[0:00]In this video, I'm going to share with you six of my all-time favorite personal finance books that I've had the biggest impact to my life over the last few years and have completely changed my mindset when it comes to money and time.
[0:11]I'll share a key takeaway from each of these so you have a little preview of what you're getting yourself into.
[0:15]Number one, I will teach you.
[0:18]The whole premise of this book is that it's not about the money you make, it's about the money you keep and what you do with that money that will really make a difference.
[0:26]You could be earning 70-80 grand a year, but if you don't know how to manage your money, you will just be living paycheck to paycheck.
[0:32]One of the things I find most frustrating when I hear people from finance backgrounds speak to people from non-finance backgrounds is their inability to use simple words when explaining something.
[0:41]Seth gets us bang on. He uses the terms that are very understandable to the everyday layman from all walks of life.
[0:50]His advice is pretty unconventional. He says buy all the lattes you want, use credit cards to your advantage, and don't think about the pennies but focus instead on the big ticket items.
[0:57]The chapters have very clear actions on things you could do, like where you can open up your bank accounts, how to get out of debt, as well as things like how to bucket your money between fixed costs, between savings, between investing and guilt-free spending.
[1:10]So if you're looking for a very practical and actionable book, he's your man.
[1:14]Next up we have the 4-Hour Work Week.
[1:17]This book has been very pivotal to my life. If you have an interest in entrepreneurship or in business in the slightest sense, you really have to read this book.
[1:25]Ever since I've got this book, I've kind of formed a very clear picture on exactly what I'm aiming for and also how I'm going to get there.
[1:30]And it's the kind of book, I do wish I read like 10 years ago. I would have done many things differently.
[1:34]This book has inspired me to think out the box and question everything I know about productivity, about time and about money.
[1:40]Most of us follow the same routine where we go to school, we graduate, we get a great job, we work super hard and make loads of money and then eventually retire.
[1:48]But this book questions that whole system, why should we be working until we're 65, 70, when we can't even enjoy that money or have the ability to enjoy that money as much, but instead take those 20-30 years after retirement and spread them throughout our life instead.
[2:02]He calls this mini-retirements. He also alludes to this concept of the new rich, which is when you have total control of when you work and where you work from.
[2:10]And he explains how the new rich generally have automated streams of passive income that allow them to work as much as they want or as little as they want from anywhere they want to work from.
[2:18]And in this book, he includes a lot of practical steps for creating passive income streams that allow you to live the new rich lifestyle.
[2:27]He also gives tips to office employees on how they can live the new rich lifestyle whilst still keeping their corporate job.
[2:33]I've received a few comments on the back of another video that I made as to how I balance the side hustles whilst working a full-time job in banking.
[2:39]And a big reason why is down to the learnings of this book.
[2:43]It has so many tips and tricks on being efficient, things like outsourcing to remote workers, automating things, batching different tasks so you could churn out things, churn out more stuff.
[2:52]And the reason why I've been able to play around with so many ideas without burning out is because I've taken on so many of the ideas that Tim Ferriss talks about in this book.
[3:00]Next up, we have Rich Dad Poor Dad.
[3:03]I know you've probably heard of this one time and time again, but it is the number one top selling personal finance book for a reason.
[3:08]And I've put this one in because it really was a tipping point for me from having an employee mindset and thinking about purely income to having a business mindset and thinking about generating and building wealth.
[3:20]And the storyline is that there are two dads. Robert has a rich dad and a poor dad, and they have very different mindsets.
[3:25]In the book, Robert explores the mindset that these two dads had when it came to money.
[3:30]The dad who had impeccable grades, qualifications and qualifications, a high-paying job, but was living paycheck to paycheck was a poor dad, and the rich dad who came from a completely different background and had a completely different mindset when it came to money, the way he spoke about it, the way he treated it, the way he used it, and the way he made more money from it.
[3:47]And in this book you take on the journey of these two individuals and their mindset when it comes to finances and wealth building.
[3:54]And by the end of the book, it's so clear as to what makes one of them rich and the other one poor.
[3:59]School doesn't teach us the things that are in this book, why you shouldn't just stop at your day job, the tax implications of an entrepreneur versus an employee, financial literacy as a whole.
[4:08]And the most important takeaway from this book is the way he describes asset and liabilities.
[4:12]The wealthy buy assets, whereas the poor and the middle class buy liabilities. Liabilities cost money to buy and they cost money to maintain.
[4:19]Whereas on the other hand, every dollar you invest into an asset becomes an employee that is working for you when you're not working.
[4:25]The goal is to get your income as high above your expenses as possible so that you can invest the disposable income, you can invest the difference into assets which create more income, and then there's this beautiful cycle of increasing cash flow, increasing assets, increasing cash flow, increasing assets.
[4:39]Next up, we have the cash flow quadrant. This is kind of like a sequel to Rich Dad Poor Dad, but it's a bit more sophisticated.
[4:47]And in this book, Robert goes through the key steps that him and his wife took to go from being homeless to building wealth and retiring young.
[4:54]In this book, Robert drills into the four sections or the quadrants of different ways we can earn money, and he categorizes that into four ways, employees, self-employed, business, and investors.
[5:07]Most of us are conditioned to become employees or self-employed, and that's the way the system has been created.
[5:10]We don't have lessons on business or on finance, not at school, at least I didn't, and no one learns how to become an entrepreneur or how to invest their money.
[5:18]But Robert says that true wealth come from the B and the I segment because of the freedom it gives you, and it's all about building passive income.
[5:26]So since I've graduated, I've always had a foot in the E quadrant, but I'm trying more and more to explore the other quadrants.
[5:32]And if I look at the people around me and those that have kind of made it in terms of freedom and passive income are those in the B and the I cash flow quadrants.
[5:40]So this book is about being intentional with which quadrant you want to be in, and just because you're in one now, it doesn't mean that you can't make that shift, and also doesn't mean that you can't make that shift overnight.
[5:50]It just means using your time and money wisely, so you can cross over to another quadrant if that's what you want to do.
[5:55]And this book gives you all the skills and the mindset shifts that you need to make to make that shift.
[6:00]Next up, we have Think and Grow Rich.
[6:03]There's a lot of controversy around this book and that it's a bit kind of fluffy, a bit airy-fairy and kind of like the Secret, the Law of Attraction.
[6:09]But I personally am a huge believer in what the mind can believe, the mind can't achieve with the right actions, of course, to back that.
[6:16]And I feel like the first step in getting anywhere is to have this kind of outrageous level of self-belief that you can do anything.
[6:23]And over the course of 20 years, the author Napoleon Hill interviewed a bunch of people that had built huge fortunes from scratch, and he found common things amongst all of them.
[6:31]And he basically outlines in this book the blueprint for how anyone can become rich.
[6:36]This book makes you realize that it doesn't take money to make money necessarily, it does take the right mindset.
[6:41]And he says that getting rich requires three key things.
[6:44]Number one, desire, number two, a plan, and number three, an unwavering focus, and these three things will unleash the opportunities you need to make money.
[6:53]People think that it's all the latest things, the latest gadgets, the most revolutionary ideas you have to do, but it really comes down to these three timeless principles that stand the test of time.
[7:01]It might be a bit fluffy for some people, but money and wealth really is about the mindset, and less in my opinion about knowing the complicated financial things and the financial actions that you need to do.
[7:12]This book rewires your brain and makes you think completely differently about finances in a way that makes the whole making money and managing your money so interesting.
[7:21]Next up, we have Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg.
[7:25]The books I've mentioned so far are about managing your money, making money grow for you in a way where you can secure independence and secure financial abundance.
[7:32]Managing your money is one part of it, but to really propel and speed up that process, you got to manage your money, manage your expenses, but also increase your income, increase your revenue.
[7:42]And for a lot of people watching this, I imagine our day job is a huge source of that income, it's the foundation.
[7:46]That's why the next book I want to recommend is Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg.
[7:50]A lot of what we see and hear about today is about owning a business, about being an entrepreneur or whatever, but the reality is a lot of us do work in day jobs.
[7:58]And so we need to know how to make the most out of our situation and make sure we are getting the pay we deserve and the money we deserve for the work that we're putting in.
[8:06]This book provides a lot of advice on how to climb up that corporate ladder and encourages women to take more risks, be more ambitious in the professional goals, gain confidence, demand more and generally gun for those leadership positions.
[8:18]This book is both for women and for men, the men that want to support their partners in achieving their goals and understanding what they have to do.
[8:25]I want to do more book reviews on non-personal finance books as well.
[8:28]There's quite a few that have completely changed the way I think, and if you're interested in that, then let me know, I'll make more of those videos.
[8:34]I am also going to record a Q&A next week.
[8:37]If you have any questions that you want to ask, put them in the comments below or DM them over on my Instagram and I'll get them answered.
[8:43]Thank you so much for watching. Don't forget to subscribe if you haven't already, otherwise I hope to see you in my next video.
