Books to Help You Budget the Books!

Five Steps to Financial Wellbeing is a book to walk you through five simple steps to change your relationship with money, in order to make life better.

Money is not the most important thing on earth, but financial stability lets you live life in line with your values, rather than having to  work any job, to stay above water.

It digs into building self-worth without buying things, avoiding debt and investing for the future. The author got out of £27,000 of debt, using the advice she now gives you:

1. Overcoming your financial baggage
2. Separating net worth from self worth
3. Creating money habits and rituals
4. Learning to spend mindfully
5. Planning and preparing for the future

It’s perfectly possible to live a happy life without abundant wealth. And to live a miserable life with millions in the bank. But it is difficult to live a happy life, if you are locked in a constant battle with your finances.

Get Good with Money is an American book that uses a simple 10-step process created by a former kindergarten teacher who lost her nest egg, when a recession (and encounter with a shady advisor) put her in a huge financial hole.

She used her teaching skills to pay it all off, buy a house and mandate into law financial education for schools in New Jersey. The 10 steps are:

1. Build a budget
2. Save like a squirrel
3. Dig out of debt
4. Score high credit
5. Learn to earn
6. Invest like an insider
7. Get good with insurance
8. Increase your net worth
9. Pick your money team
10. Leave a legacy

Stay away from debt at all costs. Debt (not poverty) is the greatest energy of financial well-being and peace of mind. Debt causes us to mortgage our future for the present.

They will dress debt up in a suit, and call it credit. But it all comes down to the same thing. You will have mortgaged your future, to pay for your present. And that is something you never want to do. Kent Nerburn