I was in the car yesterday with my girlfriend, and we passed a pawn shop and I saw a guy carrying in a set of golf clubs and I commented on what a great business model pawn shops have. I don't exactly mean their profit margins or operating expenses in relation to square footage or that sort of thing, I mean that they inherently rely on poor people to make bad financial decisions, and they are there to take advantage of that. In fact, there are endless examples of similar things that siphon money away from the poor because they continue to routinely make bad choices with their money (it's not just poor people, but they are most prone to it).
I've been learning more and more about investing and money management skills, and it got me thinking to my upbringing and the habits I've learned and developed in life. I grew up in a poor household, and learned the "skills" associated with being poor: impulse buying, lack of saving, overspending, credit card misuse, etc. My mom still routinely intentionally bounces checks to this day instead of just waiting a few days for her paycheck to make a purchase. Over the course of her lifetime, it is literally thousands of dollars just on bounced check fees - if that was invested instead she could reasonably have more than $20k today just by developing a healthier habit with her checkbook. A lot of these "skills" we learn from our parents, whether positive or negative. If we weren't fortunate to be taught solid money skills growing up, we have to work extra hard as an adult to develop these skills.
I'm committed to saving 10% of everything I earn moving forward, and I find that developing better habits and skills makes the process easy. I signed up for a cash back rewards credit card that gives me 1% back on everything and 2% on gas/groceries type of things. I'm using that for all my day to day purchases, and making sure to pay the balance in full every month to avoid any interest payments. I put my emergency savings into an Amex savings account that pays 0.9% annual interest, which is a 30x increase over the 0.03% interest my BoA savings paid. My girlfriend and I have cut down a lot on our food spending, eating out and ordering delivery less often. When I want to buy something now, I save up the money first and look around for the best price and then make a good buy. In the past, I would have gotten so set on getting it right away I'd put it on credit and pay too much just so I could have it RIGHT NOW.
I'm coming to understand that being "good with money" or "bad with money" is just like any other skill that can be practiced and learned. By coming up with a more concrete plan for my future savings, it gives me a lot more life confidence and fires me up to save more and be more effective with my money. For a long time, it was a topic I just kind of always wanted to avoid, because on some level I understood I was messing up and and didn't want to face the problem.
This book helped me tremendously, both in formulating the specifics of a plan for my life savings path and eventual retirement, but also in understanding some deeper motivation concepts. It's especially important to poker players, because we don't have employers and thus we aren't eligible for 401k plans, and obviously we don't get that juicy 401k matching from employers either. With the use of IRAs and other investment vehicles, we can still make it all happen for ourselves, but we have to be especially mindful of it and avoid the temptation to just deal with it all "someday down the road".
http://www.amazon.com/MONEY-Master-G...mm_hrd_title_0
The precursor to taking this step for me was reading Outliers by Malcom Gladwell. The part of the book that most resonated me was the section comparing people with genius level IQs and their achievements in life, and how so much of that was dictated not by their IQ but by their "practical intelligence". A person of moderate intelligence who is "good at life" is SO much better off than a genius who didn't have anyone to teach them important practical life skills (not just money, but how to approach life in general, "street smarts", growth mindset, all sorts of stuff outside of book learning). We inherent so much of this from our parents, and as someone that didn't have the benefit of learning a lot of valuable life skills at a young age, I only wish I had come to understand the full value of cultivating these other skills earlier in my adult life. Better late than never!
http://www.amazon.com/Outliers-Story...words=outliers
Lastly, I can't link personal growth books without always coming back to the one that benefited me personally the most, and really helped me get my life pointed in a better direction. Your mileage may vary, but for meit is perhaps the best thing I've read:
http://www.amazon.com/Mindset-Psycho...ywords=mindset