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The Best Finance Books For Modern Men

11 Essential Finance Books For The Modern Man

June 12, 2017

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Today’s education system falls short of preparing you to deal with the real world and its approach to financial responsibility. What you hear is often well-meaning advice from friends and family, but advice that falls short of leading you to financial success. In the end, you do what everyone else does: get a job, go to school, get a credit card, open a bank account, buy a car with borrowed money, and go through the same motions.

The problem is that most men are not financially successful and if you do what everyone else is doing then it’s likely you’ll end up with the same results.

Recipe for Disaster

“Too many people spend money they earned..to buy things they don't want..to impress people that they don't like.” - Will Rogers

Excessive spending and poor financial habits are the root cause of the financial failure of most men today. Western society has made it possible for the modern man to live in the greatest technological age, where access to information is at the touch of a button, yet most men are financially illiterate.

A 2015 report from the U.S. Census Bureau shows that the average American household has $16,748 in credit card debt, with $134,643 in total debt, which includes mortgage loans, auto loans, and personal loans. Adding to that, only 1 in 3 Americans have adequately saved enough to retire, leaving many men unable to provide for themselves without working in their later years.

This is made worse by marketers who constantly bombard you with ads designed to appeal to your vanity, desire for status and pursuit of pleasure. These messages are structured to associate these emotions with their product to trigger you into impulse buying and overspending. Combining these factors -- rising consumer debt, no retirement savings, and impulse buying -- you find the recipe for financial disaster.

The good news is that the best personal finance books available to you will lead to financial literacy. Through education, study, and putting their ideas to use, you can gain control of your finances and achieve independence.

The Best Personal Finance Books

“Rich Dad, Poor Dad” by Robert Kiyosaki

Kiyosaki documents his rise from well-to-do middle class kid from Hawaii in this book to rich entrepreneur and real estate investor. More than that, Kiyosaki breaks from traditional teachings about personal finance and explains how looking at assets and expenses from a different point-of-view shows how most people end up poor. What we think are assets are actually expenses that have no real value and end up costing his money.

That said, one of his more controversial claims is that a house is not an asset, but an expense. Expenses are things that cost you money -- which, under his definition, a house would be. Taxes, upkeep, maintenance, utilities, and a mortgage payment are all things that you have to account for when buying a home. Examples of assets include dividend-paying stocks and rental real estate that support your lifestyle and grow in value over time. In effect, they don’t cost you anything but generate a surplus income. There is a lot more good information in this book but the best parts will show you how to move assets and expenses around on your balance sheet. In the end, the one that has more assets to support them and fewer expenses to eat away at their finances ends up rich in the end.
$12.16 at Amazon.com

“Richest Man in Babylon” by George S. Clason

This is a short read containing a simple parable to explain some basic financial principles like saving 10% and investing it. If you’re thinking that this is simple then, you’re right, it is. But that’s because it’s meant to be, because if it’s simple, then you can do it. On the flip side, not doing the simple things would be a mistake.

Human beings tend to over-complicate simple solutions, which lead to poor results.

In ancient Babylon, poor people used to sell themselves into slavery in order to raise money. They used this money to settle old debts before becoming indentured or to take care of their elderly parents or family. They also did it because their new owner would have to provide for them in the form of food and shelter, which could be in short supply in those days. To gain back their freedom, the indentured servant would have to pay off the original debt they sold themselves for plus interest, as well as the expenses for food and shelter. Many of the indentured were never able to secure their freedom as a result.

Many of us do the same thing with credit card debt, working each day trying to keep our head above water but never getting out from under the shackles of financial servitude. This book offers a simple, workable plan to secure your own freedom from the slavery of debt.
$6.86 at Amazon.com

“I Will Teach You To Be Rich” by Ramit Sethi

This book gets right to the point and offers a multi-pronged attack to get ahead and be financially free. From asking for a raise, steps on how to invest early, avoid consumer debt, live a rich life, strategic credit card use, getting your dream job and more, the author gives you a comprehensive plan to get ahead.

There is a lot of actionable advice in this book but the thing that helps it stand out is that the author doesn’t just talk about budgets and sacrifice; he stresses how to make more money at the same time. Written for Millennials but applicable to any age, this book should be a part of your library and put to use immediately.
$7.95 at Amazon.com

“Money: Master The Game” & “Unshakeable” by Tony Robbins

Tony Robbins is on a mission to arm you with the facts and tools to secure your financial future. In his first book, “Money: Master The Game,” Robbins interviewed some of the world’s greatest investors and financial minds about how the average person can become wealthy. The answers he discovered were the importance of getting compound interest to work for you, diversification, guaranteed income streams, how to counter the toxic effects of inflation, planning for “black swan” events, avoiding debt, and protecting your investment capital against the unexpected.

He also details how the mutual fund industry eats away at your returns through misreporting its performance and how they get away with it. Robbins will also give you an education on how to spot where hidden fees exist in your mutual fund’s prospectus and how to find better places to invest your money. This is a massive resource chock-filled with statistics and interviews to back up the actionable advice to help you become wealthy.

Later, Robbins wrote “Unshakeable” to include all the material that he couldn’t include in the first book; in this second book, he focused on creating an “unshakeable” financial portfolio.

The book focuses on securing your financial peace of mind by giving you a playbook which centers around four key principles:

Don’t lose money.
Asymmetric risk/reward.
Tax efficiency.
Diversification.

In addition to all of this knowledge, Robbins also guides you through several exercises to raise your mental/emotional states of mind. He does this to help you be more present, to live at a higher level of experience while being immune to the petty distractions and setbacks of life.
Money – $12.87 at Amazon.com

Unshakeable – $7.85 at Amazon.com

“Killing Sacred Cows” by Garrett B. Gunderson

Gunderson does a good job at delivering exactly what his book’s title suggests by attacking most of our common beliefs about money and investing.

The book’s premise is that financial myths are destructive and it’s only by killing the sacred cows that we have a chance to reclaim our wealth. The current investment and retirement system in play is the result of scarcity thinking, according to Gunderson. The idea that the pie is finite, with little to go around, influences investment decisions in the worst way at the worst time. We are optimistic when we should be skeptical and skeptical when we should be optimistic, causing us to buy investments at the wrong moment and sell when we should be buying more.

The whole book upends your commonly held beliefs about money, making you think long and hard about how to manage with your finances. It’s a great mind-bender that will help you spot new opportunities in your financial life that you were blind to before you read this book.
$17.34 at Amazon.com

“The Automatic Millionaire” by David Bach

This is a short, simple read about an average American couple that never made more than $55,000 a year between the two of them yet ended up millionaires with two debt-free homes for little more than the price of a latte each day. Bach labels this the “Latte Factor,” where you can setup an automatic retirement account using a small amount of money, then let its compound interest work its magic.

Like “The Richest Man in Babylon,” the book’s lessons are easy to learn and easy to implement. Using just the simple steps laid out in the book can put you on the path to becoming a millionaire, let alone debt-free.
$8.92 at Amazon.com

“Debt-Free by 30: Practical Advice for the Young, Broke, and Upwardly Mobile” by Jason Anthony & Karl Cluck

If you find yourself teetering on the edge of financial abyss due to excessive debt, then this book can help bring you back from the brink. The authors show you a step-by-step plan on how to get out from under the weight of crushing consumer debt. And, once you’re debt-free, how to go forward so that you never find yourself in the same dire straits again.

As an aside, what makes this book so valuable is that it’s good medicine for sick finances. Debt is dragging down the standard of living for working people and the system is designed to make it easy to keep getting deeper and deeper into debt. This is particularly devastating to young people in their 20’s because it sets them up to be in debt well into their 30’s, 40’s, and beyond. It trains them to bridge the costs of living by using credits, creating a snowball effect that has them making debt payments for the rest of their lives.

While this book’s title is geared towards people in their 20’s, it’s a great resource for anyone who wants to become debt-free.
$6.04 at Amazon.com

“The Behavior Gap - Simple Ways to Stop Doing Dumb Things with Money” by Carl Richards

Richards is a financial planner that grew tired of seeing smart people do dumb things with their money, so he decided to write this book about it. Financial professionals often see first-hand the patterns that their customers make with their finances. Otherwise intelligent, hard-working individuals seem to take unnecessary risks and spend too much on the wrong things. Richards became frustrated at seeing people make bad mistakes over and over again, so he decided to look closer at the root causes and write about them.

Among his observations, he found that:

People spend too much time on the wrong things.
They bought investments at too high of a price and sold them too cheap.
They spent too much money on the wrong things.
People fail to have meaningful financial goals.
Most engaged in bad money habits that ate away at their financial security.
They used emotional-based decisions on money rather than employ an actionable plan.

The book is a deeper look at the underlying negative behaviors that result in poverty and a lack of financial security. By studying its lessons, it can help you avoid the pitfalls and traps that bad behaviors can create without you being aware of it until it’s too late.
$12.77 at Amazon.com

“Total Money Makeover” by Dave Ramsey

Imagine that you are the CEO of a huge corporation that has just found itself in financial trouble. Saddled with too much debt and not enough income to service that debt, you decide to sell off non-performing parts of the business to pay down that debt while working at raising more income. This book is a resource to give you the same tools to make those types of decisions for your own life.

It’s common for men to be paying a mortgage, auto loans, student loans, credit cards, and more. Factor in life’s essentials like food, medicine, clothes, gas, insurance, and taxes, and it can be an enormous strain to make your dollars stretch. In this book, Ramsey lays out the case for why the goal of every man or couple should be to become debt-free and then work to secure their financial freedom. Then, he spends the rest of the book revealing a plan to help you accomplish those goals.

The thing that is different about “Total Money Makeover” is that Ramsey doesn’t sugarcoat his message. He lets you know that it’s going to be tough and you will have to make sacrifices along the way. You may have to get a second job to help raise money. Also, you may have to sell off some of your possessions to pay off your debt. But, in the end, you’ll be debt-free and on the path to financial security.
$13.98 at Amazon.com

“The Millionaire Next Door” by Thomas Stanley

Private jets, $2,000 custom designer suits, gold cufflinks, caviar, 5-star hotels, jet-setting around the globe, an entourage, a mansion, champagne, caviar, and a life of luxury are common images of the millionaire lifestyle but reality tells a different story.

Thomas Stanley did an in-depth study of millionaires across the country and found that the average millionaire was quite different from the stereotype just described.

This book blows up several myths about millionaires commonly held by the public, but the most important part of the book that he reveals is that their success can be duplicated. Stanley’s book proves that millionaires aren’t restricted to Silicon Valley founders or Wall Street hedge fund traders but are found throughout Middle America.

Everyday people become millionaires in North America through prudent investment or owning a small business or through buying real estate. The methods people use to get rich are as varied as the people themselves, according to the studies in this book. That’s good news, because it shows that it’s achievable and that you can duplicate their success.

Even better, Stanley details common patterns among millionaires that you can emulate such as:

Being frugal is a value.
Education is highly stressed (many don’t have college degrees but they invest in specialized knowledge).
They work hard and are extremely focused.
They avoid consumer debt like the plague but deploy business debt with an eye on controlling risk.
They focus on buying assets (ex. stocks, real estate, businesses, etc.) but avoid liabilities (ex. new cars which depreciate quickly).
They are highly family oriented.

After reading the book, you’ll start to realize that the path to becoming a millionaire is simpler than you thought. But it also reveals that simple doesn’t mean easy, because it does take hard work and sacrifice but it is achievable if you’re willing to commit to the lessons detailed within these pages.
$14.99 at Amazon.com

Parting Thoughts

In closing, consider that life is meant to be more than just living day-by-day and paying bills. It’s more than just showing up each day and earning a living to go back home, sit in front of a TV, stressing about your loans, wondering if there is more to life before going to bed and doing it all over again the next day.

That is not living; it’s just existing.

You were meant to be more than a cog in a wheel making minimum monthly credit card payments. You should have responsibilities, yes, but your first responsibility is to yourself and it starts by getting smarter about the game being played. That game is of debt and investment. The books listed here can provide the education to help you win that game and live life on your terms, not on anyone else’s.

Go now and pick the one book that speaks to your situation and then begin to implement its lessons. Over time, you will gain momentum and you’ll be on track to living a debt-free life, with a future of financial independence and even wealth ahead of you.

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