5 Books That Launched My Income To Over $20,000/month

Hey guys! Welcome back to the channel. In this video, I'm going to be running through five books that I think everyone should read if you want to get better with money, get better with personal finance, and specifically get better with investing.

So obviously, I've read all five of these books, and to be honest, probably, you know, 75 to 80 percent of my knowledge around money, personal finance, and particularly stock market investing has come from collectively these five books. So they've definitely helped me. Like personally, my story—like six years ago, I'm 25 now, so six years ago, I was in uni, and I really didn't know anything about money.

I didn't know anything about investing. I didn't even know what compound interest really was. I started reading these books, and seriously, they've taken me from a position where, you know, I was earning maybe five hundred bucks a fortnight to now—and I hadn't even started investing at that point—so now, where I'm earning, you know, somewhere over twenty thousand dollars a month.

And I think if you look at my portfolio over the last twelve months, I've got a return of like over a hundred percent. Now, I don't say those numbers to brag, but I just say those numbers so that you realize that, you know, if you actually do take on board what that, you know, the content of these books, you're really taking on board, and you apply the knowledge that is within these books, it's the results you can get can be potentially life-changing.

I know the knowledge that I've gotten from these books has certainly changed my life. So definitely, like, just do it. Set yourself a goal, pick out these five books, and read through them. The worst that can happen is you don't like them, and you know, you don't get anything out of them, and all you've wasted is time and a little bit of money picking up the books.

Anyway, with that said, let's get into this first book, and I'm gonna put them in order—the order that I think you should read them. So if you're just coming in fresh, you don't know much about personal finance, definitely I think the place to start is probably the place—the book that everyone else would recommend as well.

It's this one—it's Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki. Now, this is quite an old book, but this book is brilliant. It says here right on the cover, "Celebrating 20 years as the number one personal finance book of all time." And you know, when I see stuff like that printed on the front of covers, I'm like, "Yeah, I don’t know if I believe that."

But honestly, the amount that I've seen— the amount of people I've seen reading this book and the amount of success people have gotten from the knowledge within this book is just phenomenal. So I definitely believe it when it says that this is the first book that I ever read to get started with, you know, personal finance and getting your finances in check and even starting to think about investing.

This is really a mindset book. This helps you get your head in the right space to learn the difference between how, say, a middle-class person goes about income and expenses and assets and liabilities to thinking how the rich person thinks about assets, liabilities, and income and expenses.

So it's really a book that teaches you how to think about money, and once you've read it, you realize the importance of cash flow. That's really what Robert Kiyosaki hammers home in this book—that the importance of cash flow and using your cash flow to buy cash-producing assets—that's the ticket to financial freedom, because you get that snowball going; you get that compound interest going.

So definitely to get your head in the right space and to learn more about money generally and how to be better with money and what to put your money towards, definitely check out this book, Rich Dad Poor Dad. I should say all the links to these books are going to be down in the description. There'll be Amazon links, though they'll be Amazon affiliate links, so if you want to support the channel, you can go through there if you wanted to pick up these books.

But if not, like, just check out the Book Depository or something. Usually, the Book Depository is cheaper than Amazon. But yeah, just pick these books up. Just do yourself a favor and read them one way or another, even if you just go to your library and check it out.

But moving on, so that’s Rich Dad Poor Dad—definitely read that one first. Then coming in second, I definitely recommend you read the Barefoot Investor, especially if you're an Australian. Now this is written by Scott Pape—he is an Australian.

So if you're living, you know, internationally, then this may not be the book for you, although the principles in this book are definitely very good. However, all of the examples in here are Australian examples. Now personally, I really like this book because this book, to me, takes the boring topic of personal finance and investing and bank accounts, credit cards, home loans, blah blah blah, and actually— it actually turns it into something that's a bit more enjoyable.

This is a light-hearted book; it's a very easy read, and you could probably get through it in an afternoon. And what I like about this book is that it goes step by step; it gives you a step-by-step plan to get your personal finances in check.

So it’s gonna start by, you know, figuring out sorting out your bank accounts, and then after you've sorted out your bank accounts, then he talks about, you know, saving up an emergency fund. After you've got your emergency fund, he talks about starting to snowball your debts, get rid of your debts. Then after that, he talks about how to get started with investing if you want to be a passive investor, and then he talks about retirement, yeah!

So it’s got a nice logical flow, and the steps in here he does a really good job of making this topic really interesting. So I definitely recommend you check out the Barefoot Investor. Read Rich Dad Poor Dad first, and then go on to the Barefoot Investor.

So those two books—Rich Dad Poor Dad and the Barefoot Investor—are really more geared toward personal finance and less about investing specifically. Now the last three books—once you've got your personal finance situation in check—then we start to look at investing.

And these last three books I'm gonna talk about are all about stock market investing. Now, one of the seriously one of the best books I've ever read—obviously, because it's in my top five list—one of the best books I've ever read on stock market investing has been this—this is an absolutely classic, One Up On Wall Street by Peter Lynch.

Now, this is actually a book that a lot of people read, and this is the book that gets them into stock market investing because back in the day when he wrote this, this was kind of one of the first books that made the daunting topic of stock market investing actually understandable for anyone. Like, any average Joe could actually read and learn the secrets to stock market investing from Peter Lynch, who ran the Fidelity Magellan fund for, I think, 13 years, and he got an average annual return of twenty-nine point two percent.

So this is a guy that definitely knows what he's doing—he turned eighteen million dollars, okay, in his Fidelity Magellan fund—he turned eighteen million dollars into fourteen billion dollars in thirteen years. That’s nuts! That's the twenty-nine point two percent compound annual return.

But going back to this book, obviously, he knows what he's doing, and the way that he writes is very easy to understand—it makes sense. He explains, you know, step by step what you need to do, what you need to look out for, what you need to avoid. In fact, one of Peter Lynch's big, big topics that he likes to talk about—one of his most famous quotes—is you have to know what you own.

So Peter Lynch is really big into finding investments that mean something to you, finding companies that you understand, that you're actually interested in, and going deep into those companies. But this book's fantastic. I mean, it tells you exactly what he looks like—it talks about companies, how to categorize companies, so that the different buckets that you might put different companies into, whether it be star performers or fast growers or whatever, and then he talks about when you're looking at each of those categories, what you need to look for in those companies that will make them good investments.

So he talks a lot about that, what you need to look at with each company, and make sure it is a good investment. He talks about what are the characteristics of stocks that you should avoid. He talks a lot about the psychology of investing and how a lot of people trip themselves up purely on psychology alone. He talks about creating a really bulletproof investing thesis for the company that you do end up investing in.

Overall, this is just a really solid read. You can tell when you read this that this guy knows what he's talking about; you know that he's been there, and you know that he's done that, right? So he's a very successful investor, and this is a very good book, and it takes you step-by-step through what he looks for in a stock but he doesn't look for in a stock—the psychology, the headspace he needed—all of that stuff.

So I definitely recommend One Up On Wall Street by Peter Lynch. It's definitely a good book. Now, second to last book I wanted to talk about—I’ve got it here—this one is a little bit more safe theoretical, but I guess it does get down to it eventually.

This book is The Dando Investor by Mohnish Pabrai, and this is a really good book because again, it's an easy read. So you can tell I like books that are easy to get through. I actually didn't include The Intelligent Investor in this list because it's just so incredibly hard to get through, but this is a really good book because it’s written by Mohnish Pabrai, who is obviously a very successful investor.

But this is one of the first books I read which really opened my eyes up to the Warren Buffett style, Charlie Munger style value investing approach that has worked just incredibly well for so many investors over decades and decades and decades. So yes, this book does get into what you actually need to look for to find great investments, but as I've seen before, the reason that I really like this book is that it's just a really good book to change your mindset around investing.

So for instance, Mohnish Pabrai is really big on—all the way he explains it is when you make an investment in the stock market, you know, think about it as just a bet; like you're gambling. That it's not a gamble, but think about it like it's a bet. And then he talks about the mindset or the things you need to look forward to actually skew the odds in your favor as the investor.

So he tries to find his investing strategies to try and find bets where, you know, heads I win but tails I don’t lose much. And I really like this book because the first book that specifically debunks the idea that investors have been clinging on to for decades—that to get a higher return, you need to take on more risk—that's not true.

This book plays on the fact that there's always risk in stock market investing, like what you would experience if you walked into the casino. But with investing, unlike the casino, you can find situations where the odds are in your favor, right? And that's what we have to try and exploit as opposed to going to the casino and, you know, the odds are never in your favor.

Anyway, so this is, you know, this is a fantastic book. I loved The Dando Investor. He's really funny; you know, his idols are Warren Buffett, Charlie Munger, those sort of guys. So this is a fantastic book. It talks about, you know, those classic Warren Buffett style investment points, like finding an intrinsic competitive advantage or a moat. He talks extensively about margin of safety.

So it's just a really easy book to read; it's a good mindset investing mindset kind of book. So I definitely recommend you check out The Dando Investor. Now let’s move on into the number one book that I would recommend if you want to get better with your investing, and if you've been following this channel for any length of time, this will come as no surprise but I'm going to mention it anyway.

The book is Rule One by Phil Town. Now, this is the best stock market book I have ever read because this one doesn't flirt around the surface of Warren Buffett's strategy just talking about the philosophy here. You know, you've got to find a company with a moat; you have to make sure you've got a margin of safety.

This book gets into the nitty-gritty and it tears apart, you know, company's balance sheets and income statements, and it tells you—look out of the financial data that you find out that a company has to release, quarterly reports or whatever— this is how you prove that a company has an economic moat. This is how you prove that the management team operates with skill and operates with integrity.

This is how you check the business valuation; this is how you check that you're actually getting a margin of safety price. This book is literally—I hope that every investor out there at least at some stage in their investing career reads this book because it is an, again, an easy read.

It's broken down—it breaks down Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger's strategy into four key points, which is what I talked about on the channel all the time. First of all, understanding the business or having meaning. The company has to have meaning to you; then talking about competitive advantage—right? Having a moat; then talking about assessing the management team, and then checking that you can get a margin of safety price, doing that valuation.

This book does get into the nitty-gritty, which is actually what I love about it, but it never gets so deep that you just get completely lost. Like, if you're a brand new investor, you could definitely read and understand this book. I definitely recommend you read the other ones first to get a more complete understanding, but you could definitely read this as a complete beginner, and you get a really good investing education out of it.

So definitely check out Rule One. So overall, they're my top five—first, all about personal finance, getting your head in the right space, and then three specifically about stock market investing. And as I said, probably I attribute 75 to 80 percent of the success that I've had in the stock market and with my personal finance situation. I really do credit it to these books and the lessons that are in these books.

So, you know, you can check them out. As I said, links are in the description, but you know, if you want to just check it out at your library or go to Book Depository, try and get it cheaper or something like that, just do yourself a favor and just take the time over the next couple of months maybe just to read through all five of these books, and I can guarantee you'll come out a better investor.

You'll come out better with your money—all that sort of stuff. Anyway, guys, that will do it for this video. Thanks very much for watching! Leave a like on the video if you did enjoy it, and I'd love to hear from you guys in the comment section—what are some of your favorite stock market investing personal finance books? Would you rank some other books higher than the ones that I've put in this video? I'd love to hear from you guys, so drop that stuff down in the comment section below.

And maybe I have to read some of the books you guys suggest and come back with a part two of this video sometime. But definitely check out these books! Check out Profit Full as well if you'd like a more visual guide as to how to get started with stock market investing. If you'd prefer to look through a video course that I've made, you can check that link down in the description below if that's something that interests you.

But that’ll do me for this video. You guys, thanks very much for watching, and I'll see you all in the next video. [Music] [Music]