The best books for service members and veterans who want to achieve financial freedom

Rich Dad Poor Dad is the book that changed the trajectory of my life forever.

It is a parable that explains the difference between the traditional way of thinking “Go to school, get a good job, work hard, retire” with the entrepreneur mentality, and the concepts of utilizing passive income to replace your job at an earlier age.

I love this book because it takes the normally boring subject of finance and investing and breaks it down in a fun and easy way to learn so that you will actually finish the book and have the ability to experience that light-switch moment! 

Without a doubt this is the most commonly mentioned book that I hear referenced on podcasts as “the book that started it all”.

Everybody knows that having goals is important, and yet so many of us are bad at achieving them.

The 4 Disciplines of Execution, or as it is commonly known “4DX” is a book that walks you through a simple framework to utilize when striving toward a goal in order to actually achieve it. 

This book taught me the difference between lead and lag measures—which showed me that I’d been keeping track of my goals all wrong—and helped me better understand leverage and the importance of accountability.

This is a great read to help you achieve more of the goals you set for yourself.

The 4-Hour Workweek should be mandatory reading for any wannabe entrepreneur, especially those coming from a salary job—even more so those from a government job like the military! 

This book teaches you how to become extremely efficient in everything that you do, which is a must when running your own business!

You see, in a salaried position—especially a government one it seems—it is all too easy to fall into the trap of getting as much work done as necessary so as not to get fired before the end of the work day. Whereas when you run your own business you need to figure out how to get the most work done in the least amount of time. Every. Single. Day!

Real estate investing is where I got started, and is still one of my favorite ways to build wealth.

Hands down my favorite real estate investing strategy is house hacking! This book was written by a friend of mine, and teaches you how to house hack, so I like it 😊. 

The largest expense for most Americans is where they live. House hacking is where you buy a duplex, triplex, fourplex, or large single-family home and you live in one unit and rent the other units out—or in the large SFH live in one room and rent to roommates—so that your tenants can cover a large portion, if not all, of your living expenses. Sometimes you may even get paid to live in the home!)

When you eventually move out of that property it will cash flow, and you can rinse and repeat several times. All while saving the money you would have been spending on your housing expenses to reinvest. Talk about a way to exponentially increase the trajectory in which you achieve financial freedom!

Profit First is a banking system that accounts for the inevitable human error of “ooh, there is money in my account, I can afford that”.

This book helped me set my businesses up so that I was actually able to keep some of the income that was coming in from them, rather than continually getting to the end of the month and wondering where the revenue I had generated went. 

This is a must read for self-employed and small business owners, and a solid read for personal finances too!