The Money Mustache Community
Learning, Sharing, and Teaching => Investor Alley => Topic started by: reformingSucka on January 12, 2018, 11:16:19 AM
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Hi All, I know very little about investing and my participation in the market have been exclusively target date funds. What books do you recommend I start reading to educate myself? Maybe a top 3-5 must read books? All wisdom is welcome, thank you!
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http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/the-mmm-reading-list/
And don't forget to check your local library on these - be a smart cookie and take a book for a test drive before deciding if it's something that warrants a $ investment. :D
My personal top recommendation is Jim Collins' "A Simple Path to Wealth" (Amazon link is on MMM reading list) since it was a super easy to understand and entertaining read. This series (you can see it on his website too) is honestly the reason I now understand everything since it gave me the foundation on which to build from. http://jlcollinsnh.com/stock-series/
This book/series is worth the cost of purchase, and you could totally give it as a gift to anyone else that is interested in a overall basic money/investments education. It is weighted towards being an index investor, but that's the "simple" part of the title - why complicate things when you have a legitimately easy pathway you could follow?
The Millionaire Next Door was fascinating in showing how outward trappings of wealth usually weren't all that accurate in showing who had what. But it is more for broadening your viewpoint than an instruction manual.
Other recommendation is the Bogleheads Wiki site. Not technically a book, but once you read The Simple Path to Wealth, the Bogleheads wiki will take care of any other details you might possibly come up with regarding index investing. https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Main_Page
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Investing is easy. Pick 2 or 3 broad market index funds. Use a robo advisor for help on allocation ratio.
https://www.blackrock.com/wte/core-builder/us?refType=fi
https://personal.vanguard.com/us/funds/tools/recommendation?reset=true
http://www.vanguard.com/nesteggcalculator
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Millionaire Teacher (2nd Edition) -Brief, focused, humorous, presented via clear analogies.
https://www.amazon.com/Millionaire-Teacher-Wealth-Should-Learned/dp/1119356296/
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A random walk down Wall Street is my go to first recommendation. It speaks about why indexing is the easiest / best strategy for most people.
For more traditional reads about value investing
The Snowball about Warren Buffett
Beating the Street by Peter Lynch
The intelligent investor by Ben Graham
For real beginners I recommend:
Rich Dad Poor Dad
Millionaire Next Door
Richest Man in Babylon
Any terms you do not understand Investopedia is a good reference. Avoid any websites that charge for a membership or try to sell you an ebook at the end of every post.
Bogelheads is a great reference for index investing. BiggerPockets is great for RE investing.
Check out the moneyfortherestofus podcast
Also the Radical Personal Finance podcsst
And of course, read all of the MMM posts from the beginning.
The above was my crash course and gave me the confidence needed to dive in head first. At the end of the day you will probably end up with a 3-5 fund portfolio of mutual funds or ETFS which track an index and that you rebalance once or twice a year.
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My personal top recommendation is Jim Collins' "A Simple Path to Wealth" (Amazon link is on MMM reading list) since it was a super easy to understand and entertaining read.
I'm going to second/third this recommendation. I checked it out from the library and I would highly recommend it.