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Our Personal Finance Book and Pod Recommendations

  • Finance for physicians
  • Episode Number:213
  • January 6, 2026

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Every year, we hear the same question from physicians: What should I read or listen to if I want to get better with money without drowning in jargon?

In this episode, we step back from tactics and spreadsheets to talk about the personal finance books and podcasts our planning team consistently recommends.

Daniel Wrenne is joined by Theresa Scheu to walk through a curated list of books and shows that have shaped how our planners think about money, behavior, and decision-making.

Rather than technical investing manuals, these recommendations focus on habits, mindset, values, and long-term perspective.

The conversation spans classics like The Richest Man in Babylon and The Millionaire Next Door, newer favorites like The Psychology of Money and The Wealth Ladder, and podcasts that help make sense of both personal decisions and the broader economic landscape.

Listen in to hear why so many of these recommendations emphasize behavior over brilliance, how thinking intentionally about spending can be just as important as saving, and common themes that show up again and again.

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Full Episode Transcript:

Theresa Scheu: You read this book and you realize, “Wow, so much of this is outta my control to some degree.” There are things I can control. There are things I can’t. And I think that’s a good lesson if nothing else ’cause I think people get really down on themselves that they should know all this stuff and they should be able to make—there’s finances to success, but he really does also lean into the fact that there’s a level of risk and luck.

Welcome to Finance for Physicians, the show where we help physicians like you use money as a tool to live a great life. I’m your host, Daniel Wrenne, and I’ve spent the last decade advising physicians on their personal finances with the mission to help them understand that taking control of their finances now means creating a future where they can practice medicine where, when, and how long they want to.

Daniel Wrenne: Theresa, how’s it going?

Theresa Scheu: Hi. It’s going well.

Daniel Wrenne: Welcome to the podcast. This is your first appearance, right?

Theresa Scheu: It is. I’m usually behind the scenes.

Daniel Wrenne: Yes. So for those listening, Theresa works a lot behind the scenes with helping produce and put the podcast out, so she’s very familiar with it.

And also one of our CFPs on board, but more importantly is Chief Marketing Officer with the planning business. And so we’re excited. We’re gonna be talking about some of the books and podcasts that our financial planners have recommended over the years, and we’re gonna hit the high points of each of these, but we’ll also talk about some of the overarching themes, which I think it’s gonna be interesting because we’re a little bit of a unique bunch in that we’re not like your typical personal finance geeks.

We kind are personal finance geeks as financial planners, but we’re also like—our job is to work with people one-on-one and help them take action with their money. So I would say we definitely come from a unique perspective when it comes to looking at personal finance books.

Theresa Scheu: Totally. Yeah. So last year, I guess this time last year, I asked the team to gather up what they would recommend to our planning audience book-wise kind of which, what books not only did they read at some point during their life or their career that kind of really shaped how they thought about personal finance.

So what’s cool too this year is a couple of the authors that were highlighted last year have come out with new books. I added them to this year ’cause I think if you like the first book, you’re gonna the second. So yeah, it’s an eclectic, I should say, list of books, but there are some themes that we’ll talk about throughout.

Daniel Wrenne: Yeah. I guess the first book on the list is one that the author had a new book come out.

So this came from Jackie, right?

Theresa Scheu: Yeah, so it’s Nick Maggiulli. He is in the wealth management space. So I believe he’s a partner in a wealth management firm and also has a blog, Of Dollars and Cents (Of Dollars and Data) and sends out a newsletter, I think, weekly. And so he’s really in this space. He had a book that came out I think a few years ago: ‘Just Keep Buying.’

Jackie Griggs, who is a financial planner here and our director of investing really brought this book to our attention and put it on the list. And I think for her it is just a good fundamental answer to the questions people have that we keep hearing a lot of—how much lifestyle creep is okay when you’re income goes up?

And should you rent or should you buy? So I too have read this book. He’s got a really conversational way of talking about things. You can tell if he’s a blogger, that’s a pretty good read. And then the book that just came out this year is ‘The Wealth Ladder,’ and this one I think has some good hooks.

I can see why it has really taken off in the personal finance space, ’cause it really talks about wealth and this idea of growing your wealth as a ladder. And there are different rungs to the ladder and each rung comes with a certain set of things to be thinking about. So under a hundred thousand dollars, it’s survival mode.

And then you move up from like the second rung in the ladder, which is a hundred thousand to a million, and with each of the rungs in the ladder comes more financial flexibility, which makes sense. And he sets up like a really good framework to think about.

When you’re in the million-dollar-plus, you can start not worrying so much about smaller discretionary spending, like going out to dinner. And when you move up another wrong, it’s more of you don’t have to worry so much about things like travel, like you can do more of it and housing and those types of things. It’s also, I think, interesting, Daniel, because it really talks about you may not wanna go all the way up the wealth ladder, you may wanna stop at some point.

And I think he did makes a good case for why you shouldn’t always aspire to want more. So it’s a good read and it’s a quick read.

Daniel Wrenne: Yeah. I think we’re already starting to hit on some of the overarching themes that we will see in a lot of these books. So for example, like money in itself doesn’t necessarily directly translate to happiness and life satisfaction.

‘Just Keep Buying’ is an interesting title. I think what he meant was possibly—I haven’t read this book myself, but.

Theresa Scheu: I think it’s about investing.

Daniel Wrenne: Okay. That’s what—I’m like, let’s not just keep spending, but.

Theresa Scheu: Yeah. Yeah. No, and again, it’s like one of those titles that makes you think a little, but it’s really this idea that no matter what’s going on in the market, even if you think the market’s at an all time high, which it often is, keep on investing, that’s in the long run, you’ll come out ahead is essentially the message there.

Daniel Wrenne: Which is a huge emphasis of ours is like. It’s the temptation is to find the perfect time to invest or wait till—timing the market. Like I’m gonna wait till this to invest. I think just keep buying thing implies like dollar cost averaging, let’s just get the money going into the investments and then continue to do it, which is a super important strategy.

Theresa Scheu: Totally. So next on the list, we’ve got this podcast that Dylan on our team recommended. I have not listened to it personally, but it’s called The Money Guy Show. And it’s hosted by Brian Preston and Bo Hanson.

Daniel Wrenne: I’ve hung out with these guys before.

Theresa Scheu: Oh, yeah? Cool.

Daniel Wrenne: At a conference probably at FinCon. Theresa’s been to FinCon several times.

Theresa Scheu: Yep.

Daniel Wrenne: And so they’re fun guys. They’re good guys. And I had listened to their podcast a way long time ago.

Theresa Scheu: Okay.

Daniel Wrenne: So they have a good philosophy, like I guess Dave Ramsey-esque, but more of a financial planner version of Dave Ramsey.

Theresa Scheu: Yeah. Yeah. So Dylan really likes that. It sounds like they really take the time to explain some pretty complicated financial planning topics and make ’em really relatable. And also, I think they do the Ramsey thing where they do a lot of interviews with individuals and walk through their personal financial questions.

So yeah, that’s a great format, I think, ’cause you can see yourselves in the guests.

Daniel Wrenne: Yep.

Theresa Scheu: All right. Moving on to the next one.

Daniel Wrenne: Yeah. ‘The Richest Man in Babylon.’ Jeff, who’s been on the podcast many times, recommended this book, and I think this is one of those I was telling Theresa before we started, I’m almost positive I’ve read this way long time ago.

If not, I’ve seen summaries of it many times, and I’ve heard the title a thousand times. And it’s one of those foundational money philosophy kind of books that people typically recommend. The things that it suggests are pretty solid. I don’t think anything in the lessons that they teach, I would disagree with.

It’s kinda general, but that’s good for an entry-level finance book. Yeah, so like some of the things, some of the lessons, so it’s line organized by like key lessons. So some of the big lessons this book goes through pay yourself first, which would be like, save first, spend the remainder.

This also is an old book. I think this book was written a really long time ago. And that is a great foundational lesson. Now, the one problem with that these days, probably since this book has been written, is it’s become more difficult to save first and spend the rest because of how credit cards work. It’s now really easy to spend more than the rest and then end up eating into your saving first.

So you have to be careful to pay yourself first and do number two. Like you can’t just get by with number one. And I think, he was sensing that out as well as he wrote it. So the second one is control your expenses. So you have to do that one, two, otherwise, especially nowadays, if your expenses get outta hand, they’re going to eat into your ability to pay yourself first, and then make your money work for you is number three.

So put the money to work by investing. Number four is protect your capital, which avoid like super speculative, get rich quick, like shiny object investments. And then number five is seek wise counsel. So there’s all kinds of people. There’s no way you’re the smartest person about anything really.

But like money, you can always find people that have more experience. Maybe it’s not even like book smart, but life smart or like wisdom. You can always find people around you or hire people even, like a financial planner to help you navigate this stuff that have a lot more experience and potentially a lot more competence.

And then number six is own your home. That one I’m a little like less in agreeance with always—I think that’s a good general suggestion, but there’s times when you don’t need to own your own. And then number seven, increase your ability to earn. Those are the big lessons, takeaways from this book.

So I guess it’s probably a lot like any of these foundational finance books, it’s what are the key habits and behaviors you need to establish so that you can build wealth?

Theresa Scheu: But yeah, you’re right. This book came out in 1926.

Daniel Wrenne: Oh my goodness.

Theresa Scheu: So it’s cool. These are fundamentals.

Daniel Wrenne: That’s like great depression.

Theresa Scheu: Yeah. And when I published this last year, we included a fun fact that these parables were distributed as pamphlets to US banking, insurance customers because they were so well received by the public. So yeah.

Daniel Wrenne: It’s funny how much of that’s pretty much—None of this hadn’t changed. These are like evergreen lessons.

Theresa Scheu: Yep. Totally. So yeah, that wins for the most ancient book on the list, almost a hundred years old.

Daniel Wrenne: Yeah.

Theresa Scheu: All right. So I’m moving along. The next one we have is another podcast. This comes from Heather Lovallo, one of the financial planners you’ve heard from on the podcast.

I, again, have not listened to this yet, but the host is definitely somebody who—Carl Richards is very well known in the space, has some great books too. And it sounds like this podcast really gets his network of people together to talk through kind of the more taboo topics around money and get into the feels about money and less about technical things. So it’s always nice to step back and think more about the bigger picture issues sometimes in the true technical stuff. And it seems like this podcast really emphasizes that. So that’s good.

Daniel Wrenne: Yeah. I’ve actually met Carl Richards as well.

Theresa Scheu: Uh-huh,

Daniel Wrenne: I remember he used to live in Salt or Park City, Utah, and I go skiing there a lot. And so at one point—I really like him. He’s a great guy and he’s very behavioral finance-focused. He’s way into the behaviors more than anybody I know.

Theresa Scheu: Yeah.

Daniel Wrenne: And so I had emailed him—the last time I talked to him, I emailed him ’cause I was going to Park City and I can’t remember. I wanted to meet him for some reason, but yeah. But he had moved to New Zealand.

Theresa Scheu: Oh.

Daniel Wrenne: So he doesn’t live in Park City anymore. He went to New Zealand. I don’t know if he still lives in New Zealand, but last I talked to him, he moved to New Zealand.

And he’s still doing all this personal finance—behavioral finance content, so.

Theresa Scheu: Oh, interesting.

Daniel Wrenne: All of his stuff, I’ve never read or consumed any of his stuff that wasn’t good.

Theresa Scheu: Yeah.

Daniel Wrenne: I haven’t listened to this particular podcast. But I listened to some of his others.

Theresa Scheu: Yeah. Alright, so the next, another classic on the list Jen Quire. She’s got the ‘Millionaire Next Door.’

Daniel Wrenne: Yeah, I think this mixes in maybe a little bit more, I don’t know. It’s a lot like ‘The Richest Man in Babylon,’ but it’s more of a case study, I guess. So this book, if you haven’t read it, who’s the author?

Is it Stanley?

Theresa Scheu: It’s yeah, Stanley and William Danko.

Daniel Wrenne: I actually met—

Theresa Scheu: Thomas Stanley and William Danko.

Daniel Wrenne: Okay. I think I’ve met his daughter, actually. This is funny. I’m like.

Theresa Scheu: Really? Yeah.

Daniel Wrenne: ‘Millionaire Next Door’s daughter because I think she continued on some of his stuff.

Theresa Scheu: Oh.

Daniel Wrenne: But anyway, I think the author was more into the research part, like he researched these millionaires.

They were like the millionaire next door that nobody really realized even that they were a millionaire. And I think this also has been, is a pretty old book. And so maybe a millionaire when this was done was different than what it is today. It might be like a five-millionaire or something like that.

When was it written?

Theresa Scheu: I’m looking that up right now.

Daniel Wrenne: I think it might’ve—it’s definitely not in the past 30 or 40 years.

Theresa Scheu: Okay.

Daniel Wrenne: The first version.

Theresa Scheu: First published in 1996.

Daniel Wrenne: Okay, what is that, 30 years ago?

Theresa Scheu: Yeah. It was ancient history.

Daniel Wrenne: 30 years ago. 36. 30 years is a long time. So it doesn’t feel like it. ’cause I was, I know.

Theresa Scheu: I could read it when it came out. Yeah.

Daniel Wrenne: But anyway, 1996, so anyway, either way a millionaire back then is probably at least a multimillionaire now.

Theresa Scheu: Totally. Yeah.

Daniel Wrenne: And I think his research was done in the years before then, and he pulled it together in the book.

But basically, it’s about the observations they found, the similarities of these like millionaires next door. What were the similarities with them? So some of the themes that came outta this book were like wealth doesn’t necessarily translate well to income. A lot of times the high earners spend a ton and don’t save very well.

Maybe they drive fancy cars. That doesn’t mean that they’re wealthy.

Theresa Scheu: Right.

Daniel Wrenne: Living below their means is a big deal. A lot of the millionaire next door types were like super savers, meaning they like saved 30+ percent of their income.

And so the high savings rate’s a big part of it.

They typically built wealth slowly over long periods of time and not quick hitters like lottery or like even big stock pick or a business home run. That’s not how it works. Typically, it’s more of a, “I save 40% of my income for 30 years.”

Theresa Scheu: Yeah.

Daniel Wrenne: And then a lot of them are self-made as opposed to inherited.

Avoid status consumption is another one. So that kind of ties in with living below your means and then financial independence over display. And then financial Responsibility’s a big part of it. So I think it’s just, this is probably a little bit lean towards more the frugal emphasis on, I think of the ‘Millionaire Next Door’ as like the person you don’t realize is pretty wealthy.

Theresa Scheu: Yeah.

Daniel Wrenne: And maybe they’re like, doesn’t matter necessarily what their job is.

Theresa Scheu: I’m assuming that phrase was coined because of this book.

Daniel Wrenne: Oh, for sure.

Theresa Scheu: Because now that’s just part of—the phrase we use all the time.

Daniel Wrenne: Yeah. People say it all the time. I think so. I’m almost positive.

Theresa Scheu: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Daniel Wrenne: And so this was a huge—

Theresa Scheu: 1996. Yep.

Daniel Wrenne: Huge, huge hit. And I’m sure it still sells a ton of copies.

Theresa Scheu: I feel like it’s one of the—it was one of the first personal finance books, people would say it’s for the masses versus more like technical investing books.

I think of it as kinda maybe one of the beginnings of all of these personal finance type books.

Daniel Wrenne: Yeah. And it’s very foundational. I don’t even think it gets into like investing, probably more psychology and just, yeah. It’s just personal finance, like good habits and personal finance.

And it was one of the early ones.

Theresa Scheu: Yeah. Yeah. So no, it’s definitely one of the, I think most people have that on their list of if you’re in personal finance books that you would recommend there. So.

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Daniel Wrenne: Let’s take a quick break to talk about our firm, Wrenne Financial Planning.

The goal of our podcast is to empower you to make better financial decisions, but sometimes the best financial decision you can make is to work with someone who understands your financial goals and has the expertise to keep you on track to reach them. That’s where Wrenne Financial Planning comes in. We are a full-service financial planning firm that works with over 400 physicians and their families across the country.

We charge a transparent monthly flat fee for our services and offer virtual meetings you can take from anywhere. Best of all, you’ll get to work with a team that specializes in working with physician families. So whether you’re starting out and wondering how you’ll balance your student loan payments and saving for a home, or you are established physician trying to figure out how to pay for your kids’ college and how much you need to save to reach financial freedom, we can help.

I’ll put a link in the show notes to schedule a no-obligation meeting with one of our certified financial planners. Wrenne Financial Planning, LLC is a registered investment advisor. For more information about our firm, please visit wrennefinancial.com. That’s W-R-E-N-N-E financial.com.

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Theresa Scheu: All right, so moving on to another podcast. This was actually a recommendation that I provided last year. It was the ‘Marketplace Podcast.’ The host is Kai Ryssdal. It’s a public media radio program. I consume it via a podcast, but I think your local NPR station will play it too. It’s Monday through Friday. It’s 30 minutes.

And what I really like about it is, we all have our socioeconomic bubbles. I’m over in the Boston area, and my economics is not the same as a soybean farmer in Iowa. And it’s hard sometimes to get a pulse of what’s going on around the country. So they do a really good job in layman’s terms of kind of both at a macro level, so if you’re interested in what the interest rates and what the Fed’s doing, they cover that. But they also really get into kind of the economics of Main Street. So how are small businesses doing in Oregon, that kind of thing. So it gives you a map of what’s going on at a micro and a macro level.

And they bring in a lot of different diverse voices to talk about how to interpret what’s going on in the headlines. When tariffs were out, when that first happened, they brought in a lot of different experts to talk about what the influences could be or not. So I feel like it’s a pretty well-balanced show, and it gives me a perspective of what’s going on outside of my little socioeconomic bubble.

So I really like that show, and I think it’s well done.

Daniel Wrenne: Yeah. So kind of a Wall Street Journal-esque type, if you’re gonna— Like your economics marketplace would be more of a news-ish economics.

Theresa Scheu: Yeah, totally. They start with the news of the day, what’s going on and interpreting it and what does it really mean to a normal human versus just on a bigger scale, like what does it mean to your personal finances?

So I really appreciate that perspective, and I think it really just allows you to understand what these headlines mean. Take out, strip out some of the, I don’t know, everything sounds scary when it comes out, and I think they do a good job explaining what the reality is and how it could affect you.

So I like that. And then, so the next one is a book. And this again, I think is on most people’s top five list of books when it comes to personal finance. And it’s relatively new, I wanna say. It has come out in the last 15, 20 years. But it’s ‘The Psychology of Money’ by Morgan Housel. Daniel, have you read this?

Daniel Wrenne: Yeah.

Theresa Scheu: Yeah. I think I’ve read few times.

Daniel Wrenne: I think it’s very new. I think it’s maybe in the past five years

Theresa Scheu: Well, yeah. Okay. Yeah, it is. It’s good. So Morgan has—

Daniel Wrenne: 2020.

Theresa Scheu: 2020. Okay. Wow. Really? Okay. That’s newer than I thought it was, but Morgan’s got a background at the Wall Street Journal, the Motley Fool, so he knows how to write for consumers.

And I really think this gets into the theme of some of the other podcasts and books we’ve highlighted where it’s not being the most brilliant person with money. It’s more about the behavioral elements of it and how you actually have good habits around money and that will take you farther and it end up being then having the greatest investments in the world.

So yeah, it’s just a great book. It’s the one I recommend. My mom’s just asked me just after what she wanted for Christmas, and she’s like, why don’t you get me some of your personal finance books? And this is one of ’em that I’m going to be getting.

Daniel Wrenne: Your mom wants to read your personal finance books?

Theresa Scheu: Yeah. Yeah.

Daniel Wrenne: That’s awesome.

Theresa Scheu: Yeah.

Daniel Wrenne: Yeah. It’s also for the masses, like I don’t think anyone—I think I could recommend it to pretty much anyone. A lot of these we could recommend to anyone, but this is much more obviously focused on the psychology, the behavior around money, and everybody struggles with it.

Like they’re all things that people struggle with, and so it would be helpful for pretty much everybody.

Theresa Scheu: Yeah. And it doesn’t pass judgment. I think you read this book and you realize, wow. So much of this is outta my control to some degree. There are things I can control, there are things I can’t, and I think that’s a good lesson if nothing else. ’cause I think people get really down on themselves that they should know all this stuff and they should be able to make, there’s finances and success, but he really does also lean into the fact that there’s a level of risk and luck tied to a lot of the financial stories you hear as big wins.

There was definitely some risk and some luck involved. My favorite story about this book though, mentioning the part about recommending it to anyone. I have a friend who’s really smart, and she was really interested in learning more about personal finance, and I recommended this book for her.

She went to the local library in Vermont, took it out. And within the first two chapters, I think there’s a story about how a gentleman who was a, I believe a janitor, ended up donating like millions of dollars to the local library. And people just didn’t know. It was the story of kind of that millionaire next door where he had these habits and investments and no one knew he was rich.

She finds out that the library actually that she took the book out from was the library that he donated that money to.

Daniel Wrenne: Huh. That’s crazy. Yeah, he’s a good storyteller. So I think of all these, it’s probably the most viable read.

Theresa Scheu: Yeah. Narrative. Yeah, totally.

Daniel Wrenne: Because of the stories, which personal finance books can be really hard.

‘The Richest Man in Babylon’ is like parables, which are stories. It’s a story format, which helps. ‘The Millionaire Next Door’ is kid of that way. Talks about the research of people. But yeah, the ‘Psychology of Money’ by Morgan Housel is definitely the best storyteller, I would say.

Theresa Scheu: Yeah. Yeah.

Daniel Wrenne: It feels like an educational book, like you feel like you’re coming away like more knowledgeable about.

Theresa Scheu: Totally. Yeah. It was thanks to this book too, that I had come up with investing in kind of individual securities, and he did such a good job of explaining the concept of the S&P, Standard & Poor’s index that I think started in the 1950s and has just astronomically grown by over a thousand percent since its inception.

But if you look at the individual companies that make up the S&P, like something like 80% of them are no longer in existence that started back, but the index itself has grown that much. And to me that was like a light bulb moment where I was like, okay, I think I’m an index investor now.

Yeah. So that was great. Yeah. And also he came out with another book this year that I really enjoyed. It was ‘The Art of Spending Money’ and it’s that other side of the coin from we spend. All this time talking about saving, where should you be spending your money and how do you get the most satisfaction, I think is really the emphasis for him from spending your money.

And so some really good, if you’re a parent, there’s some good nuggets in there too about how to think about money and your kids and what’s actually gonna make a difference when it comes to how they turn out as humans. So I really recommend that book as well. It’s a good one.

Daniel Wrenne: ‘Simple Wealth, Inevitable Wealth.’ I think I’ve read this or I’ve skimmed it. In fact, I think it’s on my bookshelf somewhere. I don’t see it right now, but it’s a Nick Murray book, and this was Michael recommend.

Theresa Scheu: Yeah, Michael. Yeah.

Daniel Wrenne: I guess it’s probably a little bit of a different flavor than these. It is similar in some ways, but it’s probably a little more focused on investing, like emphasis on the long term. And yeah, some of the things you were just saying about what you took away from the Psychology of Money, I think this book would actually echo those things. It’s how to take a long-term view instead of a short-term view and how stocks perform versus bonds perform. It talks a lot about that and how timing the market is you want to avoid timing the market.

Theresa Scheu: Yeah.

Daniel Wrenne: So a lot of the things we’ve already talked about, foundational stuff with personal finance, and then the one thing this book also talks about, which I think some of the others don’t talk about, is this book talks about the value of working with a financial planner, kind of as a third party facilitator to help guide you through all that. I don’t think any of the other books really hit on that.

Theresa Scheu: Yeah.

Daniel Wrenne: Maybe wise council. That was ‘Richest Man of Babylon,’ right?

Theresa Scheu: Yeah.

Daniel Wrenne: ‘Richest Man of Babylon’ talked about seeking wise counsel in the 1920s.

Theresa Scheu: Yep.

Daniel Wrenne: There you go.

Theresa Scheu: There you go. I kept this one. This one was recommended. This is ‘Money for Couples.’ It’s hosted by Ramit Sethi. It comes out, I think, every Tuesday. I listen to it. It’s was recommended by Sam, who’s no longer on the team, but she went across the—talking about moving abroad.

She’s over in England now, so we wish her the best. But she brought this up last year and I think it’s a good podcast. It goes deep. It’s long, it’s an hour and a half, and it, each week they highlight a couple. And they can be in very different financial situations.

So people that are—a hundred thousand dollars worth of credit card debt just scraping by to multimillionaires. But really, the host spends the time really talking to them about not necessarily—how the psychology behind their decisions and how they’re interacting with one another.

So it’s good if you are in a relationship and just it is interesting that we all bring our baggage to the table when we work with our spouse on these things, and he really spends a lot of time untangling things.

Daniel Wrenne: Is it an interview format?

Theresa Scheu: Yeah. Interview style. Yep.

Daniel Wrenne: So it would probably be like a little bit like sitting in on one of our meetings with our clients maybe.

Theresa Scheu: No, don’t say it. It gets really—

Daniel Wrenne: I haven’t listened to it, so just correct me.

Theresa Scheu: Yeah, no. These are people in dire straits and there’s a reason they’re on this show. There’s something going wrong.

Daniel Wrenne: So it’s people in money challenging—

Theresa Scheu: And challenging moneys. But he’s one of those proponents of why is everyone obsessed with owning a home? You can be financially successful with renting.

Daniel Wrenne: He’s the guy that’s all about increase your earning potential, right?

Theresa Scheu: Yeah. Yeah. So before this podcast, he had I Will Make You—or I Can Make You Rich.

That was his book and then his podcast, and now it’s evolved into this money for couples.

Daniel Wrenne: I think his philosophy is like invest in yourself and.

Theresa Scheu: Yeah.

Daniel Wrenne: Everybody has the potential to earn as much money as they want to earn. Don’t limit. More of an abundance mentality, I think.

Theresa Scheu: Totally. He totally has an abundance mentality and that’s what he teaches. And he does get into some of the—every podcast starts with a look at the couple’s finances, so their net worth statement essentially. But he thinks about it in percentages from the perspective of you should have guilt-free spending every month and really focusing your spending on the things that’ll bring you the most joy and eliminating the rest, especially if you have financial issues.

So I would say broad strokes his philosophy is in line with kind of how we do work with clients in that. It’s really important to understand where they’re coming from, what’s going on in their lives, and what their goals are and their values, and then taking the money to shift it in the areas that are important to them.

They just seem to be at the worst stage of their financial journeys when they show up on the show.

Daniel Wrenne: That’s challenging. Yeah, I have definitely had financial planning conversations with people that get into really challenging financial circumstances.

Theresa Scheu: Yeah.

Daniel Wrenne: It’s very difficult because especially when it’s like very, and a lot of times it is this, it’s very intertwined into like behaviors and like psychology and it’s illogical. So that can be really difficult. It’s like almost like therapy.

Theresa Scheu: Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So that’s a lot there.

Daniel Wrenne: What’s this next one on the list? I’ve never seen this one.

Theresa Scheu: No. Yeah, so I had to put it on here. It’s a shameless plug for ‘Finance for Physicians.’ We got that in there. You’re already listening to it, so I assume you’ve already you bought in—

Daniel Wrenne: What we’re doing right now.

Theresa Scheu: Yeah. So that’s good. But for our blog readers, I wanted to make sure we had a—we made everyone know that this was out there. And this was on our Wrenne Financial Planning blog. And so we publish content there about every two weeks. So if you’re ever looking for more content, go there. I don’t think we’ll get into it on this podcast, but we also have a few kid recommendations, so you should go over to the blog and check those out.

Daniel Wrenne: Can I summarize them and…?

Theresa Scheu: Yeah, go for it.

Daniel Wrenne: They’re basically, at least I recommended two of these.

Theresa Scheu: Yeah.

Daniel Wrenne: Michael. I don’t know the one Michael recommended. But I know the two I recommended are basically all the lessons in the books we just went through, but designed for kids, and they’re story-focused, or one of ’em is Fable, but like they’re basically two story books, and they’re very, very good.

Like they’re the best ones I’ve read. And they’re small and probably relatively unknown books, but they’re both fantastic. My kids have read both of ’em like multiple times, like they were. They got through ’em all. Yeah. And one of my kids read—one of them multiple times. So it’s basically they’re the same themes that came out of the books we just talked about, but for kids. In fact, adults could read these and have…

Theresa Scheu: Right. Yeah. So it’s the ‘Golden Quest’ by David Delisle.

Daniel Wrenne: Delisle.

Theresa Scheu: Sorry, and Grandpa’s Fortune Fables by Will Rainey. So those are the two books, and actually I do, I’ll say the other one that Michael recommended, it’s actually I have it or my kids have it. So it’s called Milton’s the Money Savvy Pup, and it’s written by a financial planner who has forced young kids, and it just talks about—

Daniel Wrenne: Who’s the author of that one?

Theresa Scheu: It’s Jamie. I’ll include the links in the show notes.

Daniel Wrenne: I think I have met her actually.

Theresa Scheu: Yeah, I have met her too.

Daniel Wrenne: Oh yeah, I know her.

Theresa Scheu: Yeah.

Daniel Wrenne: Yeah. So she’s a financial planner.

Theresa Scheu: Yeah.

Daniel Wrenne: I think I met her at FinCon, the conference.

Theresa Scheu: That’s where I met her too. I bought her books.

Daniel Wrenne: Nice.

Theresa Scheu: Yeah, so that’s the list.

They’re all up on our blog, I think. Daniel, do you have any books you’d recommend that didn’t make the list or podcasts?

Daniel Wrenne: I had one as we were talking. Now I’ve forgotten it. Wow. You tell yours.

Theresa Scheu: So I’ll throw in ‘Die With Zero’ by Bill Perkins. It has a bit of a controversial title because, again, it’s that whole flip side of the coin.

We spend all this time talking about saving, and now we’re telling people to spend all their money. But the book really isn’t that. It’s more of making sure you’re spending, essentially get the max outta your money during your lifetime. So that might be, and spend on the experiences, regardless of the dollar amount, or maybe because of the dollar amount at the times where you can use it.

So don’t save all your money to travel when you’re 80 years old and you can’t really do it. You should spend it when you’re in your 40s, potentially. Or if you’re thinking about gifting money to your kids when you die, maybe reevaluate whether they could use it, be able to use it more effectively while they were younger.

‘Cause as we are dealing now with the great wealth transfer, you got a lot of 60-year-olds inheriting millions of dollars where maybe they could have used half of—maybe it was only $500,000, but they could have used it when they were 40 to buy their house or what have you. So it’s really being thoughtful about your money and spending it during your life to get the max enjoyment, but also the max satisfaction from your money because you can’t take it with you. So it’s a pretty good read.

Daniel Wrenne: Yeah. I haven’t read that one, but I know the theme of it and it’s, I agree a hundred percent with the idea of at least considering it when you’re—there’s a lot of older people that I’ve worked with over the years, and they have in their mind this idea that they need to just build, continue to build the nest egg indefinitely of wealth.

And they’re not really thinking about—they’re like, “Oh yeah. And then I’ll pass the remainder to either my children or in charity or whatever.” And so it’s kind of a paradigm shift for them to think oh, I can carve this out. It’s plenty for the rest of my life.

And then there’s still X number of dollars. What if I were to do the things I was planning to do when I died while I’m still alive? And then you get the enjoyment of all the things.

Theresa Scheu: Exactly. Yeah. Controversial title, not really a controversial book from that perspective.

And I really think we’re seeing a lot more books coming out now more about like how to spend money versus just how to save money. And that’s one of the themes, I think in some of the books that were on this list.

Yeah.

Daniel Wrenne: I remembered mine. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. It’s probably the furthest away from Personal Finance, but it’s ‘Think and Grow Rich’ by Napoleon Hill. It’s another old, old book. It’s 1937. Yeah.

Theresa Scheu: Oh, wow. Okay. Yeah.

Daniel Wrenne: so it’s like more of a philosophy mindset so that you can getting your mindset and your philosophy so that you can achieve independence and financial independence and life satisfaction and that kind of thing. Of course, it’s not exactly about personal finance, but it totally ties into personal finance and a lot of the, at least the mindset themes overlap with some of the stuff that is in a lot of these other books.

So themes, you want to wrap up by summarizing some of these themes we’ve pulled out of these books? ’cause they’re very, at first I was like, no, there’s not a lot of overlap. But then. That’s not true. Yeah, they’re very similar.

Theresa Scheu: They are very similar. I think what I think is really cool is you can tell as a team we really value clarity and the ability to break down really complex topics into digestible human language because everyone on the team has had lots of financial training and I’m sure can go deep and get all kind, all wonky, but you can tell that the books that they really appreciated and the even the podcast really emphasized the ability to talk in plain language and really relate these financial topics to people’s real lives.

I think it’s kind of part of what we do and why we do it, but I think that is one theme I’ve noticed in a lot of these books.

Daniel Wrenne: Yeah. A bunch of non-technical books. Surprisingly non-technical for a group of financial planners.

Theresa Scheu: Yep.

Daniel Wrenne: Yeah. I think there’s also like a values focus in them all like values values-first focus.

Yeah. Like the whole like save or give first focus on wealth as opposed to getting rich and incorporate your—die with zero so that you can utilize what’s most important to you or appreciate or live out what’s most important to you while you’re still around.

I think those are some of the themes. And then ‘Getting Rich Slowly,’ that’s another thing to down is—

Theresa Scheu: Yeah, there’s no magic formula in any of these books on like how to create wealth. If anything, it really does lean into this idea that it’s habitual. It’s making these habits and just avoiding the big pitfalls and eventually you’ll get there.

But it takes time and it takes dedication and not getting distracted.

Daniel Wrenne: And putting your money to work.

Theresa Scheu: Right? Yes.

Daniel Wrenne: Buying and holding.

Theresa Scheu: Yeah.

Daniel Wrenne: Avoid the shiny objects.

Theresa Scheu: No shiny objects.

Daniel Wrenne: Yeah. It’s not rocket science. It’s not pretty basic. But the other thing is the behavior focus. Yes. That’s the hard part is putting in into action part.

Theresa Scheu: Totally.

Daniel Wrenne: Good stuff. I think that’s a wrap. Thanks for coming on.

Theresa Scheu: Of course. Good to be here.

No guests or clients appearing on the podcast received any form of compensation for their appearance and obtained no other benefit from us. It should not be assumed that every client has had the same experience.

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