
Ask HN: Books on getting rich? - seshagiric
Okay this does sound naive. However I have free time this weekend and want to read 1-2 of the best selling books on getting rich. Mainly to understand what kind of advice they give on finances and/or personality traits. Please suggest your favorites.
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jsackmann
How to Get Rich, by Felix Dennis

A lot of the book is biographical, but that part is very entertaining. Dennis
is very upfront about drive, sacrifice, and luck required. Definitely not warm
and fuzzy.

~~~
ig1
The above. Also Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill

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damir
i've read both and imo they are just what you're lookig for, especially How to
get rich by Dennis Felix.

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icey
It's over a century old, but the "Art of Money Getting" by P.T. Barnum is
still pretty good:

<http://www.fourmilab.ch/etexts/www/barnum/moneygetting/>

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satyajit
Whatever you read, just don't read Robert Kiyasaki ("Rich Dad, Poor Dad")
series - stay away from the Amway MLM overtones.

~~~
lucraft
Well, it depends what you are after. Do you actually want to get rich, or do
you just want to get a warm fuzzy feeling reading about getting rich? Because
if the latter then Rich Dad is exactly what you need.

~~~
charlesju
Why? What advice does he give that isn't genuine?

From what I remember, the book's premise is about using money to make more
money and that true wealth is a derivative of investing wisely. Sure, maybe
for you this is a no-brainer, but for the average American and perhaps the
average hacker this concept can be life-changing.

~~~
jwecker
The guy has never made a cent from anything but MLM and this series of books.
The "rich dad" is not a real person, though he still markets it as
autobiographical. Much of the specific business advice he gives is 1) provably
dumb, 2) unethical, 3) sometimes illegal.

He's built a whole cottage industry around one basic premise- you get rich if
you have lots of residual income that doesn't require you to put in
proportional hours. If you need a series of 7 books (or even the first one) to
teach you that (though I admit the board game is fun on its own merits)...
perhaps your not entrepreneur material?

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petercooper
Others have already suggested the best overall books I'd recommend in terms of
philosophy, but in terms of the nitty gritty details of actually _doing_ it,
I'd recommend _Ready, Fire, Aim: Zero to $100 Million in No Time Flat_ by
Michael Masterson.

Not everything will be applicable to your situation but it's a pretty detailed
guide to taking an idea, launching it, and building the company around it up
to a multi million dollar company.

~~~
dkokelley
Yeah this book is more about building businesses than building personal net
worth. There is however a strong correlation between the two :)

A very good book. I recommend it too.

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agotterer
Check out "The Millionaire Mind" and "The Millionaire Next Door". The book
isn't really about how to become rich. More about the mind set a millionaire
has to get rich and stay rich.

[http://www.amazon.com/Millionaire-Mind-Thomas-J-
Stanley/dp/0...](http://www.amazon.com/Millionaire-Mind-Thomas-J-
Stanley/dp/0740703579)

[http://www.amazon.com/Millionaire-Next-Door-Thomas-
Stanley/d...](http://www.amazon.com/Millionaire-Next-Door-Thomas-
Stanley/dp/0671015206)

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jlees
Ramit Sethi's I Will Teach You To Be Rich was nicely written and has a lot of
supplementary stuff, mostly centred around managing personal finance well.
Probably not one of the "seminal" books - it's new - but a decent read.

~~~
pneill
I'll second this recommendation. Very good for young single people. It's not a
get rich quick book. It's a get rich slow the old fashion way book. What it
does best is provides a framework for budgeting and saving that's easy to
follow.

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lawn
The Richest Man in Babylon - Old wisdom at is best.

~~~
agrinshtein
+1 All you need to learn about money is in this book.

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iterationx
The best selling book is Tony Robbins "Unlimited Power" with like 9 million
copies sold, but its also about fitness, so its not as targeted as you might
like, although I liked it, but I'm not rich.

Another one which I liked was, "Losing My Virginity: How I've Survived, Had
Fun, and Made a Fortune Doing Business My Way" Richard Branson

It's how Branson got rich which is pretty interesting.

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maximumwage
I really enjoyed The Dream by Gurbaksh Chahal. He founded BlueLithium, which
was acquired by Yahoo. The book goes into detail about the attitudes required
to get rich and manage wealth. Here are a bunch of other books written by rich
people as well: <http://www.bigwinner.org/books>

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edw519
Biographies of the very rich and successful who started with nothing are
usually very good. I look for common themes and key points in their lives. A
few of my favorites:

Carnegie by Peter Krass, [http://www.amazon.com/Carnegie-Peter-
Krass/dp/0471468835/ref...](http://www.amazon.com/Carnegie-Peter-
Krass/dp/0471468835/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1246715621&sr=8-7)

"Titan, The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr." by Ron Chernow,
[http://www.amazon.com/Titan-Life-John-Rockefeller-
Sr/dp/1400...](http://www.amazon.com/Titan-Life-John-Rockefeller-
Sr/dp/1400077303/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1246715706&sr=1-1)

"iWoz", by Steve Wozniak, [http://www.amazon.com/iWoz-Computer-Invented-
Personal-Co-Fou...](http://www.amazon.com/iWoz-Computer-Invented-Personal-Co-
Founded/dp/0393061434/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1246715846&sr=1-1)

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colinblake
I second both "Richest Man in Babylon" and "Think and Grow Rich." Both were
recommended to me by a very successful VC that attributed much of his success
to those books. Both are very good. "Babylon" covers many principles of wealth
while "Think" is more about the psychology, so they complement each other
well.

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tom_rath
Probably not what you have in mind, but The Wealthy Barber (
<http://www.wealthybarber.com/> ) provides common-sense advice for
accumulating and managing modest wealth without needing corporate success.

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teknician1
Agree with The Richest Man in Babylon and Think and Grow Rich.

I recommend: 4 Hour Work Week, Mommy Millionaire, and The Millionaire Next
Door, Gorilla Marketing, and Execution.

LOL, if I had to choose two, they would be Think and Grow Rich and 4 Hour Work
Week.

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apsurd
Think and Grow Rich

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nickfox
Think and Grow Rich Available for free here (it's no longer under copyright)

[http://www.4shared.com/file/63815169/6ed4bf95/ThinkandGrowRi...](http://www.4shared.com/file/63815169/6ed4bf95/ThinkandGrowRich.html)

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known
<http://isbn.nu/9780375503665> is good.

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il
Think and Grow Rich, old as it is, is still the best book on getting rich I've
ever read.

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thisduck
Who here has become rich, you know, by reading these books?

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zen53
How to Make Wealth <http://paulgraham.com/wealth.html>

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seshagiric
Yes. Actually I read this 2 yrs back and can remember most of it still. The
point that you create wealth by making things other want had a great impact.

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eli_s
maybe if you want to get rich your best bet is to write a book about getting
rich? Seems to work for schmuks like Timothy Ferriss.

~~~
eli_s
Looks like I'm getting down voted for not contributing anything worthwhile to
the conversation.

I'm not a huge fan of get rich books and I wonder how many rich people ever
read any of those books.

Also I don't really like the idea of hoarding personal wealth - why is it that
the richest in the world seem to often give away their wealth after they have
accumulated it? eg Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Andrew Forrest.

I remember reading somewhere about Warren Buffett. He said that he enjoyed the
challenges of making money not the money itself. He also mentioned that to be
ultra 'successful' one needs to devote oneself completely to making money to
the exclusion of all else. Doesn't sound like the road to happiness to me.

From where I'm standing it seems that most people who got rich found something
they loved doing and were really good at (the threadless guys are a good
recent example). The money was a nice side effect of their passion.

~~~
swolchok
If you have a lot or the clear potential to get a lot, money seems like a
pretty decent way of keeping score.

~~~
eli_s
I'm not saying there is anything wrong with making money - it's the single
minded pursuit of it which I think is unhealthy

