What to read after Never Worry About Money Again

Jesse Mecham's book gets you to ask what your money is for and to fund a month ahead, and then it ends. It never says what the saving is for, what to do with the money once your spending is under control, or how to grow what you earn. These five books pick up where it leaves off. I have read the 50 most popular personal finance books, and these are the ones I would hand a reader who just closed Mecham's and asked what comes next. I wrote the first one, and I put it first because it is the fastest way to a complete foundation. The other four each go deeper on one piece of that foundation.

1. Everest, Anthony Wilson

This is my book. I read the 50 most popular finance books, and Everest condenses what they agree on into one system, so it is the quickest solid grounding you can get after Mecham. Its first eight chapters cover the same ground as his book from a different angle. It covers spending less than you earn, an emergency fund sized to your risk, paying off debt, index funds, the amount you need to be free, and your savings rate. The ninth chapter is the one none of them has. It lays out a method for growing what you earn, from learning what your work is worth to getting the raise to building income you own. And it answers the question Mecham never asks, which is what the funded month is for. The answer is a date. The fifty books are listed at the back, so you can check the claim. Read the first chapter free.

2. Your Money or Your Life, Vicki Robin and Joe Dominguez

Mecham's idea that your money is you comes from this book, which calls money life energy you trade hours for. It adds the arithmetic he leaves out. You work out your real hourly wage after the costs of working, then judge every purchase by the hours it costs you. Its chapter on the crossover point, the month when your investments earn more than you spend, is where financial independence enters the story.

3. The Simple Path to Wealth, JL Collins

Once you are a month ahead, money starts to pile up, and Mecham never says what to do with it. This book does, in the plainest terms in the genre. One low-cost index fund, a savings rate you can hold, and time. Mecham settles how you talk to yourself about spending, and Collins does the same for investing.

4. The Psychology of Money, Morgan Housel

Mecham's best pages are about the money habits we inherit from our parents. This whole book is about them. It is nineteen short essays on why smart people do strange things with money, why "enough" is the hardest number to settle on, and why behavior matters more than intelligence.

5. Die With Zero, Bill Perkins

This is the counterweight, and the source of an idea Mecham and I both lean on. Experiences pay off for the rest of your life, so the same trip is worth more at 38 than at 68. Perkins takes it further than anyone and argues that dying with a large balance is a planning failure. Read it after the three saving-and-investing books above, and it keeps the whole system pointed at a life instead of a balance.

All five are on the reading list at the back of Everest. If you have not read Mecham's book yet, my full review and summary is here.

Disclosure. I am the author of Everest and the founder of Ascenza. Everest is listed first, and the reason is stated above. No affiliate links.