Books are a tried-and-true resource for financial advice, but there are hundreds of options to choose from.
We asked 10 independent financial advisors from the Investopedia 100 Top Financial Advisors list to recommend their favorite books for retail investors, and the topics touched on everything from financial planning for couples, to the behavioral psychology of money, to how to start legacy planning.
Below, read more about the top picks from Investopedia top advisors.
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The Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel
Recommended by Jared Tanimoto, Gideon Drucker, and Fran Walsh
Morgan Housel’s The Psychology of Money is a collection of 19 short stories that frame personal finance and financial planning as a behavioral field instead of a quantitative one. The stories present personal finance as a means to living a fulfilling life, and Housel encourages a holistic personal finance approach by reflecting on people’s emotions, relationships, and history with money as foundational elements of financial decision making.
Four independent financial advisors—Jared Tanimoto, Gideon Drucker, Fran Walsh, and Christina Livadary—recommended this book for those looking to improve their understanding of financial topics. Read on to learn why.
“What stood out to me was the way he incorporated a lot of stories that were relatable and made investing principles a lot easier to understand,” Tanimoto said. “Then he broke it down into a bunch of different sections that kind of help put asset allocation and risk and diversification and the power of saving into an easy to digest book.”
“It’s really reaffirming that focusing on the behavioral aspects of finance, your emotions about money, and what your family thinks about money, all of that dictates way more than how much you have in assets,” Drucker said.
“As much as people like to think of money as math and numbers (which it can be at times), personal finance is behavioral above all else!,” Walsh said. “This book does a fantastic job making people understand why individuals make the decisions to do, and thinking about things in a certain way can help us create much better financial behaviors to grow wealth over time.”
"This book has something for everyone," Livadary said. "If you're just beginning your journey, Morgan Housel outlines a clear and simple way to think about investing, if you're an intermediate investor, this book can reaffirm some age-old truths that you might have forgotten, and if you're an expert investor or an advisor, this book clearly lays out anecdotes that can help you simplify your approach to investing and building wealth."
The Total Money Makeover by Dave Ramsey
Recommended by Gabriel Shahin
Dave Ramsey’s The Total Money Makeover organizes financial planning into seven steps to lead readers out of debt and toward sustainable saving mechanisms. The book includes budgeting templates and personal anecdotes, which color and contextualize Ramsey’s straight-forward advice, making it a great read for retail investors who want to gain control of their personal finances but may not know where to start.
“I think it just has such good core characteristics,” Shahin said. “It could be for young people or people that just realized, ‘I need to start to do something’, so it's a great entry level read.”
Smart Couples Finish Rich by David Bach
Recommended by Shawn Tydlaska
In Smart Couples Finish Rich, author David Bach provides simple tools and advice for couples merging their finances. He tackles issues ranging from credit card management to long-term care and facilitates conversations about values and goals along the way.
Bach provides a framework for couples to collaborate on a financial plan that will provide a secure financial future for both people, as individuals and as a unit. Tydlaska highlighted Bach’s enjoyable and approachable writing style and said that the book could be useful for anyone looking to understand more about their personal finances.
“My wife and I both read it at the same time, and it was a good book to get the conversation started about finances and how to combine finances and to start an open dialogue around a subject that can be kind of a taboo topic,” Tydlaska said.
The 5 Money Personalities by Scott and Bethany Palmer
Recommended by Taylor Kovar
The 5 Money Personalities by Scott and Bethany Palmer provides advice and a behavioral framework for couples approaching their finances together.
It argues that healthy financial relationships are founded on understanding each other’s perspective of money, and using their created “Money Personality structure,” couples can better understand how to collaborate on financial decisions and build a sustainable financial future together.
“During a planning session a few years ago in which both spouses were arguing about their finances, I realized that there must be something out there that can help couples become unified with their money,” Kovar said. “In my research, I stumbled across The 5 Money Personalities and knew almost immediately that this had the potential to save marriages. It has been a staple of our firm ever since!”
In the Meantime by Shehara Wooten
Recommended by Reshell Smith
Shehara Wooten’s book In the Meantime illustrates different Black journeys to financial freedom and gives advice on how readers can clarify their values and redefine financial freedom to achieve personal financial success.
The book describes the historic and systematic barriers to financial success in the Black community and provides principles to increase financial stability and provide wealth for generations to come. During the writing process, Wooten consulted financial professionals, one of which was Reshell Smith.
“It addresses some of the challenges that we all have with finances," Smith said."She took us through the past with her as she was writing the book, so I think it's very personal."
Bonus Advisor Recommendation
In her book A Woman’$ Worth, Reshell Smith outlines the basics of personal finance, from credit to investments, in order to form positive habits with money. Described in parallel with Smith’s personal experiences with money, the book frames 7 key principles for readers to understand in order to achieve financial freedom and security.
Unstoppable Prosperity by Charles Payne
Recommended by Prince Dykes
In Unstoppable Prosperity by Charles Payne, Payne uses stories from his personal experience to provide readers with a fundamental knowledge of investments and advice for coping with the ebbs and flow of the market.
Dykes read the book because he had watched Payne on Fox Business Network and wanted more investment knowledge. He was pleasantly surprised by the book’s content, and he would recommend it to any person with a bit of money to spare to start investing.
“Usually books are very fundamental-based or technical-based… the Warren Buffett style is very fundamental, or there’s technical style where it's mostly about charts and timing and bar graphs. [Payne] does a great job with merging the two,” Payne said.
Bonus Advisor Recommendation
The ‘Wesley Learns’ Series is a collection of 3 books by Prince Dykes and his son Wesley Dykes: Wesley Learns to Invest, Wesley Learns About Credit, and Wesley Learns About Insurance. Written for and about Wesley, these engaging narratives about financial topics introduce children to personal finance and the wide application of financial concepts.
The Richest Man In Babylon by George S. Clason
Recommended by Nicole B. Simpson
The Richest Man In Babylon is a collection of ‘Babylonian parables’ used to communicate advice about personal financial planning. The book, published in 1926, offers seven timeless tips to advise readers on financial matters from investing to saving. Recommended to her by her mentor in 1991, Simpson found the book easy to read and understand as she was trying to gain her bearings in the securities industry.
“This was one of the books that helped me conceptually understand that which I was studying for the Series 7, how to apply it, not only in my own life desiring to be financially free, but also if I should ever go into the advisory field,” Simpson said.
Bonus Advisor Recommendation
The Quiet Shift by Nicole B. Simpson and Sharon Stanford shares key principles and tools for financial legacy planning for people approaching the ends of their lives. The book asks readers to question how they can create a financial legacy in order to preserve family dynamics generation to generation.
