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Here's what: Books I'm currently obsessed with
I'm a book lover. You can find me reading no less than three books at any given time. Usually one is a novel and the other two are nonfiction.
Picking up a nonfiction book is one of the most cost-effective ways to mentally download a ton of information about a particular topic. And there's no shortage of books about my favorite topic of all: $4.
I've read dozens of books about money, and many of them have been helpful in teaching me the basics - how to save, invest, and budget. But today I want to share four books with you that have given me an entirely new understanding of my relationship to money. Here are my current obsessions:
- Brian Portnoy's "$4" is full of insights that inspire me to think about how I can use money to shape my ideal life. He brings in lessons from other disciplines - history, neuroscience, and philosophy - to illustrate how everything in life is connected to money and how we can use that to our advantage.
- Morgan Housel's "$4" implored me to think about how we behave as investors, savers, and earners. He takes what we assume to be true about money and turns it inside out. I'm always game for new perspective.
- Rachel Rodgers' "$4" is a new book, released this past spring, that had me hooked from the introduction. Rodgers' financial ambition is infectious, plus her ideas are inventive and totally actionable. This book has reminded me to never sell myself short.
- Ramit Sethi's "$4" has been a favorite for years. It was first published in 2009 and updated a decade later. In addition to really helpful beginner investing and money management advice, Sethi introduces the concept of building a "Rich Life" for yourself and how to identify and get over your money hangups. It's always relevant.
Happy reading!
-$4, Personal Finance Insider correspondent and certified financial planner
P.S. My time at Insider is $4 - it's been a pleasure sharing my money musings with you over the past year. Going forward, senior editor of Personal Finance Insider $4 will be authoring this newsletter.
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Join the Master Your Money Bootcamp
In our first two Master Your Money Bootcamps of the year, we got organized - and then we used that mental space to start dreaming big and crunching the numbers. Now we're taking action.
Our third $4, presented by Fidelity, is a month-long challenge broken down into simple, one-week exercises. We'll walk you through tasks that include finding the right accounts for your goals, opening those accounts, setting up an automated system, and figuring out whether you could benefit from professional help.
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Stories you might have missed
This is a taste of the inspiring advice you'll find from Rachel Rodgers in "We Should All Be Millionaires," one of the books I recommend at the top of this newsletter.
Insider contributor Katherine McLaughlin set up two separate checking accounts for spending after realizing that just because she was "good" with money didn't mean she had a good relationship with it.
Angie Colee, a confidence coach who works with entrepreneurs, has been Airbnb hopping while working for the last nine months. She explains the financial moves she made to take the leap, and how she keeps it going.
If you're looking for ways to bulk up your savings account before year's end, here are some simple ideas that worked for Insider contributor Jen Glantz.
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