Personal Finance Book Suggestions?

luc13n asks: "I've seen others making requests for books or reading suggestions. I've been out of college and working professionally in the IT field for two years now. I have some money in the checking account and the savings account and I've started wondering... is there a better way to manage my money? Kinda the old adage 'make your money work fo you'. Does anyone have any good suggested readings to teach a 'young'n' how to 'make his money work for him'?"

Comments

"Your money or your life"

[Nutcase]

Before you run off and start investing and "making your money work for you" in the traditional sense, have a look at this. It certainly doesn't fall into the traditional "more more more" mindset of most people - instead if focuses on "what is enough" and making you happy.

In the words of the late, great Douglas Adams - "these people were extraordinarilly unhappy and attempted to correct their problem by spending all their time moving small pieces of green paper around - which is odd because on the whole it wasn't the pieces of green paper that were unhappy."

Just a different perspective from the norm - but one that may do more for you than any book on the money markets ever could.

Re:"Your money or your life"

[PD]

Right. There's two kinds of money - enough, and not enough. When I was in college I had no money. Just like a lot of people. I determined back then that when I reached the point where I could decide to go to the theater and see a movie, on a whim, any time I liked, without worrying about paying the phone bill, that would meet my definition of "enough" money. Everything past that would be gravy.

What I discovered was that it takes a surprisingly small amount of money to meet that definition. I'm not saying that you should set your goals as I did way back when I was a poor college student, but you should set some kind of goals first. What do you want to make the money for?

If your goal is to make a billion dollars in order to become a patron of the arts, that's a completely different strategy than to save two million dollars by the time you are 65, so you can go on a permanent RV camping trip driving between your children's homes.

Pick your goal first, figure out how much money is "enough", and center your life on the improvement of the person and not the acquisition of stuff in the meantime.