% of the time, I read the whole book and about 2% of the time, I can’t put the book down.
