MMS079: Our Favorite Personal Finance Books

EPISODE 79

[0:00:02] ANNOUNCER: Welcome to the Money Mastermind Show. Let’s Talk Money.

[0:00:01] GC: Welcome to the Money Mastermind Show. Tonight, we’re going to have some fun here. We’re going to talk about a lot of the personal finance books that we ourselves love and maybe got us into this and that we maybe go back to a bunch of times and why we like these books. There are tons of these books out there now. When I started fixing up my finances, there wasn’t too many good sources.

If you went to Barnes and Nobles and look through the finance area, there was a lot of there but there were only a handful that were really the more popular ones but nowadays, they come out every day and they all have great information for the most part, right? But they’re not the ones that you need to have, they’re not the life changers always. So we’re going to maybe get a little personal here and talk about the ones that really meant something to us or that we really enjoy.

So let’s get to introduction here. We have Kyle Prevost of Youngandthrifty.ca, Miranda Marquit of Planting Money Seeds, Peter Anderson of Bible Money Matters, Tom Drake of the Canadian Finance Blog and I am Glen Craig of Free from Broke. So PF books, personal finance books, where do we start? What’s good?

[0:01:18] MM: Well, I think we should start with More Money for Beer and Textbooks of course.

[0:01:24] KP: There’s only one place to start.

[0:01:29] PA: Somebody hold it up. I know somebody has that book.

[0:01:31] MM: Come on Kyle, where is it?

[0:01:33] TD: Now I’ll hold it up. I’ll bring it out.

[0:01:35] KP: So Tom is holding up More Money for Beer and Textbooks. I’ll give a quick plug. It is the book that myself and my co-author Justin Bouchard penned. We like to think it’s all right. It is written definitely for a Canadian slant not that an American student can’t get any out of it but it is using Canadian specific terms at certain points. We refer to Canadian specific beer brands, if that’s your thing. Basically if you or your child are going to be attending university or college anytime soon, pick up a copy and now we’ll get onto more important things.

[0:02:06] GC: Well, I mean really More Money for Beer and Textbooks, what’s more important than that, more money.

[0:02:11] KP: What you’re thinking is not there. Nothing is more important.

[0:02:17] GC: But to be fair, you wrote that book. It wasn’t a book that maybe influenced you to get into this realm, right? So let’s talk about some books like that that maybe when we started off, we didn’t know what we’re doing or we just wanted some guidance, what books influenced you?

[0:02:36] TD: For me, it’s of a Canadian thing really but The Wealthy Barber but he might have made an American version as well I think but David Chilton has The Wealthy Barber. I got The Wealthy Barber Returns here but basically, it’s written like a fiction novel. So it was the first thing I’ve ever read that got me into personal finance because it was just an easy read. It doesn’t feel like you’re reading a textbook on personal finance.

[0:03:03] GC: What was about it that made it so easy?

[0:03:06] TD: Well, just the novel style of it. Once you’re reading it, you’re literally just following the story of a few different people in the book and within that, there’s all these different money tips about saving money and investing and all that but by the time you’re done with the book, you’ve kind of covered a lot of ground but it just doesn’t come off the same way if you’re someone who’s just getting into it.

[0:03:30] GC: Yeah, I mean that is the thing with a lot of personal finance books is that they’re a little dry in formulaic and through no fault of the authors and sometimes the subject itself is pretty dry. We’re talking about savings accounts and credit cards and life insurance and all that stuff. It’s not always the most fun thing in the world and I think that’s where a lot of books, they’re just telling you what to do.

So if you could find a book like that, that is at least a little entertaining on top of that then that’s a huge bonus. I know for me, one book in the beginning at least kind of opened my eyes to looking at my money and how I looked at my money and where it was coming from and where it was going and this book gets a lot of flak both ways is Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki.

I remember looking at that and it kind of made me think about what a salary really is, who’s making that money, where my money is earning money, what owning a home really means, things like that. And in that sense, it was pretty influential and taking a deep look into my finances.

[0:04:34] MM: Yeah, so I’m not a huge Robert Kiyosaki fan but like you with the Rich Dad, Poor Dad thing when I first read that, the idea of the mortgage and how the home that you live in is not in fact an investment just like “poof” because really, when you’re growing up, when you’re starting out, when you’re getting ready to do this stuff, really everybody tells you, “Oh your home is an investment. Oh, you have to buy a home, oh it’s this huge important milestone,” and I’m talking to a bunch of home owners.

But yeah, when I read that book and it was just before my then husband was like, “Oh we’ve got to buy a house,” and I’m reading this book and I’m going, “No, no we don’t.” But it was just really interesting the way, I know he’s really big in real estate and that’s the way he likes to tell people to make money. But it did really make me take a step back and say, “Okay, let’s talk about what a mortgage really is and what it really means in your life and how to start thinking about the house that you live in.”

[0:05:41] KP: Yeah, I echo Miranda’s sense was that I’m not a Kiyosaki accolade but I remember that reading that book and him making very specific difference between how most people like his “poor dad” looked at money and how wealthy people tend to look at money and I readily was able to slot my own upbringing into the one category and say, “Hmm, this is why these things happen.” And it’s true by and large, despite whatever else you think about the man, he put a convincing argument together for why wealthy people build assets and others don’t.

[0:06:20] GC: Yeah, I think he gets a lot of flak and that he tells you to do certain things and then once you read the book, you’re like, “This is great. This is great. Wait a minute, how do I get into this real estate buying thing?” Like, “Wait, what? Huh?” And then I have to go to a seminars and I have to buy all these other books.

[0:06:36] MM: If you pay $10,000, you can go to his master’s class.

[0:06:39] KP: Let’s just move on. Let’s just move on. Let’s call in the next.

[0:06:43] PA: But you know what, that’s the thing about some of these books. Some of these books have some good information and maybe some that’s not as good but the key is to take his books and glean from them what you can. One book that affected my life when I first getting into personal finance was The Total Money Makeover by Dave Ramsey.

[0:07:02] MM: Oh I have that one back here.

[0:07:04] PA: That one is probably a lot of people have heard of but for us, it just got us thinking about our finances. Actually thinking about the importance of tracking our money in our household, making sure that every dollar that came into the house was being assigned to a saving, a giving or expense category. Helped us set up a zero based budget in our house and it also does a good job of talking about debt and the dangers of debt and getting out of debt.

That’s one of the things he really excels at, thinking about the dangers of debt and how to get out of it and how to start building wealth. I think a lot of people have issues with once he starts talking about how to build that wealth, he may not be the ideal person to look to as far as investing and wealth creation and stuff like that but for thinking about your finances, starting a budget, getting out of debt, all those sorts of things, I think it actually is a pretty decent read.

[0:08:01] MM: Yeah, it’s not bad. I remember when we had Joe Saul-Sehy on and he was talking about following gurus for where you’re at in your finances and I think that that’s something to think about when you’re talking about the books and taking what you can from them. Look at where you’re at from your finances and figure out who speaks to you and where you’re at because he talks about graduating from financial guru to financial guru. My big problem with Dave Ramsey of course is he would have told me not to finance my car and put my credit cards away so…

[0:08:39] PA: Back to those credit cards hey?

[0:08:41] MM: Back to those credit cards man.

[0:08:45] PA: Yeah but I think Dave Ramsey like you’re talking about Dave Ramsey, he’s a good person to read when you’re at the beginning of the process. You’re just starting out and maybe you’ve got a bunch of debt to get rid off. Once you move beyond that, you can move onto something else like Millionaire Next Door with Thomas Stanley, talking more about becoming a millionaire, what millionaires do, what attributes you need to have and things you need to do in order to create wealth.

[0:09:10] GC: Yeah, you know I second the motion. That book also is on my list. It really gives you an eye opener and that this whole “Keeping Up with the Jones’s” thing, it’s not going to get you wealthy and that the guy that you think with the beat up Pinto maybe he’s got more going on than you think. He might be the one who’s well on his way to six, seven, eight figures and not the guy with the brand new Lexus next door.

[0:09:36] MM: That’s like Kyle and his van.

[0:09:39] KP: Yeah, all those Toyota Corolla millionaires, I should be a multimillionaire trade I am going here but one book that I really like who skipped the vehicle all together is a good friend of the show, Andrew Hallam and it’s The Millionaire Teacher and obviously, I would like that for obvious reasons but it’s a pretty cool story where he was a Canadian teacher.

He since traveled all over the world and he’s written an American based book but just basic index investing and I would say extreme frugality. I think Andrew at the beginning would classify himself as extreme or he was eating on like $2 a day at the beginning but just the process on like if you say you can’t do it whatever his salary is, he was earning a pretty modest salary at the time in one of Canada’s most expensive places to live.

He managed to become a millionaire at a fairly young age. It just puts into practice a lot of investing theories that I’m sure will be in a lot of the books that we talked about here tonight but it’s a good starting point for someone who’s ready to take things seriously.

[0:10:44] MM: Yeah and along with that, one of my favorite books is called The Oblivious Investor and it was one of the first of many books written by Mike Piper but it’s what got me into indexing. It’s what got me into really starting investing other than the horrible IRA that my insurance agent got me into. But yeah, The Oblivious Investing, was a really great book, a really great read by Mike Piper and it’s a really good one just to get you familiar with the idea of index investing and indexing and just getting started on a really basic level. So it was one of my favorite books. It’s an easy read, it’s a 100 pages or something.

[0:11:31] GC: Yeah, that’s what I like about Mike. He’s a really bright guy, I met him and I talked to him and his books aren’t this big bloated things. He gets to the point and he has a whole series of different books on different subjects too so go on Amazon and take a look at what fits your need but he really gets to the point and helps you out to learn the subject.

[0:11:50] MM: Oh yeah, that’s what I love about him. He’s just straight afore. He’s like, “This is what we’re going to do and we’re going to do it this way.”

[0:11:58] TD: Similar to Miranda, I had a “see the light moment” about investing when I read the Little Book of Common Sense Investing by John Bogle. I had a terrible mutual fund in the bank and then I thought I was doing the right thing and once I read that book that totally changed my mind and went all in with index funds.

[0:12:22] GC: Similar to that, I’ve read The Bogleheads’ Guide to Investing which isn’t necessarily his. It’s kind of his forum with his input in there I believe but that’s basically one of his series on investing and what you need to be doing. It’s easy to start investing and you start buying all sorts of things thinking that you’re gonna get rich but it’s not necessarily that complex. There’s easy ways to go about it.

[0:12:45] MM: Well, the great thing about reading John Bogle is I mean, the guy invented the index fund right? So I might as well go straight to the horse’s mouth and get the information.

[0:12:58] GC: Exactly.

[0:12:59] KP: Yep, named one of the world’s most influential people in 2004 by Time and was one of the four giants of the investing industry of the 20th century by Fortune so yeah.

[0:13:10] MM: Good enough.

[0:13:11] PA: Another book that was on my list was one of the first ones that I read when I first started writing about personal finance was called The Richest Man in Babylon and it’s a book that was written in the 1920’s but it has a lot of insightful things to say about saving, investing and simple ideas behind wealth creation and it’s written in the vein of parables or stories.

It really just kinda gets to the root of the ideas behind wealth creation, making you’re seeking out the wisdom of those who know and who have experienced success, paying yourself first, the law of compounding returns, and you won’t miss the money if you pay yourself first, things like those. Simple ideas that are done in story or parable form and it really is a very entertaining read.

[0:13:59] GC: And that book, is that in the public domain already?

[0:14:01] PA: It may be, yeah I think it does.

[0:14:04] GC: I mean it’f it’s not, if you can’t find a free copy somewhere, it’s relatively inexpensive like Kindle or something like that.

[0:14:11] PA: Yeah, I think I found that on public domain Google Books or something like that.

[0:14:15] GC: Right, so certainly that’s a nice way to get started and let’s get started to maybe spend a buck.

[0:14:24] MM: That’s right. So another one that I like and I have here is called The Millionaire Fast lane by M. J. DeMarco and I really like this one because he talks about how basically doing what is normal in our lives, what the normal things is basically you work, right? You work for 40 or 50 years and then you’re old and sad and now you retire but you’re old and sad and you can’t enjoy anything.

So I just really like that just because it says on the back and this is kind of fun. He says, “Why prostitute your Monday through Friday for the paycheck of a weekend?” And that’s why I got this book because I was reading the back of it and I was like, “Oh,” so yeah and there’s a lot of stuff in here that I don’t really agree with per se.

But it was really interesting in terms of just looking at it in terms of all of the people that are telling you how to get rich, they didn’t get rich by following their own advice. They got rich because they went out and started this empire telling other people how to get rich and so it was interesting to read and it’s a different way to look at it and it’s just kind of fun. I really enjoyed it.

[0:15:54] GC: It’s a good book if you’re looking to maybe start a business or come up with some kind of business idea. You’re like, “What is this going to do? How is it going to generate money?” And yet it talks about trying to live the 401(k) lifestyle is not going to do much for you but if you have something that can generate money, right?

[0:16:11] MM: Yeah. But it’s just really good.

[0:16:17] GC: Another one that I read that I’ve gotten I think from another website, they had a giveaway but it really did hit me though, it was Your Money or Your Life and that book talked about how the value of your time and what that means and that really got into me. Everything that you buy, it transfers into the work that you’re doing.

You buy that new TV, well now you have to work X amount of hours to justify that and then it definitely gives you a way to look at your purchases and what you’re doing and putting a value to it that I think a lot of us don’t normally do.

[0:16:56] MM: Yeah and that one really helped me keep moving. Reading that book helps me look at things and just say, “Okay yeah, so what is important to me? What do I want to spend my money on?” And just rearrange how I did things. It was a really good one to help me figure out my priorities and realize that a lot of the things that I was spending my money on I didn’t care about.

[0:17:22] GC: It’s interesting, we have these different categories. We have some basic PF ones and we have some that go more into the business realm and some into the investing realm but I think it’s important to note that I think somebody had said, some books are maybe better for you depending on where you are and what you’re doing. So it’s important to keep that in mind.

I know at one point, I was just going a little crazy and just trying to read everything in the beginning and get my head around anything and I was reading books by Peter Lynch and books about Warren Buffett. I wanted to know everything about investing and I can’t remember but maybe it was One Up on Wall Street from Peter Lynch, I forget.

But I remember reading this books and going, “This is just so way over my head,” especially with Warren Buffett and discount prices and all sorts of different things. but what was interesting was, in both of those, there was an idea of if you’re going to invest in a company, know what they do. Get your head around it or like in Peter Lynch’s case, if there’s something that you use, that you love or a store that you’re always going to, maybe that’s a place to start if you want to look to invest in something.

You’re like, “Why are they successful?” And then you can kind of go down that road and see what’s going on rather than trying to randomly invest in things or because your uncle Joe says to invest in something. Like at least you have something personally invested in why you want to do it and why you understand it.

[0:18:51] MM: Well I think another good book if you want to start going the value investing route and do the whole stock picking thing is The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham. It’s a great classic. It’s been updated recently by Jason and I’m not going to try and pronounce his last name from the Wall Street Journal.

[0:19:10] GC: Zweig.

[0:19:12] MM: Yeah and that’s a great one if you want to start value investing but one thing that really struck me is that a couple of weeks ago, Warren Buffet was talking about how part of the reason why he’s so successful is because he had the resources to really do this stuff, you were talking about Warren Buffet and he had all these resources.

He said that if he was a regular person and basically he was just saying if he was somebody who was working for a living or whatever, he said that the best thing that you can do in index and put index funds in your retirement account and so we don’t need to get hung up and say, “Oh let’s try and invest like Warren Buffet.” Well, we can’t invest like Warren Buffett because we didn’t have a dad who had a successful business who gave us a large chunk of money to deal with.

[0:20:08] GC: And we’re just not him. Even if you built it up from the beginning. Not everybody is this super investor or whatever has the time and the inclination to really dig deep into a lot of companies and funds and sometimes we’ve got to take a simpler route just because we got to look at things realistically.

[0:20:28] TD: Another one of the deeper investment books that hasn’t been mentioned yet is The Four Pillars of Investing.

[0:20:35] MM: Oh yes.

[0:20:36] TD: By William Bernstein. It was, how we talked about graduating books, after I read the John Bogle book, reading this one felt like I was going so much into it. I don’t think it went too crazy. I didn’t feel over my head like some of the ones that are out there but it made me feel more confident about understanding how things work.

[0:20:57] KP: If you’re looking for something newer with a little bit of snark and sarcasm and pop culture references, a guy that I met and talked to and really liked is Robert Brown, Wealthing Like Rabbits. It started in Canada but he’s since released an American version. It’s a great name. Once again, it’s Wealthing Like Rabbits.

There’s no information in it that’s going to trump the books that we just talked about but if you’re looking for a quick read, something feel good with Star Wars references and obvious metaphors to the reproduction rates of rabbits, give Robert Brown a try. It reaches some people that have a hard time connecting with this stuff. So maybe something to recommend to your friend or your brother that maybe isn’t into personal finances as you are.

[0:21:44] PA: You know another author that maybe more accessible for a lot of people, just average folks is David Bach. He’s got a whole series of books but The Automatic Millionaire is one of the ones that a lot of people have heard of and it goes into how to create wealth as far as it’s not all just doing a budget and stuff like that but it’s about setting in place systems and automatic systems in order to automate your investments and your savings and all that type of things. So I think it’s a good book I think for people just starting out as well.

[0:22:19] GC: Jumping off the system’s theme, if you ever own your own business or you plan on having a business, I highly recommend reading The E-Myth and he talks there about if you own a business, you really need to put these systems in place so that the business can manage itself. So that you have the freedom to do what you want to grow the business as opposed to being stuck in all the minutia which happens to a lot of people.

[0:22:44] MM: Yeah, that’s a good one and then another one that a lot of people like and that I really enjoyed and also along with Your Money or Your Life helped me rethink my life on how I do things was The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss just because I liked the idea of “why don’t you sit down, figure out what you want your life to look like and then figure out what you need to do to make it happen?”

And that was pretty much what I got out of that. There are a lot of things in there, there was “no” but one of the great things that I took from that was, “Here, figure out what you want to look like and then start using your resources and try to figure out where you want to go and make that happen.”

[0:23:39] GC: I think that’s one of those books where not everything he says will apply to you. Not everybody is going to go and build a business like he does but sometimes it’s the idea of the book. That whole idea of the book is there might be an easier way. Maybe I’m working too hard, how can I hack this out? How can I find some sort of shortcut that will make a lot of these easier? And maybe that’s the theme for a lot of these stuff because we want to make personal finance easier and if you can make it a little less effort, a little less thinking, a little less money to put up front, then you head to the game.

[0:24:14] PA: I have another book from a friend of the show, Todd Tresidder, How Much Money Do I Need to Retire? That’s an interesting book. If you’re thinking about how much money do I need to save in order to reach my goals in retirement and topics like that, so that’s definitely one that I would recommend and check out one of our podcast with him where he talks about that topic.

[0:24:37] GC: Definitely.

[0:24:39] MM: And when we’re giving shadows to people, let’s not forget about Carl Richards because his book, The Behavior Gap was just really interesting and The One Page Financial Plan as well but both of those is pretty good as well.

[0:24:56] GC: One book I like but it didn’t really help personal finance wise, it doesn’t tell you necessarily what to do but it’s has this whole Wizard of Oz sort of behind the curtains deal is Liar’s Poker by Michael Lewis. Again, it won’t tell you how to invest but it tells you what goes on Wall Street and it gives you a little of caution as to why they do the things they do.

When you get that call from a broker, should you ever be so lucky, and maybe not? But they’re doing it for a reason because they want to make a commission. They’re not doing it necessarily for your best interest. When people are trying to sell you something, it’s probably because they have some kind of financial interest in it and it’s just a very interesting historic wise too because what happens in that book seems to have ripples that last until this day.

[0:25:47] MM: Yeah and while we’re talking about Michael Lewis, The Big Short that was a fun read.

[0:25:52] GC: Or Money Ball but yeah.

[0:25:54] MM: Money Ball yeah, if you like sports.

[0:25:57] GC: Well to me, Money Ball also looks at it a little bit like The 4-Hour Workweek and it’s more of the idea than the actual thing. None of us here are going to go out and buy the athletics and try to build a team but the idea behind that though is just because somebody says, “This is the way to do it” for so long doesn’t necessarily mean that that’s the case and it doesn’t mean it’s the most efficient. It’s okay to sometimes look around and say, “You know what? Something is wrong here. The emperor has no clothes, how can I make this better?” So what other books do we have out there?

[0:26:33] MM: One of my absolute favorite books is one, it’s a satire by Terry Pratchett and it’s called Making Money and it’s another one of those behind the curtain types of stories and it’s one when he just talks about this guy who’s appointed, he becomes the royal banker and he’s supposed to figure out how to make the bank solvent and figure out economics and he’s like, “We are done with gold, we are moving..”

It was just a really funny book when you’re reading it and then you’ll get the published state and realize that it was published before the financial crash but you’re reading it and you’re going, “Oh my gosh!” And it’s just a fun satire, a fun look at money. It’s a fun way to up end the way you look at it and it’s an interesting and fun satire.

[0:27:27] GC: And anything to make reading fun.

[0:27:29] TD: If I could take a little off track, one book that made a big difference for me and certainly only Canadian but I’m sure there’s American similarities, Make Sure it’s Deductible. It’s by Evelyn Jacks. It’s a tax book but reading that made me start my business. Just the idea that, “Oh I can start a business, I’ll get all these tax perks and see how it works out.”

Like Glen, you mentioned E-Myth like something more entrepreneurially motivating but for me, it was just this idea and the process of starting a business and taking advantage of the different tax systems in place and that was a big part of it for me.

[0:28:15] GC: Yeah, I think a lot of people don’t realize that there’s a lot of behind the curtains reasons why businesses get started and why they get to be as wealthy as they do. There’s all these advantages that for the layperson isn’t privy to necessarily.

[0:28:33] PA: If you are looking for an interesting book on somebody who is the ultimate entrepreneur, I just recently read a book called, The First Tycoon: The epic life of Cornelius Vanderbilt and it goes into this guy’s life. A lot of us have heard of him before but a lot of us don’t really know his story but it’s pretty crazy how he started from just a young man with a boat, running boat trips in Manhattan.

He went from there to becoming the richest man in the United States and a railroad tycoon and all of these. So he’s the ultimate entrepreneur and definitely a cool book to check out for anybody interested in that sort of thing.

[0:29:11] GC: Yeah, a lot of the turn of the century guys made so much money that they’re all interesting in how a lot of them just came from nothing, they forced their way in to become some of the most influential people in the country for sure.

[0:29:24] MM: It also helps when you don’t pay your workers and make them live in shanty towns and have horrible conditions.

[0:29:32] PA: Yes.

[0:29:34] GC: That’s the way it was.

[0:29:35] MM: That helps.

[0:29:37] GC: I think that’s more of what’s interesting about it too because a lot of these people have these glazed over history where you remember the museums and the houses and the funds and everything that they’re named after but that was a lot of white washing after the fact for a lot of these people.

[0:29:55] MM: “We’re going to pay you crap wages, we’re going to force you to live in this town and you’re going to pay the wages that you make, you have to spend it at the company’s store because we’re only going to pay you in company script.” Alright, I’m just going to step down and back away.

[0:30:10] PA: That’s offensive.

[0:30:12] MM: Go read The Jungle. Okay, backing away.

[0:30:18] GC: Well, the history of it could be fun too and I think that’s important too. That’s why books like Liar’s Poker and such are good. It’s good to get your head around why things happen too not just why exactly you need to do because then you get a feel for the economy at large and why things happen now, why that has effect on different things too.

So sometimes seeing what they do, it gives you a different view on what’s going on. So I think we’ve thrown out a good solid library’s worth of books out there to check out and I think we could probably come up with a hundred more if we really wanted to. I know we have a lot of friends out there that have written excellent books and it’s hard to get out there and mention every one of them.

Maybe we could try to put that up on our page when we do, we’ll maybe set up some sort of resource for different books that are out there. But let’s go around and maybe give a final word on some PF books out there. So Tom, what’s your final word on favorite PF books?

[0:31:19] TD: Yeah, on our show notes we’re going to have all of our list of books with affiliate links and everything but my number one recommendation for this is get a library card and then you can read all these books for free or at least the cost of library card depending on your city and that’s how I did it. Some of my favorite books I don’t have a copy because when I first started reading everything, I was doing it from the library.

[0:31:43] GC: That’s a great point. If you’re looking to save money, you don’t have to go out and spend 25 bucks on a book. You can start off and do it for free.

[0:31:50] TD: Yeah, don’t be intimidated by this big list of books we’ve just gone through.

[0:31:55] GC: Right and just to go back off before we jump back into final word, maybe with my final word, but find the books that work for you. What is your need and find the book that really matches what you are in your finances. So Peter, what’s your final word?

[0:32:11] PA: I’ll say it with a quote from The Richest Man in Babylon. “Wealth from a tree grows from a tiny seed. The first copper you save is the seed from which your tree of wealth shall grow. The sooner you plant that seed, the sooner shall the tree grow.” And by the same token, planting that tiny seed of knowledge by getting into these books, start today.

Just find one of these books and learn a little bit more about your finances, about money and it will just grow from there. You’ll find more and more books and you’ll learn more and more as you go. So there you go.

[0:32:44] KP: That’s deep.

[0:32:46] MM: Planting Money Seeds, cool.

[0:32:50] GC: What’s the saying, “The best time to plant the tree was yesterday,” or something like that?

[0:32:54] MM: 20 years ago.

[0:32:56] GC: Okay, let’s just keep going on that.

[0:32:58] KP: Second best time…

[0:33:03] GC: Anyway, Miranda go ahead, what’s your final word?

[0:33:05] MM: Just to kind of echo what’s been said, go get a book, go a learn a little bit more about money, go learn about how money works. I think one of the most important things you can do with a lot of these books is not so much the strategy as it is learning how money works and the way it operates and how it can operate in your life. That’s the most valuable thing you can get out of most of these books.

[0:33:30] GC: And Kyle, what’s your final word?

[0:33:32] KP: Let me give a quick shout out to two Canadian books, Canadian specific books, The Value of Simple by John Robertson and Stop Overthinking Your Money by Preet Banerjee and the one thing I really like about these two is they are very logistics oriented. It’s not theory, they’re not trying to convince you, hopefully you’ve been convinced by the time you get there, they’re going to give you a few practical steps to follow and how to actually get from A to Z.

[0:33:57] GC: Awesome and you just reminded me of Ramit Sethi’s, I Will Teach You to be Rich, which has lots of scripts and how to save money, call up these carriers and say, “This is what I need you to do and this is what you’re going to set it up as and I’m going to save money now.” So there’s another one to take a look at.

So we really went through a lot. If you’re out there listening and you don’t have a place to start, you haven’t been paying attention, when this goes up, shoot us in the comments your favorite and which ones you like. So we definitely want to know because I’m sure we’ve missed plenty and there are plenty out there and so until next week, be good with your money.

ANNOUNCER: Thanks for joining us on the Money Mastermind Show. Don’t forget to subscribe to the show on iTunes and YouTube and follow us on Google Plus.

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