The One-Page Financial Plan by Carl Richards.
Carl Richards is one of our ‘reference points’ for matters relating to behavioural finance. He writes (draws!!!) a regular column for the New York Times (the Behavior Gap – which is worth subscribing to). He has this uncanny ability to make sense of relatively complex ideas through back of the napkin doodles!!! The one-page financial plan is a bit of a misnomer BUT his approach is really compelling. Rather than starting with your goals and taking a look at your budget and net worth, this book approaches financial planning from a different perspective by asking the question: why is money important to you. The answer to this question, underpinned by your own unique value system, drives everything else related to how you should structure your financial affairs. We also like how the book suggests a subtle (but important) shift from the term financial goals to ‘financial guesses’. This is an excellent book and an easy read without unecessary financial jargon.
A Wealth of Common Sense by Ben Carlson.
Ben is also one of our favourite personal finance bloggers. His Wealth of Common Sense blog is one of the few that I always read. This book takes the complexity out of investments and focuses on the most important topics which affect investment outcomes. Taking a practical approach to investments, this book takes a look at some of the enduring myths about investing as well as discussing and delving into some of the most important aspects of developing a personal investment plan. Like Carl Richards, Ben has a good understanding of how our behaviour affects outcomes when is comes to money matters.
I came across this book fairly recently (interestingly while reading a post in Ben Carlson’s blog (see above!!) and ordered it from the library. Ron Lieber is the New York Times personal finance columnist. This excellent resource provides a wealth of practical down-to-earth advice about including kids in conversations about money and how to turn those conversations into lessons about life. The book starts with the premise that it’s hard to come up with a word which is the opposite of spoiled, Instead the author sets out to identify a set of traits and virtues which embody the opposite of spoiled and along the way shares “how to embrace the topic of money to help parents raise kids who are more generous and less materialistic.” If you’re the parent of school-aged children or a grandparent of such kids, this is an excellent resource to help you to teach those kids to be better with money than we are.