Books like Know Yourself, Know Your Money by Rachel Cruze

*A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything* Which is more dangerous, a gun or a swimming pool? What do schoolteachers and sumo wrestlers have in common? Why do drug dealers still live with their moms? How much do parents really matter? How did the legalization of abortion affect the rate of violent crime? These may not sound like typical questions for an economist to ask. But Steven D. Levitt is not a typical economist. He is a much-heralded scholar who studies the riddles of everyday life—from cheating and crime to sports and child-rearing—and whose conclusions turn the conventional wisdom on its head. Freakonomics is a ground-breaking collaboration between Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, an award-winning author and journalist. They usually begin with a mountain of data and a simple, unasked question. Some of these questions concern life-and-death issues; others have an admittedly freakish quality. Thus the new field of study contained in this book: Freakonomics. Through forceful storytelling and wry insight, Levitt and Dubner show that economics is, at root, the study of incentives—how people get what they want, or need, especially when other people want or need the same thing. In Freakonomics, they explore the hidden side of … well, everything. The inner workings of a crack gang. The truth about real-estate agents. The myths of campaign finance. The telltale marks of a cheating schoolteacher. The secrets of the Ku Klux Klan. What unites all these stories is a belief that the modern world, despite a great deal of complexity and downright deceit, is not impenetrable, is not unknowable, and—if the right questions are asked—is even more intriguing than we think. All it takes is a new way of looking at things. Freakonomics establishes this unconventional premise: If morality represents how we would like the world to work, then economics represents how it actually does work. It is true that readers of this book will be armed with enough riddles and stories to last a thousand cocktail parties. ButFreakonomics can provide more than that. It will literally redefine the way we view the modern world. First published in the U.S. in 2005, Freakonomics went on to sell more than 4 million copies around the world, in 35 languages. It also inspired a follow-up book, SuperFreakonomics; a high-profile documentary film; a radio program, and an award-winning blog, which has been called “the most readable economics blog in the universe.” ([source][1]) [1]: http://freakonomics.com/books/

The New York Times bestselling Freakonomics was a worldwide sensation, selling more than four million copies in thirty-five languages and changing the way we look at the world.Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner return with Superfreakonomics, and fans and newcomers alike will find that the freakquel is even bolder, funnier, and more surprising than the first.SuperFreakonomics challenges the way we think all over again, exploring the hidden side of everything with such questions as:How is a street prostitute like a department-store Santa?What do hurricanes, heart attacks, and highway deaths have in common?Can eating kangaroo save the planet?Levitt and Dubner mix smart thinking and great storytelling like no one else. By examining how people respond to incentives, they show the world for what it really is-good, bad, ugly, and, in the final analysis, super freaky. Freakonomics has been imitated many times over-but only now, with SuperFreakonomics, has it met its match.

Can you spot the millionaire next door? Who are the rich in this country? What do they do? Where do they shop? What do they drive? How do they invest? Where did their ancestors come from? How did they get rich? Can I ever become one of them? Get the answers in The Millionaire Next Door, the never-before-told story about wealth in America. You'll be surprised at what you find out. "Why aren't I as wealthy as I should be?" Many people ask this question of themselves all the time. Often they are hard-working, well-educated, middle-to-high-income people. Why, then, are so few affluent? The answer lies in The Millionaire Next Door: The Surprising Secrets of America's wealthy. According to authors Thomas J. Stanley and William D. Danko, most people have it all wrong about how you become wealthy in America. It is seldom inheritance or advanced degrees or even intelligence that builds fortunes in this country. Wealth in America is more often the result of hard work, diligent savings, and living below your means. - Jacket.

Dave condenses his 17 years of financial teaching and counseling into 7 organized, easy-to-follow steps that will lead you out of debt and into a Total Money Makeover. Plus, you'll read over 50 real-life stories from people just like you who have followed these principles and are now winning with their money. It is a plan designed for everyone, regardless of income or age. With The Total Money Makeover, you'll be able to: Design a sure-fire plan for paying off ALL debt; Recognize the 10 most dangerous money myths; Secure a big, fat nest egg for emergencies and retirement; Positively change your life and your family tree! - Publisher. Respected financial expert Dave Ramsey offers a comprehensive plan for getting out of debt and achieving financial health. Against a playful backdrop of fitness terminology, Dave gives solid, hard-hitting advice needed to make your goals a reality. Filled with both the "hope" and the "how-to," The Total Money Makeover includes: Useful worksheets and forms; Readable and informative charts and graphs; The four factors that keep people from getting in shape financially; Photos and amazing stories from people who have succeeded following The Total Money Makeover plan. The Total Money Makeover is a necessity for everyone in need of a financial makeover. Readers will learn to live by the The Total Money Makeover motto: "If you will live like no one else, later you can live like no one else." - Publisher.

Niall Ferguson follows the money to tell the human story behind the evolution of finance, from its origins in ancient Mesopotamia to the latest upheavals on what he calls Planet Finance.Bread, cash, dosh, dough, loot, lucre, moolah, readies, the wherewithal: Call it what you like, it matters. To Christians, love of it is the root of all evil. To generals, it's the sinews of war. To revolutionaries, it's the chains of labor. But in The Ascent of Money, Niall Ferguson shows that finance is in fact the foundation of human progress. What's more, he reveals financial history as the essential backstory behind all history.Through Ferguson's expert lens familiar historical landmarks appear in a new and sharper financial focus. Suddenly, the civilization of the Renaissance looks very different: a boom in the market for art and architecture made possible when Italian bankers adopted Arabic mathematics. The rise of the Dutch republic is reinterpreted as the triumph of the world's first modern bond market over insolvent Habsburg absolutism. And the origins of the French Revolution are traced back to a stock market bubble caused by a convicted Scot murderer.With the clarity and verve for which he is known, Ferguson elucidates key financial institutions and concepts by showing where they came from. What is money? What do banks do? What's the difference between a stock and a bond? Why buy insurance or real estate? And what exactly does a hedge fund do?This is history for the present. Ferguson travels to post-Katrina New Orleans to ask why the free market can't provide adequate protection against catastrophe. He delves into the origins of the subprime mortgage crisis.Perhaps most important, The Ascent of Money documents how a new financial revolution is propelling the world's biggest countries, India and China, from poverty to wealth in the space of a single generation—an economic transformation unprecedented in human history.Yet the central lesson of the financial history is that sooner or later every bubble bursts—sooner or later the bearish sellers outnumber the bullish buyers, sooner or later greed flips into fear. And that's why, whether you're scraping by or rolling in it, there's never been a better time to understand the ascent of money.

At last, for a generation that's materially ambitious yet financially clueless comes I Will Teach You To Be Rich, Ramit Sethi's 6-week personal finance program for 20-to-35-year-olds. A completely practical approach delivered with a nonjudgmental style that makes readers want to do what Sethi says, it is based around the four pillars of personal finance— banking, saving, budgeting, and investing—and the wealth-building ideas of personal entrepreneurship.Sethi covers how to save time by not wasting it managing money; the guns and cars myth of credit cards; how to negotiate like an Indian—the conversation begins with "no"; why "Budgeting Doesn't Have to Suck!"; how to get things rolling—for real—with only $20; what most people don't understand about taxes; how to get a CEO to take you out to lunch; how to avoid the Super Mario Brothers trap by making your savings work harder than you do; the difference between cheap and frugal; the hidden relationship between money and food. Not to mention his first key lesson: Getting started is more important than being the smartest person in the room. Integrated with his website, where readers can use interactive charts, follow up on the latest information, and join the community, it is a hip blueprint to building wealth and financial security.Every month, 175,000 unique visitors come to Ramit Sethi's website, Iwillteachyoutoberich.com, to discover the path to financial freedom. They praise him thoughtfully ("Your site summarizes everything I want with my life—to be rich in finances, rich in experience, rich in family blessings," Dan Esparza) and effusively ("Dude, you rock. I love this site!" Richard Wu). The press has caught on, too: "Ramit Sethi is a rising star in the world of personal finance writing . . . one singularly attuned to the sensibilities of his generation. his style is part frat boy and part silicon Valley geek, with a little bit of San Francisco hipster thrown in" (San Francisco Chronicle). His writing is smart, his voice is full of attitude, and his ideas are uncommonly sound and refreshingly hype-free.

Bill Browder's journey started on the South Side of Chicago and moved through Stanford Business School to the dog-eat-dog world of hedge fund investing in the 1990s. It continued in Moscow, where Browder made his fortune heading the largest investment fund in Russia after the Soviet Union's collapse. But when he exposed the corrupt oligarchs who were robbing the companies in which he was investing, Vladimir Putin turned on him and, in 2005, had him expelled from Russia. In 2007, a group of law enforcement officers raided Browder's offices in Moscow and stole $230 million of taxes that his fund's companies had paid to the Russian government. Browder's attorney Sergei Magnitsky investigated the incident and uncovered a sprawling criminal enterprise. A month after Sergei testified against the officials involved, he was arrested and thrown into pre-trial detention, where he was tortured for a year. On November 16, 2009, he was led to an isolation chamber, handcuffed to a bedrail, and beaten to death by eight guards in full riot gear. Browder glimpsed the heart of darkness, and it transformed his life: he embarked on an unrelenting quest for justice in Sergei's name, exposing the towering cover-up that leads right up to Putin.

What's the secret to becoming a millionaire?For years people have asked David Bach, the national bestselling author of Smart Women Finish Rich, Smart Couples Finish Rich, and The Finish Rich Workbook, what's the real secret to getting rich? What's the one thing I need to do?Now, in The Automatic Millionaire, David Bach is sharing that secret. The Automatic Millionaire starts with the powerful story of an average American couple--he's a low-level manager, she's a beautician--whose joint income never exceeds $55,000 a year, yet who somehow manage to own two homes debt-free, put two kids through college, and retire at 55 with more than $1 million in savings. Through their story you'll learn the surprising fact that you cannot get rich with a budget! You have to have a plan to pay yourself first that is totally automatic, a plan that will automatically secure your future and pay for your present.What makes The Automatic Millionaire unique:You don't need a budgetYou don't need willpowerYou don't need to make a lot of money You don't need to be that interested in moneyYou can set up the plan in an hourDavid Bach gives you a totally realistic system, based on timeless principles, with everything you need to know, including phone numbers and websites, so you can put the secret to becoming an Automatic Millionaire in place from the comfort of your own home. This one little book has the power to secure your financial future. Do it once--the rest is automatic!

"Conventional analysis suffers from a profound failure of imagination. It imagines passing clouds to be permanent and is blind to powerful, long-term shifts taking place in full view of the world." --George FriedmanIn his long-awaited and provocative new book, George Friedman turns his eye on the future--offering a lucid, highly readable forecast of the changes we can expect around the world during the twenty-first century. He explains where and why future wars will erupt (and how they will be fought), which nations will gain and lose economic and political power, and how new technologies and cultural trends will alter the way we live in the new century.The Next 100 Years draws on a fascinating exploration of history and geopolitical patterns dating back hundreds of years. Friedman shows that we are now, for the first time in half a millennium, at the dawn of a new era--with changes in store, including:- The U.S.-Jihadist war will conclude--replaced by a second full-blown cold war with Russia.- China will undergo a major extended internal crisis, and Mexico will emerge as an important world power.- A new global war will unfold toward the middle of the century between the United States and an unexpected coalition from Eastern Europe, Eurasia, and the Far East; but armies will be much smaller and wars will be less deadly.- Technology will focus on space--both for major military uses and for a dramatic new energy resource that will have radical environmental implications.- The United States will experience a Golden Age in the second half of the century.Written with the keen insight and thoughtful analysis that has made George Friedman a renowned expert in geopolitics and forecasting, The Next 100 Years presents a fascinating picture of what lies ahead.For continual, updated analysis and supplemental material, go to www.Stratfor.com

John Bogle puts our obsession with financial success in perspective Throughout his legendary career, John C. Bogle-founder of the Vanguard Mutual Fund Group and creator of the first index mutual fund-has helped investors build wealth the right way and led a tireless campaign to restore common sense to the investment world. Along the way, he's seen how destructive an obsession with financial success can be. Now, with Enough., he puts this dilemma in perspective. Inspired in large measure by the hundreds of lectures Bogle has delivered to professional groups and college students in recent years, Enough. seeks, paraphrasing Kurt Vonnegut, "to poison our minds with a little humanity." Page by page, Bogle thoughtfully considers what "enough" actually means as it relates to money, business, and life. Reveals Bogle's unparalleled insights on money and what we should consider as the true treasures in our lives Details the values we should emulate in our business and professional callings Contains thought-provoking life lessons regarding our individual roles in society Written in a straightforward and accessible style, this unique book examines what it truly means to have "enough" in world increasingly focused on status and score-keeping.The EPUB format of this title may not be compatible for use on all handheld devices.

A memoir from former Galleon Group trader Turney Duff which portrays an after-hours Wall Street culture where drugs and sex are rampant and millions in trading commissions flow to those who dangle the most enticements, exploring the dizzying temptations of making a living on the Street.

Provides a guide for becoming a successful angel investor, from identifying new opportunities to structuring investments in order to maximize returns.

In this account of his stranger-than-fiction baptism into the corrupted ways of Washington, Neil Barofsky offers an irrefutable indictment, from an insider of the Bush and Obama administrations, of the mishandling of the $700 billion TARP bailout fund. In behind-the-scenes detail, he reveals proof of the extreme degree to which our government officials bent over backward to serve the interests of Wall Street firms at the expense of the broader public--and at the expense of effective financial reform. During the height of the financial crisis in 2008, Barofsky gave up his job as a prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney's office in New York City, where he had convicted drug kingpins, Wall Street executives, and perpetrators of mortgage fraud, to become the special inspector general in charge of oversight of the spending of the bailout money. From his first day on the job, his efforts to protect against fraud and to hold the big banks accountable for how they spent taxpayer money were met with outright hostility from the Treasury officials in charge of the bailouts. Barofsky discloses how, in serving the interests of the banks, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and his team worked with Wall Street executives to design programs that would funnel vast amounts of taxpayer money to their firms and would have allowed them to game the markets and make huge profits with almost no risk and no accountability, while repeatedly fighting Barofsky's efforts to put the necessary fraud protections in place. His investigations also uncovered abject mismanagement of the bailout of insurance giant AIG and Geithner's decision to allow the payment of millions of dollars in bonuses--including $7, 700 to a kitchen worker and $7,000 to a mail room assistant--and that the Obama administration's "TARP czar" lobbied for the executives to retain their high pay. Providing details about how, meanwhile, the interests of homeowners and the broader public were betrayed, Barofsky recounts how Geithner and his team steadfastly failed to fix glaring flaws in the Obama administration's homeowner relief program pointed out by Barofsky and other bailout watchdogs, rejecting anti-fraud measures, which unleashed a wave of abuses by mortgage providers against homeowners, even causing some who would not have lost their homes otherwise to go into foreclosure.

"Life looks good, but hidden beneath that glossy exterior are credit card bills, student loans, car payments, and an out-of-control mortgage. Their money situation is a mess, and they're trying to live a life they simply can't afford. So why exactly do we try so hard to keep up with the Joneses? Are we really living the lives we want, or are we chasing someone else's dream, just trying to keep up appearances on social media, at church, and in our community? Why are we letting other people set the pace for our own family's finances? In Love Your Life, Not Theirs, Rachel shows you how to buy and do the things that are important to you--the right way. That starts by choosing to quit the comparisons, reframing the way you think about money, and developing new habits like avoiding debt, living on a plan, watching your spending, saving for the future, having healthy conversations about money, and giving. These habits work, and Rachel is living proof. Now, she wants to empower you to live the life you've always dreamed of without creating the debt, stress, and worry that are all too often part of the deal. Social media isn't real life, and trying to keep up with the Joneses will never get you anywhere. It's time to live--and love--your life, not theirs.