Wealth Building Books Part 1

Recently I reread an article by Michael Masterson about Wealth Building books. I am not going to re-list his categories but I thought I would highlight the ones I thought were interesting to me. One thing I have discovered is that if you have any type of addiction these books will not work. As it is hard to build wealth while feeding the addiction with money. One category his lists is Academic studies, such as The Millionaire Next Door by Thomas Stanley. I am presently reading this book and have discovered several things.

The first is the need to be frugal with your money. Just because a person has a high income does not mean they are wealthy as many high income people are also high consumption oriented. If fact many millionaires are people who follows the rule, "Pay Yourself First." What people forget is rule number two, "Don't Lose Money." Thus people blindly placed their money into 401k's because the stock market was heading higher. I guess rule number three would be, "If You Don't Understand it, Don't Invest."

Have I followed these rules? Nope and that is why I am not a millionaire. As an aside if you have the chance go to www.earlytorise.com and subscribe. The wealth of information that comes out has no seconds. As Ben Franklin said, "Early to bed and early to rise makes a man Healthy, Wealthy and Wise." The should be the motto of all would be millionaries. I guess the next book to read wil be Ben Franklin's book "The Way to Wealth."