How to Create an Investing Plan Like a Billionaire— Even If You're Not One Yet

The world’s greatest investor Warren Buffett read this book when he was 19 years old, and he still calls this “by far the best book about investing ever written.” The Intelligent Investor covers timeless ideas of how the market behaves, how investment is different from speculation, and how to identify profitable investments.

Learn whether you’re a defensive or an aggressive investor, why most trading strategies don’t work, and how to maintain control of your psychology in any type of market condition.

Have you ever wondered how the economy works - how millions of individuals can buy and sell goods and services without a master coordinator? Have you wondered why we use money, rather than bartering our services with each other? Why do some nations prosper, while others stay poor despite vast natural resources?

Basic Economics by Stanford economist Thomas Sowell is an incredibly useful, broad introduction to economics. Containing no math, it instead communicates intuitive principles that will help you understand how market transactions work and the effect of policies on the economy. Understand how prices for goods are set, why rent control has bad side effects, and the purpose of brand names.

In The Simple Path to Wealth, blogger and financial expert JL Collins offers a simple road map to achieving financial independence and a secure retirement: Spend less than you make, avoid debt, save “F-You Money,” and invest in stock index funds. He demystifies stocks and bonds, as well as a plethora of investment plan options. In addition to explaining basic concepts such as asset allocation, Collins answers key questions such as how to live on your investments and how to avoid major tax hits.

Whether you’re in the wealth accumulation stage of life where you’re growing your investments, or in the wealth preservation stage where you’re living on them, Collins tells you how to use your money to achieve freedom and a more fulfilling life.

You may have heard of the compound effect—where an investment grows not only in the principal amount but also in the interest earned, leading to exponential growth over time.

Investment portfolio manager and best-selling author Gautam Baid argues that compounding isn’t just a financial concept. Rather, it’s a transformative principle you can apply to every aspect of your life to grow both your bank account and your sense of personal fulfillment. In The Joys of Compounding, he draws on the wisdom of legendary investors, including Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger, to provide actionable strategies for boosting both your finances and your overall life satisfaction.

In this guide, we’ll cover Baid's suggestions for making meaningful investments in six life areas, including his expert strategies for maximizing financial returns. Additionally, we’ll expand on his ideas with up-to-date research and actionable advice from other financial experts and self-help practitioners.

Why do so many business models fail? According to entrepreneur, Lean Canvas creator, and best-selling author Ash Maurya, it’s because entrepreneurs assume they already know what customers want and finalize their plans before testing their ideas. As a result, they create rigid plans that they can’t easily adapt to customers' actual preferences.

In Running Lean, Maurya suggests that you can avoid this pitfall by adopting continuous validation and iteration. This approach helps build and sustain a flexible business model that evolves alongside customer preferences.

This guide explores Maurya’s thoughts on creating successful business models. You'll come away with a plan to capture the core elements of your idea in a concise, agile business model; a methodology that allows you to refine and align your offer with your customers' true needs; and a testing strategy to optimize your business for sustainable long-term growth. Additionally, we’ll complement Maurya’s ideas with research from business experts, and we’ll suggest actionable strategies to help you apply his concepts to your own business.

In The Four Steps to the Epiphany, entrepreneur Steve Blank tackles one of the most daunting challenges that new businesses face—the uncertainty of whether there’s a genuine market demand for their product. He writes that the key to identifying customer interest is understanding customer needs and behaviors through a process called customer development: a systematic model that startups can follow to validate their business ideas, ensure product-market fit, and achieve scalable growth.

In our guide, we’ll explore how the customer development process differs from product development, the four market types your startup may enter, and how to define your goals and mission. We’ll then explain Blank’s four-step process of customer development, which includes 1) finding your customer base, 2) testing your business model, 3) acquiring customers, and 4) establishing and growing your company. In our commentary, we’ll discuss complementary business principles and models, as well as advice from other experts such as Eric Ries, Clayton Christensen, and Michael Porter.

Charlie Munger is Warren Buffett’s long-time partner at Berkshire Hathaway. Content to being the lesser known of the two, Munger is no less impressive. Bill Gates says that Charlie Munger “is truly the broadest thinker I have ever encountered,” and Buffett calls him the ideal partner who is “both smarter and wiser.”

Poor Charlie’s Almanack is a collection of Charlie Munger’s best advice given over 30 years, in the form of 11 speeches given as commencement addresses and roundtable talks. He covers a wide range of topics, including rationality and decision making, investing, and how to live a good life. You’ll learn why Charlie considers multidisciplinary learning vital to success, his checklist for investment criteria, and how to build a trillion dollar company from scratch.

Warren Buffett is the world’s most successful investor, but he also thinks of himself as a teacher in the field of investing and economics. Compiled from Buffett’s annual reports to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders, The Essays of Warren Buffett provides a glimpse into the mind of a man whose ideas contrast with those of the typical Wall Street mogul. His insights on investing are simple yet difficult to put into practice, while his thoughts on the culture of the wider business world shine a light on the values that shape modern finance.

In this guide, we’ll cover Buffett’s writings on investment, his recommended approaches, and some widely accepted economic practices that he considers to be wrong. We’ll also look at the opinions of other financial experts, both those who agree with Buffett and those who present an alternate view. We’ll place Buffett’s essays in their historical context and look at how well his ideas hold up in the modern world of high finance.

If you’re asked who the greatest CEO of the last century was, one name might naturally come to mind: Jack Welch. Sure, he achieved great financial return and is trumpeted by the press. But is Jack Welch really the greatest CEO of the century? According to the author of The Outsiders, no—not even close. There are CEOs who performed better during worse economic periods.

Studying companies broadly, the author ended with eight CEOs and companies with standout performance during the 20th century. Looking deeper into their management practices, he found virtually identical patterns to their management style and capital allocation decisions. These strategies were unorthodox but directly caused their outsized results. These CEOs and their management practices are the subject of The Outsiders.

A massive bestseller now in its 13th edition, Burton Malkiel’s A Random Walk Down Wall Street provides a comprehensive and entertaining introduction to the world of finance. Malkiel leverages his experience as an academic economist and former Wall Street portfolio manager to explain for the lay reader the intricacies of security analysis, asset valuation, and investment theory. He also offers a wealth of practical investment principles that will be useful for novice and seasoned investors alike.