At least as far as personal finance and dropping debt is concerned, I'll plug Dave Ramsey. I don't necessarily agree with anything he says outside the personal scope, but I don't have to.

I'll contribute with Your Money or Your Life/. It contains sobering thoughts of how much life we have to spend to get that money.

Dave Ramsey may be the one I sampled on audible and didn't get -- and regretted it. I'll follow up on that.

And that's the second time I've seen "Your Money Or Your Life" praised today. That seems to be an oldie-but-goodie.

Thanks!

I think I'm looking for something basic and no-nonsense in the financial realm, like GTD is in the organizational realm!

Doesn't get more basic or classic than The Richest Man in Babylon. The writing style gets kind of old after a while, but it's really really simple.

I have also found Rich Dad, Poor Dad I find myself challenged in my concepts of money.

"Your Money or Your Life" -- as much about money as about our perceptions of it.

"The Truth about Money" -- I just lent this to a friend to help him understand the inflation risk of bonds; it has a lot of clear (but basic) explanations about different types of monetary concepts and instruments.

"The Intelligent Assest Allocator" -- for investing
[EDIT] Berstein's other book "The Four Pillars of Investing" covers much the same ground as "Intelligent Assest Allocator," but in a more introductory and less technical manner. It's up to your reading preference.

I have been using a Personal Finance Software package by Australian business Parcus Group - Personal Finance Associate.
The product is very good. For the AU$29 it costs, you get budgeting, financial planning templates as well as advanced features that typically cost loads more as separate software packages such as investment real estate calculations (mainly based on rental cash-flow analysis) as well as some value based shares valuations (based on Warren Buffet's stock valuation methodology)
Their website is http://www.parcusgroup.com
For anyone interested in their own wealth creation this product is definitely worth looking at.

Another vote for Dave Ramsey.

Following his recommendation of budgeting before the beginning of the month is like doing your weekly review before the following week...you feel so much less stressed because you've done the thinking on the front end.

Check out his weekly column at www.davesays.org

I second Dave Ramsey and The Richest Man in Babylon. They take the complex and make it dead simple.

By the way, anyone here familiar with both of them? I'm doing Dave Ramsey's baby steps, but then I read Richest Man in Babylon and I'm really pondering the 10/20/70 percent system. Does anyone recommend one system over the other ... or a combination of both?

Pooks - I think you need to be more specific in your question - of course I know you are just spurring conversation, but really, money is such a diverse subject that just throwing out anything is not going to get anywhere. There are so many books about money that I think the best approach is to really determine what your goals are over the long term and then read the things that you need to have you achieve those goals. For example if I am a newly minted college grad, I don't need to be reading about investing, until I get my a** out of debt. What if we start over with some categories:

Getting out of Debt
Investing
Retirement
Money or Life - or both!
etc.....

Suze Orman, Dave Ramsey, "The Richest Man In Babylon" cover all those categories. Not all, but a lot of books on money understand people are dealing with different issues regarding money, and so they deal with those issues.

I think it's true that in any subject many of the gurus say the same things. But they communicate them in different ways, and we respond in different ways. Now that I've listened to more of Suze Orman, I realize it was probably a mistake to get it. I've seen her on PBS many times and have never wanted to watch her presentation. Listening to her voice I realized that she annoys me at some level. It's not a "right or wrong" thing. It's just something about her presentation -- the oozing sincerity of her voice -- that rubs me wrong.

So what I need to do is be more careful when I listen to samples on audible, and find somebody whose style I find more approachable.

In the meantime, I think there are a lot of good suggestions here and I think it's interesting that some of them seem to be consistently mentioned even though they've been around for years.

Yeah, Suze has that effect, doesn't she? And what's up with that hairstyle?

Start with the 1 hour podcasts for the Dave Ramsey show at iTunes. After a couple of weeks, you'll get to learn his teachings and style. I basically find him to be a "GTD-Guru" at finances because his goal is to get rid of the stuff (debts) that we have to maintain so we can live a simpler and less cluttered life. And he does that with a time-tested, people-tested "debt snowball."

Once you've experienced his teachings, you can decide how to proceed.

I didn't realize it was available on iTunes. Great! I just downloaded the podcast.

I am also a fan of Ramsey. I went through the Financial Peace University at my church and it has really helped me.

I also read Get a Financial Life a long time ago and regularly reference it when I have questions about any financial stuff.

Michael

They weren't mentioned, but Jane Bryant Quinn usually has a big big book on money-management that covers the gamut, and she updates it regularly. Look for it at the library.

Andrew Tobias is my personal favorite. His THE ONLY INVESTMENT GUIDE YOU'LL EVER NEED is updated regularly also, and the advice, as with most advice, is basic and simple.

Moving from these two, I'd then go to YOUR MONEY OR YOUR LIFE to really get down with the philosophy of money and life energy.

Basically, pick your guru and stick with the plan. It's like dieting; they all work if you stick with them.

For myself, the software I use is Moneydance for my electronic checkbook but The B Word for money management. The B Word proffers a good systemized process (based on the envelope system) for cash flow management that reminds me a lot of GTD, in terms of having a solid framework within which you can be creative.

I just needed to give a nice plug for Pear Budget spreadsheet. If you're serious about money, check this spreadsheet out. It's the best I've seen for a long while.

Slightly off topic, but I've been wanting to tell someone about this.

Kind regards,
Jonathan Cisco

http://www.dreamingnz.com

The things I like about Dave Ramsey:

1) His approach is simple. (Even I can do it!)
2) It scales with you. (He talks about Baby Steps (thank you Bill Murray) and if you are $20K in debt, you don't really worry much about anything beyond that debt.
3) His system helps people who make 4 figures as much as it applies to people who make 6 figures.

Things that might be hard to swallow:
1) He HATES debt. As in zero. As in buy the car with cash. As in, ideally, buy the HOUSE cash.
2) He hates credit. As in cut up the cards.
3) He talks about haggling/bargaining ... which seems "anti-American" to some.
4) He doesn't like new cars at all. Used all the way.

That being said, I have had a $30K swing in net worth and just purchased a mini-van for my wife, with cash, and bargained an AWESOME deal by having the cash... YMMV, but I like him!

Yeah. Dave rocks!

I checked Ramsay's book out of the library and have to say that he certainly isn't my cup of tea, to say the least. I found parts of it downright creepy.

Some of David Bach's books have some good points in them, but as the others have said, it'll take some research to find a good 'fit'.

Creepy? How so?

Rich Dad, Poor Dad is always my #1 choice of recommodation

Dave is a really GREAT influence for me and my family.

I've had the pleasure of listening to a talk and meeting him personally, and what I'm most impressed by is that Dave is exactly what Dave appears to be.

Heart on his sleeve, No B.S., just straight shooter. You don't have to agree or subscribe to his religious beliefs to get the benefit of what he talks about.

He reminds me of my scoutmaster, an Ex-Marine Mechanic. Not pretty, practical, down to earth, loves the hell out of you, and isn't afraid to say "what the #$Q^^QRE are you doing?!?"

My $0.02

/J

P.S. I'm sure Suze is good, but I have to third the motion, UGH. I find her presentation saccharine, oozing, and very touchy. Mechanics of her stuff seem fairly sound though, but just not right for ME personally.

There's no big secret to making lots of money. All you need is a product that can be made repeatedly (cheaply) and delivered cheaply (preferably automatically). Items that fall into this class are eBooks, software, and subscriptions to training courses or web sites.

You can make lots of money with physical products, of course, but your costs and workload are considerably higher. I do both: the "virtual" products get handled automatically so my only costs are the web site hosting and payment handling. For the physical products I have to pay someone to pack and ship them.

Dave Ramsey has a great program! His style is simple, basic and straight forward. His program helped my Wife and I "snow ball" $20,000 in dept in under two years! We are currently working on the six to twelve month emergency fund.

noodle,

Sorry for the lag. When I said DR's work bordered on the creepy sometimes I was referring to how he kept using death and terminal illness in his examples. That, and his in-your-face religion, really turned me off. As I said, YMMV.

Thanks for clarifying.

I'm a huge fan of the [URL="http://www.amazon.com/Richest-Man-Babylon-Thievery-Corporation/dp/B00006CY6H"]
soundtrack[/URL]. ;)

(in all seriousness, that is a good record. heh.)

Personally the best two books I have read about getting rich and staying there are "The richest man in Babylon" and the original "Rich Dad Poor Dad". Both offer great tips and tricks to get your rich and keeping you there.

I've only read "Rich dad,Poor dad" and it really got me thinking - it's a nice book ,but the poor dad story is sort of sad.