Which books made you the most money?
Most wealth creation books are fluff. I wonder of there are any good books out there that have directly contributed to your wealth building endeavors. Which books have helped you make more money.
The Startup Owner's Manual.
It's a classic, but for some reason not too popular. As the subtitle says, there are literally step-by-step instructions on how to build a great company. It's a little dry. It's a 600 page book. And checklists can be intimidating.
I didn't even read the whole thing, but it shows how the process is more like R&D than gambling, and removes any doubt. I feel like a lot of modern startup "advice" was pulled from this book and mutated beyond recognition, becoming more like cargo cult.
It was so long ago and I forgot the book’s name. But the gist of it is the reason why most advice fails is they assume we can devote all of our time to advice X. Most of us have extremely busy lives. Our energy. Our time. Our focus is our most precious asset. We need to carefully manage it. At the same time we have to prevent falling into an echo chamber and always honestly be willing to listen to differing opinions even if we disagree with them.
Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment
Read through it, worked many of the examples. Had a 20 bump in salary.
Rich Dad, Poor Dad
It's by no means a great book, but it covers the basics, it's accessible, and I read it at just about the right time around 18 years of age.
Something better / more modern might be:
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/317640/the-index-ca...
Learning the basics of accounting goes a long way too.
Unfortunately, you also need to read up a little bit on the gory details of taxes and deductions, pension schemes, etc in your country, and that stuff changes all the time, so the books and knowledge rapidly gets out of date - you want to try not to get distracted by the minutiae of that, and focus on accounting, assets and liabilities, income and expenses.
Benjamin Graham - Intelligent Investor
It's what got me into fundamental analysis, which after investing for more than a decade had definitely a positive impact on how I allocate money etc.
It isn't a modern book by any means and there might be much better alternatives, but I've started to build some reasoning around assets and get excited about investing.
Never split the difference has saved me 10's of thousands across negotiations.
Liar's Poker. It spurred my interest in investing topics, which made me take the phone call from a D. E. Shaw & Co. recruiter, which gave 25 year-old me's income a step-function up and an increase in the slope over time.
It's also an amazingly enjoyable and engaging read.
Kill Everyone: Advanced Strategies for No-Limit Hold Em Poker.
Never turned much of profit at the poker table, but the life-lessons in that book have been invaluable.
Excel Power Programming with VBA, by John Walkenbach
It's what pushed me into programming and eventually data science in other languages, which led to a significant push in my career.
That's not to say that you should read this book, but instead a remark on how adding high-demand skills to my skillset made me more money than any of the side-hustles or hobbies I've ever tried.
I'm more broke than most people here.
But "Investing for Dummies" teached me many valuable lessons. I read it when I was ~15 so it was my first insight into economics, business, and investing. It's well written and digestable.
Definitely has to be Cracking the Coding Interview for me
Deep Learning (by Aaron Courville, Ian Goodfellow, and Yoshua Bengio)
Read cover to cover, then applied these techniques to Crypto Markets (turns out, crypto markets are pretty inneficient)
The Little Book of Common Sense Investing by John Bogle
"Jesus' Terrible Financial Advice". I was morally hung up/worried about making money, becoming wealthy. Odd I know but for me this was a big deal. This book highlighted the fact the bible doesn't teach us to persue wealth or purposely try and make ourselves poor. Now my thoughts are in order I am happy to work hard and not be hung up on outcomes. The freedom in my thinking helped as I left my job and went out on my own. I earn a lot more now. Maybe I won't next year. Either way hopefully I will be happy.
I Will Teach You to Be Rich.
Bad title, but this helped me to automate saving and put my energy into more important things.
Effective Java : Joshua Bloch
In my 23s (2008) when I started my career as a Java Developer it was Effective Java. Applying that rules and talking about them with other colleagues makes me better and self-confident developer which other noticed. That leads to better salary negotiations in the future (and my job made me most money). After 10+ years it still helps, because I work mostly in enterprise environments when maturity is way lower and at the same time nowadays lot of juniors joining java community and they are even more junior than I was back in my start of career.
For me there is no better way for your wealth building than real knowledge. Learn hard skills, nurture soft skills, work smart. Lot of investment opportunities are just gambling (with money of naive people), choose wisely.
The Startup of You by Reid Hoffman and Ben Casnocha. It helped me in my early career right after graduation and influenced my career trajectory thereafter. I haven't lived up to the ideal that is set out in the book but it has been a guiding light.
Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience - made me fall in love with deep work.
How To Get Rich - by Felix Dennis
A Random Walk Down Wall Street.
German language books. Thanks to them I don't have to live in a sh*thole country turning into a dictatorship and I have a decent life.
Probably code complete, I'd studied engineering and programmed at home for years at a very poor level really. On becoming a commercial coder I got this and it gave me confidence in attacking a problem, maintaining code and the realization that, in a team, communication, readability and maintainability are more important that coding skill.
"The Motley Fool Investment Guide", from 1996, not because it's particularly great (it's not), but because it got me into regular, sustained investing over time, and was where I first encountered the quote (mis?)attributed to Einstein: "compound interest is the most powerful force in the universe."
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
Options as a Strategic Investment by Lawrence G. McMillan introduced me to the wonderful world of selling covered calls on my long term holds as well as many of the ins and outs of options wrangling in general.
TCP/IP Illustrated, It was that first time I realized that all the magic the computer was doing could be understood on a bit by bit level. It launched me into a rewarding career.
Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (SICP)
None.
On the other hand, writing and selling a wealth creation book could work. Better to sell the miners their shovels than be a miner yourself.
Sun Tzu - The Art of War
From negotiations to strategy my boy Sun Tzu has never let me down.
No BS Wealth Attraction In The New Economy by Dan Kennedy
Fearless Salary Negotiation by Josh Doody.
Negotiate your salary, people!
"JavaScript: The Good Parts"