What it takes to become a rich lady - top 5 personal finance books for women
While there are lots of general personal finance books available in the market, women-specific personal finance guide books are rare. Here is a list of 5 personal finance books specifically catering to women. So, what does it take to become a rich lady? Find out, through this article that reviews five women-specific books related to finance.
Personal finance self-help books are must-reads for everyone. The reason why so many people struggle with their finance and have done so in that past is the lack of financial literacy. Personal finance is not a subject usually taught as a basic course in the school curricula. While the schools teach us to get good grades and learn a particular trade or skill, they do not teach us how to manage our money. It is therefore not unusual to find someone who is very successful in his or her profession – say a good doctor or a teacher or a lawyer – but utterly struggles to manage his or her finances. As Robert Kiyosaki has famously mentioned in his bestselling book Rich Dad Poor Dad, one can be highly educated and a successful professional, but still financially illiterate. Personal finance, therefore, is a subject that should be taught or learned with great care and diligence, because it does not come naturally to even the smartest of humans. Otherwise, Sir Isaac Newton, one of the cleverest humans ever born, would not have lost a huge fortune in the South Sea Bubble. Personal finance books for women
However, although there are several great personal finance books that everyone should read, today we are going to talk about some particular personal finance books specifically written for women. Due to several factors including gender inequality in the socio-cultural structure, the case of women's personal finance, especially in India, is often different from those of men. It, therefore, requires special treatment. In India, women's education, in general, is still not up to the expected mark, and financial literacy for women is still a distant dream for many. We the women manage so many things: we manage our careers, our daily chores, our households – now it is time that we manage our money properly. However, as the writer of Smart Mom Rich Mom Kimberly Palmer has aptly noted, most personal finance books are targeted at men, hence the need of women's personal finance books in particular. Here is a list of top 5 personal finance books for women that you should definitely give a go. 1. Smart Mom Rich Mom by Kimberly Palmer
Kimberly Palmer is a noted money columnist and a mother of two; as a mother, she herself faced the agonizing question of how to manage the finances of the family and meet the expenses of raising the little humans. For over nine years, as a money columnist, Palmer has been interviewing "smart moms" – women who have successfully managed their family finances. She has put all those experiences, including her own, in Smart Mom, Rich Mom: How to Build Wealth While Raising a Family – which definitely stands out from other personal finance books. The title of the book is probably inspired by Robert T. Kiyosaki's epoch-making personal finance self-help book Rich Dad Poor Dad. Kimberly Palmer notes that while most personal finance books are male-oriented, and the ones designated for females usually restrict their advice on shopping less and couponing harder. She asks a valid question regarding this gender inequality: why are women-only lectured on "pinching pennies at the grocery store and cutting back on our shoe collections" while men have full-scale books and magazines on investing and money management. 2. Rich Bitch by Nicole Lapin
A television news anchor on CNBC, CNN, and Bloomberg, as well as a finance correspondent for 'Morning Joe' on MSNBC and 'The Today Show' on NBC, Nicole Lapin is quite a popular name in the world of personal finance. Her book, Rich Bitch, was published in 2015 as an addendum to what she was already doing for long for empowering women in the field of personal finance with lecture series, events like seminars and workshops, online courses, and how-to videos. A New York Times bestseller, Rich Bitch is particularly written for those women who do not get want to, or are rather scared by, the financial jargon. If you "break out into hives at the thought of money", this book is certainly going to make your life easier in the field of money and finance. In this book, Lapin provides the reader with a 12-step plan in which she shared her experiences about her own personal finances. And that is exactly the biggest strength of this book – its personal touch. Lapin does not lecture you but shows you the mistakes she had made as a friend so that you can avoid those pitfalls and the things that had helped her put her personal finance in order so that you can learn from those. If you want to learn the basics of personal finance without scaring yourself with all the jargon, there can perhaps be no better alternative than Nicole Lapin's Rich Bitch. 3. Women and Money by Suze Orman
Susan Lynn "Suze" Orman is an American financial advisor and author, who founded the Suze Orman Financial Group in 1987. She shot to fame as a financial advisor with a CNBC show that ran continuously from 2002 to 2015. Her bestselling personal finance self-help book for women, Women and Money, first came out in 2007. Unlike many other personal finance self-help books that are centered around theory, this book certainly stands out by calling for action. It is based around a five-month program – which the author calls the 'Save Yourself Plan' – to provide the reader with long-term financial freedom and security. This book is particularly written for women, as evident from the title; in its course, it also discusses the eight qualities of a wealthy woman as well as why she deserves to be in control of her financial future and destiny. In 2018, an updated and revised edition of this book came out, with an enhanced financial empowerment plan and an added chapter on investing. As the author has claimed, this book truly "speaks to every mother, daughter, grandmother, sister, and wife".4. Secrets of Six-Figure Women by Barbara Huson
Like most common women, Barbara Huson grew up depending on her father's help for managing her finances, and after her marriage, she thought her husband would do the same. But soon, she discovered that her husband was a gambler. Nevertheless, as she was intimidated by numbers and financial jargon, she still allowed her to handle their finances. The epiphany came with a severe crisis – there were tax bills for over one million US Dollars and her husband has absconded. With three daughters, Barbara could have been on the streets – instead, she chose to get smart with her money. And she had shared those secrets in her books. As a former journalist, she interviewed financially successful women, and put together all those bits of knowledge in her first book Prince Charming Isn't Coming: How Women Get Smart About Money. At the same time, she continued to interview the rich women. Secrets of Six-Figure Women: Surprising Strategies to Up Your Earnings and Change Your Life is born out of that research of interviewing over 150 women who made $100,000 or more.
Note – Barbara Huson's former name was Barbara Stanny, under which she published most of her books. However, in 2017, she decided to take the last name of her present husband Lee Huson; and while most of the web and finance world still knows her better as Stanny, we would respect her decision and address her as Barbara Huson! 5. Million Dollar Women by Julia Pimsleur
Women run a whole lot of businesses in the modern world, but most of them never succeed to cross the thresholds of a start-up or a small-scale business. In fact, in America, women are starting businesses at nearly twice the rate of men, but hardly three out of a hundred could achieve a million-dollar revenue. In Million Dollar Women, author and entrepreneur Julia Pimsleur has shared her own success story – how she has formed her own company and raised a capital of several million US dollars. This book is therefore a quintessential guide for women who want to make it really big. If you think you have a great creative idea that could be translated into a million-dollar business, you should definitely give this book a go. Pimsleur also a four-month online coaching program called the 'Million Dollar Women Masterclass' targeting aspiring women entrepreneurs.
Have you read any of these books? What are your opinions on them? Can you recommend any other good personal finance self-help book for women? Kindly post a comment below, as we are all ears!