Total Money Makeover
by Dave Ramsey
Tough-love cheerleader Ramsey dispenses financial advice in broad, motivational strokes rather than delving into the nuts-and-bolts technicalities of investing in this cash-is-king New York Times bestseller. Debt, here, is a deadly sin—after securing a $1,000 emergency fund, debt elimination (home excepted) is the highest priority in Ramsey’s seven-step guide to financial salvation. To the criticism of some financial experts, Ramsey encourages readers to pay off smaller debts first, regardless of interest rates, in order to maintain the motivational momentum needed to reduce debt, attain financial stability and ultimately accumulate wealth. Shared stories of success using Ramsey’s plan offer hope to others on his disciplined path toward financial health; the more dire the situation, the more applicable Ramsey’s no-nonsense advice.
The Intelligent Investor
by Benjamin Graham
Minimizing risk in your investment plan, rather than maximizing profit, forms the defense-is-the-best-offense premise of this 1949 classic, which is recommended reading by Robert Topping, founder of Williamsburg, Virginia, investment management firm Covenant Wealth Advisors. Disciplined, thoroughly researched investments based on the concept of value investing supplant the temptations of market hype and the financial destruction of impulsive, emotional investment behavior. Heralded by Warren Buffet as “by far the best book on investing ever written,” The Intelligent Investor expounds the importance of a favorable “margin of safety”—the difference in a stock’s intrinsic value and its market price—to safeguard the inevitable volatility of the market.
Your Money or Your Life
by Vicki Robin and Joe Dominguez
The unexamined financial life may not be worth living, according to “Your Money or Your Life.” Springing off the idea that, if held at gunpoint, most of us would gladly hand over our wallets to save our supposedly more-valued lives, Robin and Dominguez delve into the intersecting values of life and money. Rejecting the mutual exclusivity of happiness and money, they instead suggest the possibility of an “authentic, productive, meaningful life” free of financial discomfort. Dismissing the flowchart of wealth acquisition leading to personal fulfillment and encouraging an honest reevaluation of wants and needs through a nine-step process, the dialogue here shifts from the management of money to your (likely flawed) relationship with it.
Reminiscences of a Stock Operator
by Edwin Lefevre
“The markets are determined by human nature,” says Williamsburg, Virginia, financial advisor Richard Maurer III. “In order to better navigate through it all, one needs to know and learn to control their own self.” A timeless roman à clef based on famed stock speculator Jesse Livermore, “Reminiscences of a Stock Operator” discusses the the forces of the market through an examination of the attitudes and thought processes of investors which motivate their movement within it. Recounting the triumphs and travails and the lessons that go with them as Livingston wins and loses two multi-million-dollar fortunes, the novel is considered a classic in the art of trading and speculation. Livingston’s failures, as much as his successes, offer unconventional wisdom empirically obtained to the new and experienced investor alike.