I just ran across a short blurb talking about the “Best Personal Finance Books” in the most recent issue of Bottom Line/Personal. They highlighted four recent books, none of which I’ve read. Here they are, along with their Amazon star ratings:
- “Smart and Simple Financial Strategies for Busy People” by Jane Bryant Quinn (5 stars)
- “The Only Guide to a Winning Bond Strategy You’ll Ever Need” by Larry Swedroe and Joe Hempen (4.5 stars)
- “The Smartest Investment Book You’ll Ever Read” by Daniel Solin (3.5 stars)
- “Inside the Economist’s Mind” by Paul Samuelson and William Barnett (5 stars)
Unfortunately, I don’t have much to add here… I’ve long since stopped reading personal finance books on a lark. While I’ll now read them for the purposes of writing a review, once you’ve read a few, there’s not much new under the sun. That being said, I’ve heard a lot of good things about the Jane Bryan Quinn book, and five star rating supports that. As far as the others go, I hadn’t actually heard of them before today. If anyone has read any of these, I’d love to hear your thoughts.
In the mean time, here are a couple of books that I can heartily recommend:
» “Time is Money” (my review)
» “The Bogleheads’ Guide to Investing” (my review)
Another good book I forgot is Good Debt Bad Debt…very good book on explaining the 100,000 luxury car and how buying used can save you in the future
I have listen The Richest Man in Babylon, this book was much easier to listen to than read, but I loved this book. I think readers who are just getting interested in finances could really benefit from this book.
chris
I haven’t read any of them either. A couple I recommend are “Are you Being Seduced by Debt?” by John Cummuta. Look past the ‘program’ he sells and the book has a lot of great information. It’s a good read on the history of debt and our personal relationship with it. It also has a decent get-out-of-debt strategy.
For some fun budgeting/planning ideas I found “The Complete Cheapskate” by Mary Hunt to be very enjoyable. Also related to debt, I recommend “Born to Buy” by Juliet Schor, which looks at a generation of consumers. Materialistic overconsumption is a big factor in debt, after all.
Thanks for the other book reviews.