Rich Dad Poor Dad talks about plenty of savvy financial lessons. Still, the one I think is the most widely applicable is the concept of paying yourself first. This concept aligns with withdrawing money from your paycheck before it deposits into your bank account.

More than one million copies have been sold of this seminal book on investing in which legendary mutual-fund manager Peter Lynch explains the advantages that average investors have over professionals and how they can use these advantages to achieve financial success.

America’s most successful money manager tells how average investors can beat the pros by using what they know. According to Lynch, investment opportunities are everywhere. From the supermarket to the workplace, we encounter products and services all day long. By paying attention to the best ones, we can find companies in which to invest before the professional analysts discover them. When investors get in early, they can find the “tenbaggers,” the stocks that appreciate tenfold from the initial investment. A few tenbaggers will turn an average stock portfolio into a star performer.

Lynch offers easy-to-follow advice for sorting out the long shots from the no-shots by reviewing a company’s financial statements and knowing which numbers really count. He offers guidelines for investing in cyclical, turnaround, and fast-growing companies.

As long as you invest for the long term, Lynch says, your portfolio can reward you. This timeless advice has made One Up on Wall Street a #1 bestseller and a classic book of investment know-how.

This book is prevalent for a good reason; it's hard to put down. I enjoy a good self-help book, but this was packed full of helpful tips and tricks. I found the advice to curb bad habits through classical reinforcement. I was pairing the practices with either a punishment or something you want to get better about doing. 

My example of using this was doing 50 pushups when I was binge-watching YouTube or Netflix. Although it's good to take breaks, sometimes I get lost in the rabbit holes and need to either break the habit or improve myself in a different facet. 

The book was fantastic and worth the time and money to learn the lessons. The introduction grabs you, and it's hard to let go. Enjoy!

The #1 New York Times bestseller that examines how people can champion new ideas—and how leaders can fight groupthink, from the author of Give and Take and co-author of Option B

“Reading Originals made me feel like I was seated across from Adam Grant at a dinner party, as one of my favorite thinkers thrilled me with his insights and his wonderfully new take on the world.” —Malcolm Gladwell, author of Outliers and The Tipping Point

“Originals is one of the most important and captivating books I have ever read, full of surprising and powerful ideas. It will not only change the way you see the world; it might just change the way you live your life. And it could very well inspire you to change your world.” —Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook and author of Lean In

With Give and Take, Adam Grant not only introduced a landmark new paradigm for success but also established himself as one of his generation’s most compelling and provocative thought leaders. In Originals he again addresses the challenge of improving the world, but now from the perspective of becoming original: choosing to champion novel ideas and values that go against the grain, battle conformity, and buck outdated traditions. How can we originate new ideas, policies, and practices without risking it all? 

Using surprising studies and stories spanning business, politics, sports, and entertainment, Grant explores how to recognize a good idea, speak up without getting silenced, build a coalition of allies, choose the right time to act, and manage fear and doubt; how parents and teachers can nurture originality in children; and how leaders can build cultures that welcome dissent. Learn from an entrepreneur who pitches his start-ups by highlighting the reasons not to invest, a woman at Apple who challenged Steve Jobs from three levels below, an analyst who overturned the rule of secrecy at the CIA, a billionaire financial wizard who fires employees for failing to criticize him, and a TV executive who didn’t even work in comedy but saved Seinfeld from the cutting-room floor. The payoff is a set of groundbreaking insights about rejecting conformity and improving the status quo.

The big short. What's not to love?

The classic Michael Lewis book that defined an era of greed, gluttony, and outrageous fortune, available for the first time unabridged and read by the author. 

In 1986, before Michael Lewis became the best-selling author of The Big Short, Moneyball, and Flash Boys, he landed a job at Salomon Brothers, one of Wall Street’s premier investment firms. 

During the next three years, Lewis rose from callow trainee to New York- and London-based bond salesman, raking in millions for the firm and cashing in on a modern-day gold rush. Liar’s Poker is the culmination of those heady, frenzied years - a behind-the-scenes look at a unique and turbulent time in American business. This new audio edition, produced by the same team that produces his number one podcast Against the Rules, is unabridged, read by the author, and features archival news clips from the era, original scoring and sound effects, as well as a bonus episode from the companion podcast. 

From the frat-boy camaraderie of the 41st-floor trading room to the killer instinct that made ambitious young men gamble everything on a high-stakes game of bluffing and deception, Liar’s Poker is both “the funniest book on Wall Street I’ve ever read” (Tom Wolfe) and the launchpad for Michael Lewis’ storied career.

Michael Lewis’s instant classic may be “the most influential book on sports ever written” (People), but “you need know absolutely nothing about baseball to appreciate the wit, snap, economy and incisiveness of [Lewis’s] thoughts about it” (Janet Maslin, New York Times).

One of GQ's 50 Best Books of Literary Journalism of the 21st Century

Just before the 2002 season opens, the Oakland Athletics must relinquish its three most prominent (and expensive) players and is written off by just about everyone—but then comes roaring back to challenge the American League record for consecutive wins. How did one of the poorest teams in baseball win so many games?

In a quest to discover the answer, Michael Lewis delivers not only “the single most influential baseball book ever” (Rob Neyer, Slate) but also what “may be the best book ever written on business” (Weekly Standard). Lewis first looks to all the logical places—the front offices of major league teams, the coaches, the minds of brilliant players—but discovers the real jackpot is a cache of numbers?numbers!?collected over the years by a strange brotherhood of amateur baseball enthusiasts: software engineers, statisticians, Wall Street analysts, lawyers, and physics professors.

What these numbers prove is that the traditional yardsticks of success for players and teams are fatally flawed. Even the box score misleads us by ignoring the crucial importance of the humble base-on-balls. This information had been around for years, and nobody inside Major League Baseball paid it any mind. And then came Billy Beane, general manager of the Oakland Athletics. He paid attention to those numbers?with the second-lowest payroll in baseball at his disposal he had to?to conduct an astonishing experiment in finding and fielding a team that nobody else wanted.

In a narrative full of fabulous characters and brilliant excursions into the unexpected, Michael Lewis shows us how and why the new baseball knowledge works. He also sets up a sly and hilarious morality tale: Big Money, like Goliath, is always supposed to win . . . how can we not cheer for David?

This book is a survey of millionaires and tells you what it finds out. Biggest takeaway: Multiply your age times your realized pretax annual household income from all sources except inheritances. Divide by ten. This number, less any inherited wealth, is what your net worth should be.

A former international hostage negotiator for the FBI offers a new, field-tested approach to high-stakes negotiations—whether in the boardroom or at home.

After a stint policing the rough streets of Kansas City, Missouri, Chris Voss joined the FBI, where his career as a hostage negotiator brought him face-to-face with a range of criminals, including bank robbers and terrorists. Reaching the pinnacle of his profession, he became the FBI’s lead international kidnapping negotiator. Never Split the Difference takes you inside the world of high-stakes negotiations and into Voss’s head, revealing the skills that helped him and his colleagues succeed where it mattered most: saving lives. In this practical guide, he shares the nine effective principles—counterintuitive tactics and strategies—you too can use to become more persuasive in both your professional and personal life.

Life is a series of negotiations you should be prepared for: buying a car, negotiating a salary, buying a home, renegotiating rent, deliberating with your partner. Taking emotional intelligence and intuition to the next level, Never Split the Difference gives you the competitive edge in any discussion.

How do you spot an area poised for gentrification? Is spring or winter the best time to put your house on the market? Will a house on Swamp Road sell for less than one on Gingerbread Lane? The fact is that the rules of real estate have changed drastically over the past five years. To understand real estate in our fast-paced, technology-driven world, we need to toss out all of the outdated truisms and embrace today's brand new information. But how?

Enter Zillow, the nation's #1 real estate website and mobile app. Thanks to its treasure trove of proprietary data and army of statisticians and data scientists, led by chief economist Stan Humphries, Zillow has been able to spot the trends and truths of today's housing market while acknowledging that a home is more than an economic asset. In Zillow Talk, Humphries and CEO Spencer Rascoff explain the science behind where and how we live now and reveal practical, data-driven insights about buying, selling, renting and financing real estate. Read this book to find out why:

It's better to remodel your bathroom than your kitchen

Putting the word "cute" in your listing could cost you thousands of dollars

You shouldn't buy the worst house in the best neighborhood

You should never list your house for $444,000

You shouldn't list your house for sale before March Madness or after the Masters 

Densely packed with entertaining anecdotes and invaluable how-to advice, Zillow Talk is poised to be the real estate almanac for the next generation.

“[A] retelling of the careers and the personalities . . . who formed today’s world of high finance.” —St. Louis Post-Dispatch

The 2008 financial collapse, the expansion of corporate and private wealth, the influence of money in politics—many of Wall Street’s contemporary trends can be traced back to the work of fourteen critical figures who wrote, and occasionally broke, the rules of American finance.

Edward Morris plots in absorbing detail Wall Street’s transformation from a clubby enclave of financiers to a symbol of vast economic power. His book begins with J. Pierpont Morgan, who ruled the American banking system at the turn of the twentieth century, and ends with Sandy Weill, whose collapsing Citigroup required the largest taxpayer bailout in history. In between, Wall Streeters relates the triumphs and missteps of twelve other financial visionaries. From Charles Merrill, who founded Merrill Lynch and introduced the small investor to the American stock market; to Michael Milken, the so-called junk bond king; to Jack Bogle, whose index funds redefined the mutual fund business; to Myron Scholes, who laid the groundwork for derivative securities; and to Benjamin Graham, who wrote the book on securities analysis. Anyone interested in the modern institution of American finance will devour this history of some of its most important players.

I have to say: the podcast is better than the book. I've listened to nearly every podcast episode and loved each one, but the book was lazy. It tries to be a lot of different types of books but doesn't achieve any of them. I would recommend staying away.

Rasiel's book is geared toward consulting but has excellent tips for everyone. 

The three biggest takeaways: 

1. Everything in threes.

2. M.E.C.E.,

3. Don't boil the ocean.

If you're interested in learning more about these concepts and more, give this a read! It's an interesting perspective on the top consulting firm in the '90s!