The Three Books I Sent First
So I flew out that fall. But before I sat down with any of them, I gave the group homework: three books, read in order. Not twenty books, three. I wasn't going to run a get-rich-quick seminar, that has never been my gig, and I didn't want to start at first grade. I wanted them arriving with a foundation so we could go straight to eighth.
Book one, why investing matters: The Wealthy Barber by David Chilton (the Canadian classic, and it covers RRSPs), or Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki. Pick one.
Book two, how a millionaire actually becomes one: The Millionaire Next Door by Thomas Stanley. If you read only one book on this list, read this one. It is my favourite business book of all time; I've read it three times. Its finding surprises everyone: most millionaires didn't inherit it and don't look rich. They spent less than they earned for decades and invested the difference, and their neighbours never knew.
Book three, the mechanics: The Four Pillars of Investing by William Bernstein, or The Bogleheads' Guide to Investing. Pick one.
Read those three and, in theory, you don't need me. That was always the point. It was never really me teaching college students about money. It's the books. I'm just the one insisting they get read.
The Math I Wish Someone Had Shown Me at Twenty
If I could staple one page to every diploma, it would be this arithmetic, and it's the page I most wanted her friends to leave with.
Invest 200 dollars a month starting at age 20, at the market's long-run average return of about 7 percent, and stop adding at 30. Then let it sit. By 65, that decade of contributions, 24,000 dollars out of pocket, grows to roughly 350,000 dollars.
Now start at 30 instead, invest the same 200 dollars every month, and keep it up for 35 straight years, until 65. You'll contribute 84,000 dollars, three and a half times more money, over three and a half times more years. You end up in roughly the same place.
The ten years you start early are worth more than the thirty-five years of discipline that follow. Nobody tells you this at twenty, which is precisely when it's worth the most. Time is the only input in the whole formula you cannot buy more of later, at any price. Her generation doesn't need to pick brilliant stocks. They need to start boring and start now.
Jeff Wiener founded Digitcom, a Canadian telecommunications company, in 1991 at age 23 and ran it for 27 years, growing it into an eight-figure business named one of Canada's fastest-growing companies five years running. He sold it to a private equity firm in 2017 and semi-retired at 49. He now invests in multi-family real estate and writes about building wealth, selling a business, and the second act.