Investing in yourself through reading personal finance books

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Originally uploaded by panzergrenadier

How does one learn about personal finance?

How many of you have ever attended a formal financial literacy or personal finance class in your primary, secondary, pre-university/junior college, polytechnnic or university days?

How many investment clubs are there where students can learn about investments and shares?

I read in the newspapers that the Singapore Management University has something like that but during my days in Nanyang Technological University there was nothing of the sort going on when I was studying.

So how do we go about acquiring the book knowledge about personal finance?

We read.

The good thing is that our excellent public libraries are stocked with many of the world class titles when it comes to personal finance and investments. Any first time investor should talk to experienced investors but also take some time and put in some effort to read, read and read about personal finance and investments.

Some of the books that I have personally read and benefitted from include the following:

• THE RICHEST MAN IN BABYLON - George S. Clason
  
• HOW TO THINK AND GROW RICH - Napolean Hill
• ONE UP ON WALL STREET - Peter Lynch
• RICH DAD POOR DAD - Robert Kiyosaki

These books are relatively easy to read as they are pitched at the layman. There have been some criticism of Robert Kiyosaki in that he made his millions selling his book through Multi-Level Marketing channels rather than real estate but his book puts very succinctly what financial freedom means. But he takes from some of the principles expounded by "The Richest Man in Babylon" as well as Napolean Hill.

Napolean Hill is not so much an investment guide per se but more a book that is more motivational in nature. The examples used by Napolean Hill are big businessman in the US that made millions and billions but Hill does qualify to say that "rich" does not always have to be framed in monetary terms. It can be in terms of great deeds or great relationships that you can develop if you apply his approach.

The one thing I learned from Napolean Hill is to be specific in goal setting. And that is very important in personal finance and investing because you have to understand why do you want to "make money" and clarify how much exactly do you want in terms of returns on your assets which translates into the opportunities that you would look for when you are scouting around for where you can invest your money to work hard for you.

I myself have read and continue to read books on personal finance and investment as you can never learn enough. But the important thing is to execute and take action on your investment objective and put money into those assets that will yield the returns through dividends, interest and capital appreciation and also to know how to save a portion of our income towards investments and to defer current wants for future needs.

Remember, read, read and read so that you can be well and prosper!

Our Public Libraries - Unlimited DVDs Rentals for $20.60 per year

It is a open secret that our public libraries are a economical source of knowledge, entertainment and resources. Reading can be both a pleasurable activity as well as financially rewarding as one learns new information, skills and hobbies that can turn into a future career. Since public libaries are funded by taxpayers and provided free-of-charge to residents, why not take advantage of this public resource to save money on entertainment.

Magazines and Periodicals
The library stocks many of the periodicals that one finds on the newstand. Instead of paying that $5.00 or $6.00 for that FHM or HERWORLD magazine, why not borrow these from the library using your NRIC (if you are already a registered library member)? Granted, the latest magazines would likely be borrowed but you can get hold of the last couple of months. Periodicals such as Fortune, Time, Newsweek are all available from NLB libraries.

CDs, DVDs and Movies
The library@Esplanade provides DVDs that we can borrow relating to drama serials, movies and science-fiction series. Boxed set of Star Trek, Cheers, Seinfeld and even Space 1999 can be found at this library. There is a catch of course! The borrowing period is 1 week and you need to be a Premier library member and pay an additional $20.60 per year, or only $0.06 cents a day to enjoy this privilege. Compared to paying $3-5 per rental for 2-3 days from VideoEZY or your neighbourhood video rental shop, this is a bargain. I particularly enjoyed following the first 2 seasons of Deep Space Nine (Star Trek spin-off) which was not shown on Singapore TV and hence it was good to be able to watch such series.

Novels
The fiction section of the library stocks most of the popular fiction e.g. Tom Clancy, David Eddings, Nadine Godimer, James Michener, Charles Dickens, JK Rowling etc. If you are really desperate to reserve one of the popular fiction books that were just released, you can pay $1.55 to make a reservation online through NLB's website and request to collect the book from the public library nearest your home. Talk about convenience!

So for those who like me love to read and watch DVDs, make use of our public resource -- The Library and save your hard earned money for investments that will advance your goal of achieving financial freedom!

Be well and prosper.