A List of Books That Will Make You Rich

I read this book about 20 years ago and its timeless concepts have helped me to make and/or save many thousands of dollars. The ideas from this book that have helped me the most are:

1. Do not be afraid to pay premium prices for expert services, such as accountants, lawyers, brokers, consultants, etc.
2. Think outside of the box. Success is not achieved in a linear fashion.
3. Recognize what assets and liabilities are. The house you live in, your rare collectibles, your car, and your jewelry are not assets! Basically, if something takes money out of your pocket, it is a liability. The poor spend their money exclusively on liabilities. The rich (who want to remain rich) buy liabilities only with the money that is generated from their assets.
4. Become a generalist, not a specialist. Specialists know more and more of less and less and can narrow themselves into a dead-end job. Generalists are good at employing specialists!
5. Strive for entrepreneurship. If you try to just have a job, you will probably be Just Over Broke (job) forever.

This classic book from the 1930's is all about being positive and having unwavering determination. It is full of ideas that have helped me immensely throughout the years:

1. Seek to form a Mastermind Group.
2. Develop a burning desire to be successful.
3. Surround yourself with people with specialized knowledge.
4. Harness your sexual energy to productive endeavors.
5. Move forward with 100% conviction. Leave no easy way out for yourself.

This book presents common sense concepts with a very compelling story. This fictitious story is so intriguing that I think it could be turned into an epic movie. It will entertain and impress upon you the necessity to:

1. Save a portion of every dollar that you make (10% to be exact).
2. Invest the money that you make very wisely. Beware of scams, because many tricksters are eagerly waiting to get their hands on your hard-earned money.
3. There are no shortcuts to success.
4. Own your own home. Do not rent.
5. Be ready. By having discipline and becoming financially educated, special opportunites will present themselves to you.

David Bach is extremely action oriented. This book will make you angry when you realize how much money you have been wasting on a daily basis. In fact, this book made me so angry that I read it completely in one night and started taking action immediately on the following day. It will compell you to:

1. Automate the payment of your bills. This will reduce your stress and allow you to focus on more important things.
2. Automate your thiving, otherwise you won't do it! I started sponsoring two kids in Africa because of this book. Now, 15 years later it is still automated and going...
3. Automate your savings and investments, otherwise you won't do it!
4. Own your own home instead of renting.
5. Refinance your 30 year mortgage to 15 years. I refinanced my home after reading this book, and now it is almost paid off. This was one of the best decisions of my life.

This is a tiny book with a silly story about mice that have to navigate their way through a maze. Each of the mice have different personalities that represent the inner fears that you may have when faced with life's challenges. This book will teach you some powerful and lasting concepts, such as:

1. Change is constant and is a part of life, accept it.
2. Change can trigger similar emotions as grief when someone dies. These emotions are: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.
3. Acceptance must be arrived at as soon as possible when change disrupts your the good things in your life (cheese).

This book is not necessarily an easy read with over 600 pages. But, the revised edition has commentaries that help to update some of its old examples to today's world. This book contains many timeless investment advices from Warren Buffett's mentor himself: Benjamin Graham. Some of the important ideas that you will learn are:

1. Buy stocks from sound businesses using a discounted future dividends model to arrive at a rough "intrinsic" value. Buy only when there is a significant "margin of safety." In other words, when the market price appears so under the value that it is difficult to lose in the long run. In the short-term, price and value can differ greatly, but if you give it enough time (of at least a few years), price should "always" catch up with value.
2. Graham's intrinsic value approximation is probably not as good as the conventional DCF theory, but it is worth considering. It can be calculated with the formula:
   V = EPS x (8.5 + 2g) x 4.4/Y
   Obviously this cannot be used in isolation, since debt, overall market prospects, product obsoletion, trends, quality of management, and many other qualitative and quantitative factors must be weighed. But it is a starting point, I suppose.
3. Ignore the news. Use Mr. Market's craziness to your advantage. Have the courage to buy when everyone is selling and sell when everyone is buying.
4. Index funds are a really good idea for the non-enterprising investor. Even better if you dollar cost average into it.

This fantastic book contains wisdom and exciting stories from the world's most successful traders and investors. I have read this book at least 10 times in the last 15 years and it remains one of my favorite books of all time. Some of my takeaways from this book are that:

1. Risk management is way more important than a trading strategy.
2. There are an almost infinite number of trading and investment approaches, but you have to find an approach that fits your personality, time frame, and capital.
3. All successful traders and investors are extremely disciplined and have a robust system, or at least a very specific set of rules.
4. All successful traders have thoroughly studied and backtested their strategies so they have a lot of conviction to keep executing trades during the inevitable draw-down periods.
5. When a position goes against you, simply cutting it in half will get you out of a lot of trouble.