It has been 10 months since I read the barefoot investor. This Australian book describes a step-by-step procedure to take control of your personal finance. Following each of these steps had a positive impact on my life.
- I learned to manage and understand my spending without budgeting.
- I learned how to improve my financial security.
- I developed a will to learn about personal finance.
- I invested in a fund for my son and established a legacy plan.
Since then, I read a lot of books about personal finance and investment. Rich Dad books, Warren Buffet's favorite books, the little book of common sense investing, for citing some impactful ones.
Now I am learning to focus on developing my assets - the items that generate money. I needed a tracker to visualize my assets. I did not want to use someone else app, been a little paranoid about security. And I did not want to use a spreadsheet on mobile. So as any developer would do, I started working on my own asset tracker app.
My current prototype can be found at https://my-financial-independence.web.app/
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References
- Barefoot Investor | Audible This is the first finance book I would suggest reading for someone who has trouble controlling his finance. The Audible version is really good - the author is really energetic. I still ended up buying the book itself.
- Rich Dad, Poor Dad | Audible In this book, the author explained the difference of mindset between a poor, middle-man, and rich person. He recommends focusing on acquiring money-making assets and explain what is an asset.
- Rich Dad's Cashflow Quadrant | Audible The book explains the difference between an investor, a business owner with a business system, a small business owner/freelancer, and an employee. It emphasizes how the success of a business is about the business system and not the product.
- The warren buffet books Great videos on investing in the stock market based on the real future value of companies - also called value investing. I did not see many people talking about these videos, but they are great learning resource nonetheless. The author created most of the videos, but he also references one of my favorite video about finance:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHe0bXAIuk0
- The little book of common sense investing | Audible versionA book from the Vanguard founder, one of the biggest financial companies in the world, about acquiring a total market index fund. In my current knowledge, it is the only book you need to know about if you want to invest in the share markets and don't have a lot of time.
- The book on Rental property investing - https://www.audible.com.au/pd/B0195KXF34?source_code=ASSORAP0511160006&share_location=library_overflow - It starts with all the same personal finance advises that you find in all book making you wonder if Brandon Turner is not losing your time - moreover he sounded young - then he discussed plenty of stuff about real estate on what to look at when buying and how to calculate various cost. I learned a lot with this book - but I did not know much so I can’t compare with other books. It is exactly what I needed at the time. I was really happy with this reading.
Disclaimer: I am not a financial advisor, the references on these pages are just what I think is interesting to read when starting learning. It comes from my little knowledge that I have been acquiring for not even a year. Moreover, if I consider most of the Barefoot Investor content to be sound, I do not have the same opinion on some content of the Rich Dad books. Finally, my current state about the market would be still quite risk-averse. My current plan is to increase my financial knowledge for the next two years.