5 Must Read Books on Building Wealth
Everyone dreams of owning a mansion, driving a luxury car, and never worrying about money. While dreaming is the first step to achieving, learning and experience are the more practical ways of achieving your financial goals.
Inspired by our readers, here are some of their favorite wealth books to help you learn success tips from those who made it.
1. Rich Dad, Poor Dad
This book by Robert Kiyosaki and Sharon L. Lechter offers essential lessons on financial independence, literacy, and investments. This book is based on personal parables from Kiyosaki’s life.
It describes how a friend’s father or the ‘Rich Dad’ accumulated wealth and managed finances through entrepreneurial genius and shrewd investments, while the ‘Poor Dad’ in this book is used to refer to Kiyosaki’s father.
The book argues that the traditional education system needs to teach people about money management strategies and how to make money work for them. Instead, people are stuck in a ‘rat race’ of working for money.
2. The Millionaire Fastlane
“The Millionaire Fastlane” was a smash hit with readers and critics alike and offers a new perspective on understanding financial success.
The book focuses on a fast way to become a millionaire and argues that traditional approaches – getting a college education, getting a steady job, and saving up, are too slow and, at times, unreliable.
Instead, the book argues that speed is the key instead of slowly building up wealth. Author MJ Demarco labels time as the most valuable of assets and explains how the more time you take to become financially successful, the less beneficial your victory is worth.
3. Broke Millennial
This personal finance book by Erin Lowry is targeted towards millennials, a generation facing a mountain of barriers in their quest to achieve financial success.
One of the selling points of Broke Millennial is that it also covers current topics millennials suffer from, such as student debt and entering and navigating the current job market, which is unlike anything people have ever seen historically.
Lowry uses a conversational approach and humor to enhance relatability. This starkly contrasts financial books with a monotonous and bland approach toward covering topics related to economic success and literacy topics.
4. Think and Grow Rich
The self-help “Think and Grow Rich” is a timeless book showing how some items age, like fine wine.
The central message conveyed in this book is that no matter who you are, you can achieve financial success and accumulate significant wealth by adopting a certain mindset and principles.
The book also emphasizes the need for a sound support system of people who believe in you and your goals. These like-minded individuals must have similar goals and drive each other to perform better. Napoleon Hill called this a “Mastermind Group.”
The book highlights the practicality of these lessons by giving examples of successful individuals who applied these lessons in their lives, such as Henry Ford, Andre Cargnie, and Thomas Edison.
5. The Richest Man in Babylon
Another classic, “The Richest Man in Babylon,” presents a vision of financial success set in ancient Babylon. The parables impart advice on how to create, grow and preserve wealth.
The protagonist here is Arkad, a poor scribe who becomes the wealthiest man in Babylon. The book presents conversations and interactions Arkad has with friends and citizens of Babylon, where he imparts his wisdom on financial success.
These evergreen lessons are still applicable today, which is why the book has sold over 2 million copies since its inception and has been a favorite of many successful people in the modern world.
Josh Dudick
Josh is a financial expert with over 15 years of experience on Wall Street as a senior market strategist and trader. His career has spanned from working on the New York Stock Exchange floor to investment management and portfolio trading at Citibank, Chicago Trading Company, and Flow Traders.
Josh graduated from Cornell University with a degree from the Dyson School of Applied Economics & Management at the SC Johnson College of Business. He has held multiple professional licenses during his career, including FINRA Series 3, 7, 24, 55, Nasdaq OMX, Xetra & Eurex (German), and SIX (Swiss) trading licenses. Josh served as a senior trader and strategist, business partner, and head of futures in his former roles on Wall Street.
Josh's work and authoritative advice have appeared in major publications like Nasdaq, Forbes, The Sun, Yahoo! Finance, CBS News, Fortune, The Street, MSN Money, and Go Banking Rates. Josh currently holds areas of expertise in investing, wealth management, capital markets, taxes, real estate, cryptocurrencies, and personal finance.
Josh currently runs a wealth management business and investment firm. Additionally, he is the founder and CEO of Top Dollar, where he teaches others how to build 6-figure passive income with smart money strategies that he uses professionally.