A GUIDE TO SELECTING THE
Best Books on Financial Freedom and Abundance
Choosing between Mindset, Investment Strategies and Spending Habit (or not)
Books about improving finances typically revolve around one of five topics:
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generating exponential growth by investing savings in a (niche) business or financial products
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breaking the habit of impulse spending too much
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how to change your perception of your current financial situation to one of sufficiency or
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how to change limiting beliefs about your ability to acquire more wealth
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you have a degree but can’t find a job and are running out of savings
The first question you need to answer, then, is whether you believe that your perceived lack of money should to be solved with more money. If not, you’re going to find books that will teach you to reframe your circumstances as perfect (although not most comfortable) for the life experience you need to fulfill your purpose in life. You let it guide you to the path you ought to follow.
If you do feel more money is your way to go, the next question is whether you feel you have a limiting belief that is capping the amount of wealth you’ve been able to accrue. If you do, you’ll be guided in how to change this mindset by visualizing, assuming and acting differently while also spending time in a more calm and suggestible state, so your neural pathways can change. This is basic mindset change protocol but applied to finances.
If mindset is not your issue or cup of tea and you already have some savings, you’ll find plenty of books about setting up (online niche) businesses with recurring income that require little effort as well as books on how to invest in financial products that generate interest and then interest on interest, ever more and more.
If you currently have little or no money because you spend too much of your income on things you don’t really need, you’ll find books that help you identify your spending triggers, help you budget, develop discipline with rules and reflection among other tools.
Once you save more, you can look into ways to get higher returns on those savings.
If you are struggling to find a job for your level of education, literature on improving finances is not where you typically find the kind of advice you need. There are specific books with clever strategies to (re)launch your career. However, your issues may be related indirectly to your ideas about self-worth and your relation with money.
There are roughly three types of books you find:
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Books with real-life success stories, that discuss how changing the mindset was responsible for those successes and how to do it yourself. Example: The Millionaire Next Door
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Books with an emphasis on the neuroscience or biology (epigenetics) of how thoughts and intentions materialize. But beware, there is no hard scientific evidence that holds all the way up to the ‘significant’ levels. Example: Joe Dispenza
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Books with intuitive wisdom conveyed by someone in a trance state, either with or without the impression that the wisdom was channeled from another (E.T.) being. Example: Creating Money: Attracting Abundance
When you consider yourself rational, you might not be drawn to esoteric concepts and mindset-related approaches. However, some of the richest men of the past 150 years have been known to be attracted to such irrational elements. Banker JP Morgan, for example, often consulted with astrologers and was quoted (probably falsely, but nonetheless) as saying: “Millionaires don’t use astrology. Billionaires do.”
If you consider yourself spiritual, you’re probably be inclined to focus on your mindset. However, it’s our own observation that many people in spiritual circles struggle to transcend their financial distress.
Another observation is that in these circles the objective is often to create abundance but that their definition of abundance is not the same as that which you find in most books on this subject. Abundance is often interpreted by spiritual seekers as “enough for everyone to live without financial worry”, whereas in books abundance is defined as something that follows when you align with the universe (i.e. start following your authentic, intuitive impulses despite worrying about outcomes) and trust that the universe will provide exactly what you need at the right time and place. Whereas the books describe a quality, the interpretation is often rather about a quantity – hoping that strong beliefs in a high quantity indeed provides sufficient quantities to see all desires fulfilled.
Types of Personal Finance and Abundance Books
Here you find a list of archetypal books for improving your financial situation from which we captured the essence in a short summary. The books are listed in a random order. We don't earn any commission on your selection.
"Your Money or Your Life"
Vicki Robin guides you through a 3-month program in which you become aware of your spending patterns and learn how to improve them. She takes a very rational approach to spending, by having you calculate prices in terms of how much time and effort it took you to earn that amount. It lets you budget and plan investments in order to achieve financial independence.
"Think and Grow Rich"
By looking at the most successful people of the early 1900s, Napoleon Hill revealed the pattern that they all operated from a deep belief in themselves and that they could strongly visualize their success so clearly that they could feel it. Along with examples, the book explains how to develop your ability to do the same. The core is believing it, being able to visualize it and to surround you with people that help you to cultivate this mindset.
"Money and the Law of Attraction"
This book is the message of a spirit called Abraham, channeled by Esther Hicks. The central advice is to translate your needs into the imagination of the situation and feeling you'd have if what you feel you lack were present. The more you can feel it as real, the better it works. You should also feel excitement and, lastly, gratitude for whatever form the abundance begins to take in your life.
"Rich Dad, Poor Dad"
Using autobiography, Robert Kiyosaki shares insights on how to get rich by improving your financial literacy, such as strategically choosing the right assets and investments, and how to avoid mortgages. He explains concepts such as exponential growth and how investments made early in life multiply in value over time. His premise is that people from rich families learn this but that this advantage can also be gained by young people from poor families.
"The 4-Hour Workweek"
Tim Ferris helps people who want to quit their jobs by providing concrete examples of generating passive income from side hustles and time management to have lots of free time. His core advice of setting up web shops with a focus on a particular niche has become somewhat outdated as many people have done this since this book was first published. However, his time management advice still holds true.
Bukuru's Zero-Books Approach
If anything, ask yourself: how much is enough to be happy if you look back in your life and consider the happiest among all the people you’ve met? Then, ask yourself: if money was no object, what would you be doing in life? You might be surprised how much of your dreams is possible without changing your financial situation first.
About Bukuru
The core philosophy of Bukuru is that each person should test their own beliefs. The project started as a quest to categorize self-development books in such a way that it would become easier to find books that match your beliefs. However, along the way we concluded that the essence of most books can be captured in a few sentences – if the idea is original at all. Instead of helping people buy books, we now help people not buying books.