Financial Self Improvement

When I was five, I would read with a flashlight under my blankets for hours every night. When I was 12, I read all sorts of personal finance and investment books and invested my babysitting money in the stock market. When I was 18, I checked out over a dozen books on credit cards before applying for my first credit card. I've always loved reading, learning, and personal finance.


Nice Girls Don't Get the Corner Office - Source

Earlier this week I decided to re-read Lois Frankel's Nice Girls Don't Get the Corner Office: Unconscious Mistakes Women Make That Sabotage Their Careers. I of course had to check out three of her other books as well: See Jane Lead: 99 Ways for Women to Take Charge at Work; Nice Girls Just Don't Get It: 99 Ways to Earn the Respect You Deserve, the Success You've Earned, and the Life You Want; and Nice Girls Don't Get Rich: 75 Avoidable Mistakes Women Make with Money.


Nice Girls Don't Get Rich - Source

I read Nice Girls Don't Get Rich (the other books are in transit to my library branch) and put a hold on two books Frankel mentioned: Women Don't Ask: Negotiation and the Gender Divide and Secrets of Six-Figure Women: Surprising Strategies to Up Your Earnings and Change Your Life. I also checked out some of the magazines (or rather their websites) Frankel recommended: Money, Market Watch (formerly Smart Money), and Kiplinger. I love the articles on investing and retirement planning and current events, and I plan to check these three sites at least weekly.

I've been reading about personal finance for 15 years, and I'm a CPA with a master's in accounting, and I still got a lot out of Nice Girls don't get rich. My biggest takeaways are to keep up on things via financial magazines or sites, to seek out seminars on investing, and not to sell myself short salary-wise. It is so easy to not negotiate or to settle for the market rate or to ask for just under the market rate to have a better shot at landing a job. If you know you're better than average, you should ask for a better than average salary.

I can't wait for my other books to arrive!