﻿What is one habit that all successful people have in common?
They are all readers. And I'm not talking
about just few pages. They read alot. It's reported that Bill Gates read about
50 books a year - he even takes 2 week out of the year just to dedicate himself to reading.
Warren Buffet spends 80% of his day reading. Elon Musk, the founder of Tesla and
Space X, taught himself rocket science simply by reading tons of science books.
Oprah Winfrey refers to reading as her "path to personal freedom."
Once she learned to read at the age of 3, she discovered there was a whole world to
conquer that went beyond her farm in Mississippi. So are you ready to conquer the world as well?
Hi, my name is Tae from Financial Tortoise - a channel dedicated to creating Personal Finance
content for the Sandwich Generation. Introduction: In this video, I'll be
sharing three of my favorite personal finance books which helped my wife
and I to reach financial security in our 30s. Before we start, I've time stamped each book,
so if there's any part of the video that you'd like to skip, then don't worry it's all right
there in the description Let's get started.
Number One "Total Money Makeover" by Dave Ramsey I first got introduced to Dave Ramsey by a friend
who had extra tickets to one of his conferences. I've read a lot of other personal finance books
before - "Rich Dad Poor Dad" by Robert Kiyosaki, "The Richest Main in Babylon" by George Clason,
"Think and Grow Rich" by Napoleon Hill. They are great books and in no ways am I
recommending you don't read them, but for me they were just too high level mindset focused and not
enough on down to earth mechanics - most often it was hard to connect the concepts from those
books to the reality of my personal situation. I spent my twenties following the traditional
path to success - or what I believed was the path to success.
Attend good college, get a good grades. Become a professional - something that
makes a good salary and is well respected. By the age of 30, I felt I had hit all the
appropriate targets expected of me by my immigrants parents.
Graduate college in 4 years. Receive a commission to the United States Army and rise to the rank of
a Captain. Complete my MBA at a well respected institution.
Meet the love of my life and get married. However, I had a nagging feeling,
especially when in came to my personal finance. I thought I had followed the right pathway and
hit all the makers - I wanted to feel like I achieved the American dream. That I had
found success. That I had found wealth. However, when I went to that first Dave
Ramsey conference, I got a rude awakening. I was so focused on "showing" my success
that I did not pay enough attention to the nuts and bolts of managing my personal finances.
When I tallied up my "net worth" right after our wedding, I had nothing to show for except
a combined student loan of $105,000 - 80% of that being student debt from my MBA program.
A plug for my wife for marrying me despite this - "I love you honey!"
What I appreciate about Dave Ramsey's book is that he gets right to the point - he doesn't spend time
on the mindset of the "rich and wealthy" but for example, he'd go right to - "what car are
you driving and why haven't you sold it yet!" If you are just starting your personal finance
journey, but don't know where to begin, I highly recommend starting with Dave
Ramsey's book. I first picked it up 10 years ago, but I come back to it often to remind
myself of the many timeless principles. Thanks to this book, my wife and I were
able to pay off $105,000 of student loans in 3.5 years and have reached financial security today.
Some quotes and takeaways from the book I want to share:
"When you are physically fat, it is hard to be in denial, because
there is the ever-widening belt line. When you are financially fat, however, you can
fake it and look good for a while." - Dave Ramsey Facing Reality - It's hard to see if someone is
doing financially well or not by just looking at his or her lifestyle. We are conditioned
to believe that if someone lives in a big house with a nice car, they must be doing financially
well. However, this oftentimes is far from the truth. Until we are willing to face the facts
and realize that our financial position is not healthy, we can't begin to work to make it better.
"Debt is so ingrained into our culture that most Americans cannot even envision a car
without a payment, a house without a mortgage, a student without a loan,
and credit without a card." - Dave Ramsey Be Very Careful with Debt - Dave Ramsey takes
a pretty strong stance against debt; no debt. I personally wouldn't go that far, but I definitely
agree with the notion that we must be very very careful when it comes to borrowing money. Debt
allows us to buy more than we can afford and we can quickly get into trouble (e.g. foreclosure,
bankruptcy, etc.) if not managed well. "Taking on a car payment is one of the
dumbest things people do to destroy their chances of building wealth. The car payment is most folks'
largest payment except for their home mortgage, so it steals more money from their income
than virtually anything else." - Dave Ramsey Say No to Car Payments - If you ever heard of
Dave Ramsey's radio show, it seems like the answer to most people's financial problem is 'sell your
car.' It is funny to listen to, but the reason he recommends this so often, is that it is the truth.
Have a Budget! - Until I read Dave Ramsey's book, I didn't think I needed a budget. I had a general
idea of where my money went and thought that because I had money leftover in the bank at
the end of the month, I was managing my money fairly well. Well being buried under $105,000
of student loan quickly snapped me back to reality. Spending money without a budget is
like going on a vacation without an itinerary - you can do it, but why allow the stress?
Number Two "I Will Teach You To Be Rich" by Ramit Sethi
If Dave Ramsey's book is great for getting you jump started on the personal finance journey,
Ramit Sethi's book is great for providing a specific step by step road map.
It's written specifically for young professionals with mid to high income - where to save your
money, what to invest in, how to automate your process so you can focus more on your life
instead of counting every penny you spend. Some takeaways from the bopl:
Automation: Sethi gives advice on “automatically enabling yourself to save,
invest, and spend - enjoying it, not feeling guilty.” His main point is that you should
automate your finances so that you can effortlessly save and invest as well as
spending the remainder on the things you enjoy. Automation helps to remove the "emotional" element
of our decision making that often time hinders us from making smart financial decisions - splurge
buying because we feel deprived or not buying something we need because we feel guilty.
Long-Term Investing: Along with his emphasis on automation, Sethi's recommends long-term,
passive stock investing instead of speculative guessing. I also liked Sethi’s 85 Percent Solution
where it is better to act and get things about 85% right than doing nothing at all.
Be Frugal, Not Cheap: Ramit Sethi says "spend extravagantly on the things you love,
and cut costs mercilessly on the things you don't." That's the difference between being cheap
and being frugal; being cheap is trying to cut spending on everything, and being frugal is
cutting costs on the things you don't care about so that you can splurge on the things you do.
And Finally, my Last Favorite is "The Simple Path to Wealth" by JL Collins
After I've gotten basics of my finances such as having a budget,
saving and managing my expenses, this book quickly became one of my favorite personal finance books
because it tackles head on the most talked about personal finance topic - investing.
If you just google "investing" online, you are bombarded with so much information - stocks,
bonds, mutual funds, dividends, gold, bit coins, etc. You name it, it's there.
This books cuts right through the noise and gives you on a platter
the only investing advice you will need. The book grew out of a blog that Jim Collins
initially started out as a series of letters to his teenage daughter - after having spent
decades studying the market and making his own mistakes investing,
he was shocked to find that not everyone shared his passion for understanding money.
In his daughters own word "I know money is important. I just don't want to spend my
life thinking about it." By reading this book,
we get all benefits from Jim's realization. He wrote this book for those of us who necessarily
don't want to spend our life thinking about money, but still want to make smart financial decision.
Some 'simple' and powerful lessons: * Spend less than you
earn - invest the surplus - avoid debt * Carrying debt is as appealing as being covered
with leeches and has much the same effect * Money can buy many things, but nothing
more valuable than your freedom * Try saving and investing 50% of your
income. With no debt, this is perfectly doable. * When you can live on 4% of your investments
per year, you are financially independent. * Three simple tools for your portfolio:
* Stocks: VTSAX * Bonds:
VBTLX * Cash
By the way, did I mention my wife and I had a chance to meet Jim in person! Yes, I am fanboy!
“You will be the same person in five years as you are today except for the people you meet and the
books you read.” - Charlie Tremendous Jones Books are one of the most
powerful vehicles for change. One of the greatest lessons that my
parents taught me, is the value of education. Having grown up in a post-war Korea,
both my parents had limited opportunities for education - neither
received more than an elementary schooling. However, they understood the power of education
and drilled that into my sister and I growing up. I learned early on that books held the secret to
so much knowledge and I believe it is one of the most accessible vehicle for life transformation.
For just $9.99 you can access the minds of some of the smartest and wisest people in
this world. Free if you have a local library. Books help you rewire your brain and make you
think completely different about the world. And Financial knowledge gives you power and
freedom, as Oprah Winfrey would say "to conquer the world "
So please get your hands on these books. They can transform you and your family's life.
Thank you guys for watching. If you found value from this video,
please hit the like button, leave a comment and subscribe to the channel
so that you don't miss out on any of my other upcoming videos.
I firmly believe that being part of the Sandwich Generation doesn't have to mean financial stress.
With careful planning and preparation, we can thrive during this stage of life.
Help me spread the knowledge. Thank you again and I'll see you in my next video.