Tag: personal finance

Book notes: The Simple Path to Wealth by JL Collins

The Simple Path to Wealth by JL Collins book summary review and key ideas.

Get the audiobook on Audible 👇 (affiliate link)

The Simple Path to Wealth: Your Road Map to Financial Independence and a Rich, Free Life by JL Collins

Synopsis:

“This book grew out of a series of letters to my daughter concerning various things – mostly about money and investing – she was not yet quite ready to hear.

Since money is the single most powerful tool we have for navigating this complex world we’ve created, understanding it is critical.

“But Dad,” she once said, “I know money is important. I just don’t want to spend my life thinking about it.” This was eye-opening. I love this stuff. But most people have better things to do with their precious time. Bridges to build, diseases to cure, treaties to negotiate, mountains to climb, technologies to create, children to teach, businesses to run.

Unfortunately, benign neglect of things financial leaves you open to the charlatans of the financial world. The people who make investing endlessly complex, because if it can be made complex it becomes more profitable for them, more expensive for us, and we are forced into their waiting arms.

Here’s an important truth: Complex investments exist only to profit those who create and sell them. Not only are they more costly to the investor, they are less effective.

The simple approach I created for her and present now to you is not only easy to understand and implement, it is more powerful than any other.” -Audible

~If you enjoy my summary, please consider buying me a coffee via my Ko-Fi link (click the button below) or support this blog in one of several ways! 📖 🎓

I appreciate every donation as it goes directly to the maintenance costs of my blog and creation of new content. 😊

Buy Me a Coffee at ko-fi.com Continue reading “Book notes: The Simple Path to Wealth by JL Collins”

Money Mastery: 10+ Years of Personal Finance Wisdom Distilled From 3 Essential Books

Money Mastery: 10+ Years of Personal Finance Wisdom from 3 Essential Books

Companion article to One Thousand Gurus Podcast Special Episode #60

The Books That Changed How I Think About Money

Over the past decade, I’ve read dozens of personal finance books. Some were helpful, many were repetitive, and a few were downright misleading. But three books stood out as absolute game-changers—books that I wish someone had handed me when I first started my financial journey.

Today, I’m going to share the most powerful insights from these three books and show you how they work together to create a complete personal finance system:

By the end of this article, you’ll have a complete roadmap for building wealth—not just tactics, but the psychology and philosophy to back them up.

Why These Three Books?

Here’s what makes this combination so powerful: Most financial advice focuses on only one dimension. You’ll get books that are all tactics (“open this account, buy that fund”) or all philosophy (“money is energy, abundance mindset”).

But real financial success requires three things working together:

  1. The mechanics – You need a system that actually works
  2. The mindset – You need to understand why you make the money decisions you do
  3. The strategy – You need a long-term plan that compounds over decades

These three books, when read together, give you all three dimensions. Let me show you how.

Continue reading “Money Mastery: 10+ Years of Personal Finance Wisdom Distilled From 3 Essential Books”

10 Personal Finance Truths I Wish I Learned in My 20s

Advice on personal finance I wish I learned sooner.

If you’ve been following my book summaries, you know I’ve spent years reading and distilling the best personal finance books out there—from classics to modern masterpieces like:

After reading dozens of these books and implementing their strategies in my own life, I’ve discovered something important: most personal finance advice is solid, but the real challenge isn’t knowing what to do—it’s actually doing it consistently.

Through coaching others on gaining clarity and control over their finances, I’ve seen firsthand which principles create real transformation and which ones sound good but don’t work in practice. I’ve also learned that the small financial decisions we make (or don’t make) in our 20s compound into massive differences down the road.

Looking back at my own journey, I realize there are core truths that—if I’d truly understood and applied them earlier—would have accelerated my financial success by years. These aren’t obscure secrets or complex strategies. They’re foundational principles that the best financial minds agree on, but that most of us learn the hard way.

Here are the 10 personal finance truths I wish someone had clearly explained to me when I was starting out—and more importantly, what you can do about them right now.

Continue reading “10 Personal Finance Truths I Wish I Learned in My 20s”

Book notes: Same as Ever by Morgan Housel

Same as Ever by Morgan Housel book summary review and key ideas.

Get the audiobook on Audible 👇 (affiliate link)

Same as Ever: A Guide to What Never Changes by Morgan Housel

Synopsis:

“From the author of the international blockbuster THE PSYCHOLOGY OF MONEY, a powerful new tool to unlock one of life’s most challenging puzzles.

Every investment plan under the sun is, at best, an informed speculation of what may happen in the future, based on a systematic extrapolation from the known past.

Same as Ever reverses the process, inviting us to identify the many things that never, ever change.

With his usual elan, Morgan Housel presents a master class on optimizing risk, seizing opportunity, and living your best life. Through a sequence of engaging stories and pithy examples, he shows how we can use our newfound grasp of the unchanging to see around corners, not by squinting harder through the uncertain landscape of the future, but by looking backwards, being more broad-sighted, and focusing instead on what is permanently true.

By doing so, we may better anticipate the big stuff, and achieve the greatest success, not merely financial comforts, but most importantly, a life well lived.” -Audible

~If you enjoy my summary, please consider buying me a coffee via my Ko-Fi link (click the button below) or support this blog in one of several ways! 📖 🎓

I appreciate every donation as it goes directly to the maintenance costs of my blog and creation of new content. 😊

Buy Me a Coffee at ko-fi.com Continue reading “Book notes: Same as Ever by Morgan Housel”

Book notes: The Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel

The Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel book summary review and key ideas.

Get the audiobook on Audible 👇 (affiliate link)

The Psychology of Money: Timeless Lessons on Wealth, Greed, and Happiness by Morgan Housel

Synopsis:

“Doing well with money isn’t necessarily about what you know. It’s about how you behave. And behavior is hard to teach, even to really smart people.

Money – investing, personal finance, and business decisions – is typically taught as a math-based field, where data and formulas tell us exactly what to do. But in the real world people don’t make financial decisions on a spreadsheet. They make them at the dinner table, or in a meeting room, where personal history, your own unique view of the world, ego, pride, marketing, and odd incentives are scrambled together.  

In The Psychology of Money, award-winning author Morgan Housel shares 19 short stories exploring the strange ways people think about money and teaches you how to make better sense of one of life’s most important topics.” -Audible

~If you enjoy my summary, please consider buying me a coffee via my Ko-Fi link (click the button below) or support this blog in one of several ways! 📖 🎓

I appreciate every donation as it goes directly to the maintenance costs of my blog and creation of new content. 😊

Buy Me a Coffee at ko-fi.com Continue reading “Book notes: The Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel”

TOTD: Why 70% of lottery winners end up bankrupt

What to do if you win the lottery and not end up broke.

I cover a range of topics in this talk including:

  • Why lottery winners go broke
  • What to do if you win the lottery
  • My own thoughts on personal finance
  • Why money won’t make you happy

 

What are your thoughts on winning the lottery? Leave me a comment and let me know! I respond to every comment 🙂

TOTD: How to spend more money guilt-free

The key to spending more is to know what you value and what brings you happiness.

For many of us, we feel like we’re not good with our money.

  • We spend more than we think we should
  • We buy things that don’t make us happy long-term
  • We get buyers remorse often
  • We find we have less money at the end of the month
  • We’re constantly waiting for payday so we can feel good again

The key to being able to spend more is to:

  1. Know what you value, what brings you true joy, and spend more on that
  2. Cut mercilessly on things we don’t value or doesn’t bring us lasting happiness

From there, you can develop your own “conscious spending plan” as outlined in the book I Will Teach You To Be Rich by Ramit Sethi.

Why I Spent Almost $120 on Acai Bowls Last Month

Why I don’t think this is going overboard.

For anyone who checks out my foodie Instagram account (@yolocruzfoodz) and story, or has talked with me in the past couple of months, you probably know that I’ve become mildly obsessed with acai bowls.

“Mildly” being up for interpretation.

This point was underscored when I took a look at my July spending towards this recent obsession (I track all of my spending categories via my budgets feature on Mint).

While my fascination with acai bowls began in late May / early June, this was the first month I knew it was becoming an actual obsession.

July Acai Spending Breakdown:

Total: $117.95

Continue reading “Why I Spent Almost $120 on Acai Bowls Last Month”