Well Endowed: The Secrets to Strategic Spending, Building a Financial Foundation for You and Your Family, and Creating Lasting Generational Wealth

Well Endowed: The Secrets to Strategic Spending, Building a Financial Foundation for You and Your Family, and Creating Lasting Generational Wealth by Vivian Tu

The author came from an immigrant Chinese family who wanted what was best for their daughter. They were frugal and were able to save for her to go to University of Chicago. Now she dispenses financial advice to Millenials. It seems to be "save more than you spend, but still enjoy things." There are also long discussions about treating marriage and kids as financial endeavors. Oh millenials.

Planet Money: A Guide to the Economic Forces That Shape Your Life

Planet Money: A Guide to the Economic Forces That Shape Your Life by Alex Mayyasi, Alex Goldmark, Erika Beras , Mary Childs , Sarah Gonzalez , Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi and Kenny Malone

Planet Money is an NPR show and podcast that discusses interesting money matters. The audiobook has some highlights which are then translated back to an audiobook. The stories are nice bite-sized pieces that explore economics and money. There are anecdotes and examples illustrating various economic points, including those that appear somewhat counter-intuitive.

Mind over Money: The Psychology of Money and How to Use It Better

Claudia Hammond is a Brit, so there are plenty of examples of British financial systems in this book. While this book does end with some "financial advice", it is done in a fairly tongue-in-cheek way.

Humans have an interesting relationship with money. Though money is an instrument for trading, the value attached to it is different from the value of goods it represents. People also attach a different value to physical money than to a credit card or abstract payment scheme. Burning money is seen as much worse than burning objects of a similar value.

There are also different psychological tricks to get people to part with money. People will base value on how something is framed. The middle priced item will often be purchased as it is better deal than the more expensive one, but better than the cheaper one. If a charity provides different "benefit levels", people will tend to donate that exact amount for the level. There are many other psychological quirks with humans and money that have been uncovered in psychological studies.

The Little Book of Safe Money: How to Conquer Killer Markets, Con Artists, and Yourself

The Little Book of Safe Money emphasizes the safe. Inflation Protected Securities are the gold standard. They are guaranteed to beat inflation. Further investments should be a mix of stocks and bonds. The best are low cost index funds. Any investment with fees or yields that are higher than others is by necessity introducing too much risk. People should understand the market is filled with people. There is a seller for each purchase. Why do you think you are smarter than the person at the other end of a transaction? It is also important to focus on liquidity. If you don't have enough liquid assets you may need sell other investments at times with the market fails. It is also important to manage your "human capital". It is perhaps the greatest returning investment. However, you should also keep in mind that your human capital is invested in your company and industry. If your investments are in the same area, you may be too concentrated in a single area.
It is important to not take more risk than you need to. It is also good to understand psychology weaknesses, especially among men. The emphasis on the book is safety. Following the content will keep you with investments that lose minimal value in a down market, yet do not gain very much in a bull market. The principles do not exclude high risk investments. However, these are treated as "gambles" that can only be taken on with money that can be afforded to be lost.

AgeProof: Living Longer Without Running Out of Money or Breaking a Hip

Age Proof is written in a way that treats the audience like three year olds, and then asks them to behave like millionaires. Are they writing to people living paycheck to paycheck? Or are they writing to people that employee a cadre of assistants while they eat caviar on the beach? It is unclear. However, they do seem to feel they are above the audience they are writing to. (But what do you expect when one of the credentials is an expert on a TV show?)
They site the study where people preferred to have $50k when everyone else had $25k rather than $100k when everybody else had $200k. Their explanation was that people would rather "keep up with the Jonses". However, perhaps they just understand money as a relative indicator of value. $200 million zimbabwe dollars sounds a like a big number, but would be worth a lot less than $1 US dollar.
The advice seems to a be a hodge podge of various health and finance advice that is in fashion today. Much of the advice is justified by "science". However, many of the studies are of fairly preliminary nature. It attempts to be very prescriptive with specific bits of advice that are not necessarily compatible with each other. It would be interesting to see how this "advice" pans out in the long run. There are some good bits in there, but also plenty of things that will likely be proved detrimental in the future.

Gold, Hard Money and Finance

Gold, Hard Money and Finance contains a few dramatized accounts of investing history. The first part focuses on the rise of the investment newsletter. There are a ton of newsletters that purport to help people to do the research that they do not have time to do themselves. Some have shown great success. However, much of that is retrospective. (If everyone did invest in the recommendations early on, it may not have had the same peak.) There is plenty of good advice out there, but there is also dumb luck masquerading as good.
The Gold Bug story has more drama. I didn't realize that FDR had outlawed holding of personal gold supplies (with the exception of coins.) It wasn't until the Nixon presidency that this restriction was removed. (And this was after the dollar was removed from the cold standard.) There are plenty of hard core Gold Bugs that feel gold is the only viable investment that will maintain its wealth. (Alas, the markets have not been too kind to gold in recent history.)

The New Frugality

Conservative, simplistic advice in consumer economics. It is well carried out with plenty of personal experiences. The underlying thesis is that the fall of the economy in the "great recession" has triggered a change in behavior and circumstances. The excessive consumption of the past cannot be continued and today people will be required to live within their means. He thus provides a number of tips for doing that.

The goal, however, is not to sacrifice the quality of life. Instead, "excess" should be siphoned off, while still spending generously (within one's means) on areas that provide value. Debt is generally to be avoided, but is appropriate in some cases. Renting a house is often very appropriate, especially when house values are high relative to rentals. Saving for retirement and other events is good. Credit cards can be good or bad depending on how they are used.

The author presents his "goals" in a fairly open manner, acknowledging that different people function in different ways.