The Personal Finance Podcast - How to Read a Book Per Week (My Unbelievably Simple System!)

Episode Date: December 16, 2020

Episode 32: How to Read a Book Per Week (My Unbelievably Simple System!) In this episode we cover:  How to read a book per week How to compound knowledge  Why it is so important to read  The best Personal Finance Books  Check out the system here!  Best Business Books! Stuff I Recommend!  M1 Finance Best Place to Invest  Personal Capital Free Wealth Management and Budget App  CIT BANK (Best Savings Account) ** Some links may be an affiliate link and we earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. We only recommend products we truly believe in.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Local news is in decline across Canada, and this is bad news for all of us. With less local news, noise, rumors, and misinformation fill the void, and it gets harder to separate truth from fiction. That's why CBC News is putting more journalists in more places across Canada, reporting on the ground from where you live, telling the stories that matter to all of us, because local news is big news. Choose news, not noise.

CBC News. Okay, when I sell my business, I want the best tax and investment advice. I want to help my kids, and I want to give back to the community. Ooh, then it's the vacation of a lifetime. I wonder if my head of office has a forever setting. An IG Private Wealth Advisor creates the clarity you need with plans that harmonize your business, your family, and your dreams. Get financial advice that puts you at the center.

Find your advisor at IG Private Wealth.com. On this episode of the personal finance podcast, we're going to talk about how to read a book per week. It's my unbelievably simple system. What's up, everybody, and welcome to the personal finance podcast. I'm your host, Andrew, founder of dollar after dollar.com. And today on the personal finance podcast, we're going to be talking about how to read a book per week. And this is my unbelievably simple system. And the reason why we're talking about how to read a book per week is if you don't have the knowledge of personal finance,

and you're taking the first step by listening to this podcast, but if you don't have some sort of knowledge and background in personal finance, how do you ever expect to achieve any result at all if you don't actually try to educate yourself? And listening to the personal finance podcast is your biggest first step, because I'm going to cover as many topics as possible on this podcast. But expanding your knowledge in in-depth book reviews and reading books, is going to allow you to build true wealth through your knowledge. Because after you start reading enough, all of a sudden you're just going to have reading the compounding. And over time, it's going to be something that's going to make a significant difference for you.

So today, what we're going to talk about is we're going to go through my simple system and we're going to go through the different ways that you can implement this system and why I created this system in the first place. So let's get into it. So one of the biggest questions that's going to come up is why would you want to read this many books. And there's a book that came out called Rich Habits, and it's by a guy named Tom Corley. And if you haven't read the book, add it to your reading list for a book per week. But what he found out was that most wealthy people, the majority of wealthy people, make sure that

they read every single day. And here's some of the stats that he talked about in the middle of his book. Sixty-three percent of them listened to audio books during their commute. So 63 percent of people who were wealthy, who were millionaires, who had rich habits. And they were, and they were habits were those who listened to audiobooks and learned on their way to work. 79% read educational or career-related material. So they were increasing their knowledge in their career so they could increase their income moving forward. Fifty-five percent read for personal development. So they were increasing their personal development. And in turn, if you increase your personal development, it's going to trickle down to every part of your life,

including your health, your wealth, your wisdom, all of those pieces. Fifty-eight percent read biographies of successful people. And what that means is they're trying to get motivation and they're learning from other people's mistakes and learning from other people's successes so that they can mimic those as well. 94% read current events. And this is important as well for a lot of different reasons. Now, I'm not saying to ingrain yourself into politics, but reading current events about things like the stock market or things that are going to happen with the economy. Those are going to help your bottom line in your personal finance. And then 51% read about history. Now here's the telling fact. Only 11% of people who are extremely wealthy over a million dollar net worth. Only 11%

of them read nonfiction material. This is extremely telling because what this study shows is that reading nonfiction books has a correlation to success. A recent study found out that most CEOs read at least 60 books per year. So if you want to get ahead in your career, if you want to increase your income, if you want to build true wealth, then reading has to be a habit that you start to ingrain in your life. Because if you read, you're going to be ingrained in these habits and this knowledge that you can use to build wealth for the rest of your life. Once you have that knowledge, you can use it forever. So here's the challenge today. I suggest that you increase your book count. Because think about this. If you read a book per week, it's going to compound tremendously. So let's

think about this for a second over the time. If you read one book per week, that's 520 books per decade. 120 books every 10 years if you read one book per week. Imagine the amount of knowledge that you're going to have if you read 520 books. That's going to be way more than any college education can ever give you if you read 520 books. Even if you break it down to biweekly, maybe you don't think you can read a book per week. That's 260 books per decade. That's still a massive amount. A book per month is 120 books per decade.

So see the massive difference. If you only read one book per month compared to one book per week, the difference is massive. It's 520 books for one book per week or 120 books for one book per month per decade. And then one book per year is only 10 books. So that's why I decided that I'm going to read one book per week to compound my knowledge to increase my net worth and increase my bottom line. Now, there's a number of different ways that you can implement this system. It doesn't have to be just physical books.

Now, physical books are one way to read. It's the way I prefer to read because it's the way that I can remember the material more because I use a highlighter and things like that to be able to recognize pieces so I can go back and look at those books and say, where are the important parts? I'm just going to read the highlights. Because a lot of times you're not going to remember most of the things that you read in the first place. So that's why I like to physically read books and highlight it.

But you can use audiobooks. And audiobooks are a tremendous tool that we have nowadays because audio books are ingrained in every single book now almost. Every big book that's out there, there's an audio book for it. And it allows you to listen to books at work. Listen to books while you're working out. Listen to books on your commute. And this is a different way.

If you're a big podcast listener, if you like podcasts, obviously you do if you're listening to this podcast, then audio books are a fantastic way to get some books up. Get your book count up, homie. And then lastly, there's digital books. So things like Kindle. And Kindles are rapidly increasing as well. And I don't mind reading books on Kindle. I just find that I read the material almost too fast. Like I read it like I'm scrolling through social media.

And I don't remember the material as much. That's just me personally. For you, it may be fantastic for you and you remember the material as much as possible. But for me personally, I just like physical books. But do whatever is going to make you motivated enough. Maybe you want digital copies because you can read books anywhere. When you have five minutes here or there, you can read it on your phone. And apps like Scribed, which I've talked about before, is an app that you can add a bunch of books for like nine bucks a month.

So that's a great tool to use as well. Or you can listen to audiobooks on Audible or things like that. But there's a bunch of tools out there that are going to allow you to be successful. in this system. So let's get into my unbelievably simple system to read one book per week. So lately, I've been noticing how fast things are changing at home. The kids are growing like crazy, clothes don't fit anymore, and routines are changing. And it just hits you. Life is expanding. And when your life grows, your responsibility grows with it. That's something I've been thinking about more this spring, making sure the safety net we have in place actually matches the life that we're

building. And that's where PolicyGenius comes in. PolicyGenius isn't an insurance company. They're an online marketplace that helps you compare life insurance quotes from some of the top insurers in America, all in one place for free. And their licensed team works for you, not the insurance companies. So they help you find the right coverage for your situation without all the guesswork. And they walk you through everything. Answer your questions, handle the paperwork, and help you get the coverage that actually fits your life today and where it's going. So protect your family with a policy that grows with your life. With PolicyGenius, you can see if you can find 20-year life insurance policies starting at just $276 a year for $1 million of coverage. Head to

PolicyGenius.com to compare life insurance quotes from top companies and see how much you can save. That's PolicyGenius.com. I remember when I needed to hire someone fast, but finding the right person quickly felt impossible. And if you've ever been there, you know how stressful this can be. That's where indeed comes in. When it comes to high school, Indeed is all you need. Instead of struggling to get your job post noticed, Indeed's sponsor jobs help you stand out and hire faster. Your post jumps up to the top of the page, making sure it reaches the right candidates. And it makes a huge difference. Sponsored jobs on Indeed get 45% more applications than non-sponsored ones. And there's no need to wait any longer. Speed up your

hiring right now with Indeed. And listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility at Indeed.com slash personal finance. Just go to Indeed.com slash personal finance right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com slash personal finance. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring, Indeed is all you need. So before I started this project to read one book per week, I had a few criteria that I wanted to meet. The first one was it had to be easy because I wanted to make sure that I was consistently thinking about how I could read a book per week. I did not want some. complex system that required me to need all kinds of cumbersome notes and things like that to keep track

of. I want it to be simple and I wanted it to be easy. And you're going to see how amazingly easy it is here in a second. The second one is it needed to be forgiving because I know myself better than anybody else. I'm going to miss days. There's days that I'm just not going to read. I'm going to get too busy or I just don't feel like it. And we all have those days. We all have those days we just don't feel like doing something. But the key to building habits and the key to putting together systems that create success for yourself is to make sure that you pad in forgiveness into that habit because you're going to have off days. There's going to be days that you're not going to accomplish your goal. But if you go ahead and put that padding in, it's going to allow you to keep pressing forward and

forgive yourself because what happens is a lot of people fail and they quit. But if you have that cushion there, you're going to fail and just move on the next day. The key is not missing two days in a row if you want to maintain a habit, say, every single day. Or you can set up a system where you only do this six days a week or five days a week. And I'm going to show you how to do that. last criteria, obviously it needed to meet my book per week. I needed to be able to read one book every single week. So those were the three main criteria for me. And those were the three main pieces that I need to accomplish to be able to read one book per week. So you need three things for this incredibly simple system. You need two sticky notes. And I'll tell you what that.

That's four in a second. You need like a notes app or something to keep track of the books you read. And you can use your phone or whatever for that. And then you need a book. Those are the three things that you need. Now here's what you do. Once you have these items ready, you pick up your book and go to the very last page. So before you start reading the book, you're going to go to the very last page of that book. Then you're going to get the amount of pages that's in that book. And what you're going to do is you're going to divide that number by seven. Now see what I'm doing here? You see what I got going on here? You're taking those pages and dividing it by seven. There's seven days in a week. What that's going to tell you is how how many pages of that book you need to read every single day. So let's say, for example,

that the book is 244 pages. If you divide 244 by 7, that's 35 pages per day that you need to read. Now, there's a lot of books that have a lot less pages than that. There's a lot of books that have more pages than that. And if you're really struggling to build this habit, you want to early on give yourself some short-term wins and pick books that have less pages. Let's just be real. Pick up books that have less pages, because if you start accomplishing this goal, and once you get into the habit, then it becomes a lot easier. At first, it's kind of hard. If you don't read it all, it's pretty hard to kind of, it's pretty hard to read 35 pages per day. But if you pick books that are, say, 150 pages, it's going to significantly reduce the amount of workload that you have when you have

to read a book each time. Then it gets easier and easier and all of a sudden it becomes enjoyable, but it takes practice that you have to push through to be able to do it. Step three, start reading the number of pages that you selected. Now, if you don't want to divide it by seven, let's say you want to take a break day every single week. You can divide it by six. You can divide it by five if you only want to do Monday through Friday. But figure out that number that's going to work for you so that you're able to accomplish it. And then once you hit your daily goal, you're going to use the first sticky note as a bookmark. Then you're going to add, so let's say you end on page 35. So you're going to put a sticky note on page 35. Then you're going to take your second sticky note and you're going to put it

on page 70. So you see what I'm doing there? You're adding the next day's goal. So all you have to do is open up the book to page 35 and start reading until you hit the next sticky note. Once you hit that next sticky note, then you've accomplished your goal for that day. And that's the key, is being able to accomplish that goal each and every time and knowing exactly where you are. Then all you're going to do is step five is you're going to repeat. And you will finish that book in seven days. It's incredibly simple, but most people just don't think about it systematically like this. And it's so easy. It's not like you have to do all of these steps. You just have to be able to make sure you know where you need to start and where you need to finish.

And once you finish it, you're automatically going to read a book per week every single week. Step six, write down the book that you read and keep a list. Because what you want to do is if you're highlighting or keeping notes or anything, you want to see, you know, hey, what date did I read that book? Maybe I should want to read it again. Maybe, oh, man, it's been seven or eight years. I'm going to think I'm going to read that book again just to remember what I was talking about that you can go through the highlights or things like that. And that's it. That's the system.

That's how unbelievably simple the system is. It's that easy. And that's exactly what I do. every single week. I've gone towards reading a lot more physical books, and I've been listening to a lot of audiobooks lately, especially when I'm busy. I'll listen to a lot of audiobooks that way. And you can do the same thing with audiobooks. If there's seven hours of audiobooks, you've got to listen to one hour every single day. And it's the same system that's going to work for each and every medium that you use to read. The last thing I want to do before we wrap this episode up is I want to

give you a few personal finance book recommendations so that you can get your reading list. started. And I'm going to give you these recommendations in order of my favorite. So I'm going to give you five of them to start off with. And these five books, if you read these five books, you're going to have yourself a fantastic financial baseline for yourself. And I'm going to throw in a bonus one if you have debt or anything like that as well. The first one is the millionaire next door. And what the millionaire next door does is it teaches you how to think about money. And it teaches you how wealthy people actually use their money. It's not to buy Lamborghinis and Ferraris. It's not to buy fancy house. And A lot of times, most of the millionaires that you know are right next door and you're never

going to know it. They're plain old Jane people. And that's what the millionaire next door will show you. But you have to see some of the data that they put in that book. It's one of the best personal finance books that everyone should read. The second one is Rich Dad Poor Dad. And Rich Dad Poor Dad is going to teach you how to think about money and how to think about using your money so that you can create wealth and freedom.

Because it talks about assets and it talks about liabilities. And what it goes through is exactly how to embeds. your money to create more wealth for yourself. And it uses the example in that book of real estate, but you can use the same examples for other asset classes as well, like index funds or stocks or things like that. The third book I would recommend is the simple path to wealth. And what the simple path of wealth is, is a book that teaches you literally how you can invest your money, and majority of it is in index funds, and how you can do it without even having to think about it. And the author lays out some amazing pieces of advice and goes through each part of personal finance

that truly will walk you through each step. And if you, if you digest that information in that book and you use the information in that book, you're going to have zero financial problems for the rest of your life. If you utilize and implement that book. It is one of the best books out there that a lot of people don't know of yet. But I think it's going to become a very popular personal finance book in the future. Another one is, and this book is great for automating your finances, it's also great for a lot of other pieces, but it's I Will Teach You to Be Rich by Rameet Safety. And that book is one of the best books for teaching you how to make your money stress free, how to automate your finances so you don't have to think about it, how to put together

a system that allows you to just let your money work itself and how to create tremendous wealth while doing it. And then another one, if you really want to learn more about index funds or how to invest your money in the stock market, is the boglehead's guide to investing. is what that's going to do is going to teach you all about index funds. And John Bogle, who is the founder of the index fund, is what they call him. He has this whole following. He just passed away recently, but he has this whole following of folks called Bogleheads. And index funds are my primary vehicle of investing, along with real estate. And they're the way that I love to invest. But if you want to learn more about index funds because you hear me talking about index funds all the time,

that is a great book to look at, the Bogleheads guides to investing. And then if you're in debt, Here's a bonus book. If you're in debt, I would look at the total money makeover by Dave Ramsey. I don't think his system is the most efficient way to pay down debt because what he talks about is you need to start with your smallest balance of debt and pay that down first to get that quick win and then just go in order that way. But I do think that so many people have had success with his system that I would definitely read that book if you are in debt. And I would implement that system if you are in debt if you want something that is really truly going to work and that has worked for a lot of people. Now, I don't agree with his investment advice, but I do agree with his debt pay down methods

for people that need that extra push to pay down that debt. And those are the books I would start with. On dollar after dollar.com, we have a bunch of book recommendations. And what I'm going to do is I'm going to start putting together book lists so that you guys have an idea of what books are out there that are fantastic that I've already read. And I can put together what I'm currently reading and things like that as well so that you guys can see that as well. So check out dollar after dollar.com to see those book lists as well.

Thank you guys so much for listening. And if this is your first time listening, consider subscribing so you never miss an episode. And share this episode with a friend. And don't forget to leave a rating and review on iTunes as well, because our goal is to bring as much value to you as possible. And we're trying to spread this message that money can buy freedom. That's what money is there to do, is to buy more freedom.

So thank you again so much for listening, and I hope you have a great day. Rosen lasagna, medium power, 15 minutes. Sounds like, Ojo time. Let's play. Feel the Fun with Play-Ojo The online casino with all the latest slot And live casino games What you win is yours to keep

With no wagering requirements Instant payouts and no minimum withdraws Hey, I just won Woohoo Feel the fun Play Ojo Honey, forget about the lasagna Let's celebrate

19 plus Ontario only please play responsibly Concern about your gambling Or that of someone close to you Call 16-531-2600 or visit connectxontera.ca