5 MUST Read Financial Books For Young Adults In 2023

Feb 15, 2023

There are so many books come out nowadays, but how do you know which ones actually give you a strong foundation in personal finance? Which ones give you the strong foundation so that any other financial book you read afterwards, you can put it in its right place and use the information? What are five books that lay a firm foundation for young people to build off of since the school system has failed to do so? That's what we are going to address in this article! Not in the mood to read? Feel free to watch the video below instead!

 

Since the school system does not teach you about financial literacy for the most part unless you're a major in college like business or accounting, these books can also serve as financial basics or financial education that you can just use to build a solid foundation. Any more information on finances you get from there, you can really build off of as opposed to you read or listen to a book and a lot of it goes all over your head or over your head because you don't have anywhere to effectively put it because you haven't had enough exposure.

 

1. The Anatomy Of Financial Success: The Key To Building Financial Confidence And Destroying Your Insecurities About Money

 

1st on our list is The Anatomy of Financial Success: The Key To Building Financial Confidence And Destroying Your Insecurities About Money written by yours truly, Elijah Bilel. You're going to say that's a bias putting your own book at first. Being honest though, this book was written specifically for young people because there's two aspects that young people get screwed over in financial society. First one is the school system has failed us.

They don't teach us about finances in school. We know this, but there's a higher component. I don't see many if any financial books that really take your personality into consideration when assigning financial techniques, tactics or ways of doing things when it comes to making money, income, budgeting and spending money. There are techniques that are going to work best for your personality that won't work for me and vice versa.

The Anatomy of Financial Success dives into those techniques, shows you what they are and the six personality types that inhabit the financial world as well as which one you are. From there you can find out what is the best type of income that is best for you to make based on your personality and your emotional wants and needs.

You can find out what's the best way to budget your money as well as your emotional strengths and weaknesses as we all have aspects of budgeting where we just spend money automatically. Like I just spend money here by default but in other areasI may hesitate. 

The 6 areas referred to are:

  1. Donations
  2. Business (If you have one)
  3. Investments
  4. Self Spending
  5. Expenses
  6. Savings

We're going to focus on the last four because donations and businesses, they don't come to play here. Out of the last four, two of those you just spend automatically, they're your emotional strengths. The other two of them, you're more emotionally weak in and for whatever reason you may hesitate to spend there. In order to achieve financial success, you need to figure out how to spend that money in a way that you keep moving forward financially. The Anatomy of Financial Success goes into the science of that.

In addition to that, once you know your personality, you're going to be bombarded with financial opportunities throughout your life, whether they're presented to you or you go out trying to look for them. You you need to know your financial personality so you can figure out if that opportunity is going to be good for you based on that personality. If you pick the wrong opportunity, you're going to burn out and waste your time. You may also not get the results you want versus if you pick the right opportunity, it's a license to print money. That's why I highly recommend The Anatomy of Financial Success.

  

2. Money Magic

Unleashing Your True Potential For Prosperity And Fulfillment

 

Next up we have Money Magic by Deborah L. Price. Now this book is, it's a different type of book. If I was to put it in a category it's materialistically spiritual. I don't even know if that's a phrase, but it gets into the principles of how to attract money because the whole objective of the book  is to become a money magician. You have seven other personalities that you're going to fall in and they all have their pros and cons.

So once you find out what your personality is, you see the flaws that are in there from an emotional perspective when it comes to making money.  You then make those corrections. Eventually, you want to become a money magician and then the author lays out a solid foundation that you can build off of based on your emotional strains. This book in particular I feel is a great foundation when it comes to learning some stuff about yourself as far as fundamentals of your emotions go when it comes to making money.

I also like the hierarchy that the book uses which is constructed by 2 pyramids. One is like the spiritual side when it comes to money and the other one is the material side. Anytime you're lacking in one of the tiers on those pyramids, that's saying that area needs more work and they tie it back to the personality that you have. Money Magic also lays the reasons why you shouldn't do certain things with money because it bites you in the butt in a practical way.

 

3. Increase Your Financial IQ

Get Smarter With Your Money

 

 

Coming up next is another Robert Kiyosaki book. It's one that's underrated in my opinion and it's Increase Your Financial IQ:Get Smarter with Your Money by Robert Kiyosaki. In this book, he gets into what he calls financial IQ and he breaks it down in five levels and those five levels are:

  1. Making more money.
  2. Protecting your money
  3. Budgeting your money
  4. Leveraging your money
  5. Increasing your access to financial information

Robert lays the details about each one of those and how to strengthen them. A very direct approach towards increasing your financial IQ as he puts it. Those five levels can be used as staples to measure where you're at financially and which one's your weak at. Once you find out which ones you're weak at, you can make adjustments from there.

This one is one of the more detail oriented in Robert Kiyosaki's books. A lot of his books are too conceptual in my opinion. This one is actually more on the detailed side. 

 

4. The Total Money Makeover

A Proven Plan For Financial Fitness

 

For our 4th book, we have Dave Ramsey's Total Money Makeover. A lot of you all probably expected that to be on this list. Dave Ramsey is a very detailed author and if you listen to the audio book he'll be scolding you the whole time which in itself is worth a good laugh! The point though is to get out of debt and to build wealth and his whole objective is financial peace.

This includes setting yourself up for retirement, setting your savings up and never using debt again in addition to getting yourself out of debt if you're in debt. I say this is a must read because he gives a lot of details on how to do certain things in life without necessarily needing credit. That's a good side to know. Regardless if you decide to use it or not, you should know that side of the equation.

Included are things like getting a lease without them looking at your credit score. If you do it the right way, they'll look at other things as opposed to your credit score. It also includes how to get things in cash and get a discount because most people in the sales field are so used to having to finance thing, that a cash customer is very appealing since they get a commission on the total sale which by default will be higher in that case. 

If you walk in there with cash saying that "Hey I want to get this in cash", a lot of times they'll give you a discount and if they don't you could probably negotiate a discount. it's a lot of good game as far as how to live life debt free in general in addition to not just getting out of debt but also not taking it on. You need to know that side of the equation and if you decide to follow that side, it's up to you. Even if you don't, it's just good to know.

 

5. Alpha Money Strategies

AMS's Guide Towards Financial And Mental Freedom

 

 

The book to complete out list is Alpha Money Strategies by Alpha Male Strategies. I really enjoy this book and the reason I enjoy it is it's a very direct approach towards being financially successful and I kind of see it as the masculine component of Money Magic. I considered the book Money Magic like the yin or the feminine aspect and Alpha Money Strategies the yang or the masculine aspect.

The way Alpha Male Strategies puts it is you need to find your purpose in life and figure out a way to monetize it. In the meantime though you need to develop a trade or a skill so you can make good money and try other things while you find out your purpose. You do all of this while you're setting yourself up for just a nice life, an abundant life. Once you are making good money, he recommends you get involved with the lazy dog portfolio. This is a stock market strategy where you just pick four index funds, the S&P 500, the total bond market, the total stock market, and the total international stock market and put them in a portfolio.

Then you just funnel money in there and as the market rises and falls you'll end up paying the average. He didn't use this term, but that strategy is known as dollar cost averaging where you just keep putting money in and you'll end up paying the average of how much those shares cost, but these shares are paying dividend so it's steadily just building wealth.

Even if you don't find your purpose in life, you're still getting covered, setting yourself up for a nice retirement and just living an abundant life while searching for your purpose. If you find your purpose, you can give it all you have without having to worry with all this financial stuff because of the setup he outlines. I think that that is beautiful and it's underrated in my opinion. It's a very masculine approach towards finance, but it hits the spiritual side too.

 

Honorable Mention: Rich Dad Poor Dad, What the rich teach their kids about money that the poor and middle class do not! 

First off, we have a honorable mention and that is Rich Dad Poor Dad, written by Robert Kiyosaki. Now I would like to put this in the top five but this time around I can't do that because it's just a little too basic. What it did for its time is revolutionary, introducing the aspect of assets and liabilities and making sure something really serves you. By today's standards though it's way too conceptual. People are demanding useable action, like hey show me how to directly do something.

I feel like that's really lacking in that book. I do like the graphic novel sense it's told in and it does really nail in that concept of assets and liabilities as well as the rich don't work for money. These are strong conceptual things but they don't have enough active things to show you how to do stuff like that. So it's just an honorable mention as it stands, but a good honorable mention at that.

 

Now this next part, some of you all aren't going to like, but I recommend that you read or listen to all the books at least five times before moving on to the next one. Plus, it would benefit you the most if you listened or read them in a particular order. I can hear you all now. "Hey man, why I got to read/listen in all these five times in a row? I don't have time for that." Well, it's up to you. Do you want the strong foundation so that you can build money or do you want to complain? That's just up to you. Now some of you all might say, well I ain't got time to sit down and read a book five times. Well, great news! All of these books are available in audiobook form so There are plenty of opportunities to sneak in some time to listen to them once you think about it.

So listening or reading them in this order is going to have the most benefit because some of these are over detailed and they will go of your head and some of these are more conceptual and some have a exact balance.  if you're going to include the honorable mention, it's going to be Rich Dad Poor Dad: What the Rich Teach Their Kids About Money That the Poor and Middle Class Do Not! This book is a like 75% conceptual, 25% like detail action, but that's needed when you're first getting started. You really need to lay a foundation on what mindset you need to have.

Next it's going to be Money Magic, same as Rich Dad Poor Dad in terms it being 25% like detailed stuff and 75% conceptual. Next is going to be The Anatomy of Financial Success. This is the first book in this little foundation series where it has a balance between conceptual and detail. So it's 50/50 and that's what you're going to need once you start to get a grasp of the financial concepts in general. Then you can get a more balance book where things aren't going to go over your head. The Anatomy of Financial Success is going to lay a foundation to where any book you read in the future, you'll have a place to put that information so it just doesn't fall to the wayside, so to speak.

Next up is going to be Alpha Money Strategies. Another book that strikes a good balance between conceptual and detailed. It's  50/50, so 50% detail, 50% conceptual. It has a very direct approach towards setting up a foundation in a practical way. Then next is going to be Robert Kiyosaki's Increase Your Financial IQ. This is a book that's more detailed and is actually  75% detailed, 25% conceptual. The information will go over your head if you don't read the previous books mentioned before. If you've read or listened to them though, then you're going to be fine. You can soak up all that great game.

Lastly, Dave Ramsey's Total Money Makeover which is 75% detailed, 25% concept. I mean the concept is pretty much financial peace and staying out of debt period and living debt free. Pretty easy concept. Once you read these books you can make a decision if that's for you or not. But regardless if you choose to use that or not, you need to know the other side of the equation.That's why I recommend his book comes in last, because this is probably the most detailed among all these books. Hence you need more perspective before you tackle that.

And there you have it. We have the five, or if you're going to include Rich Dad Poor Dad, six books, to lay a firm financial foundation that they can build off of. If I'm being honest, you could read or listen to these five books and stop and you would be fine. That would be the equivalent of getting, let's say an associates in quote and quote in finance. And that's good because you need to have this financial foundation. I really feel that information in these books combined really should be required as basics in college. Not that stuff about math, algebra and English and just a retread what we did in high school, which isn't going to serve us in the least in the real world in most cases.

I mean this should be the basics but that's for another article. That does it for this one though. If you would like to get any of the books covered, you can get them here. I will catch you in the next one. Don't forget to get out there and take control of your financial destiny!