I’m a smart person, but I’m not a financial advisor nor do I pretend to be one. I don’t think I ever could be a financial advisor, I don’t know how those folks sleep at night if their clients lose money. Heck I feel bad when one of my readers goes to a pharmacy to do a deal and it doesn’t work out! But I will share with you some of my favorite reads when it comes to money.

The first book that I ever read that really captured our personal philosophy, even though we weren’t 100% compliant at the time, was The Millionaire Next Door. Although I haven’t read it in quite a number of years, I was reminded of it again yesterday, when Yahoo put out this article. Basically that article just summarizes the philosophy of Millionaire, which is really quite simple. Spend less, save more. It gives anecdotal information about some households, how they drive their cars forever, say no to peer pressure when it comes to designer clothes and McMansions, stuff like that.

I highly recommend the book and if you don’t want to buy it, go to the library. Hard to believe that text is almost 15 years old, but the advice still holds true today. Don’t get me wrong–I’m not judging others, and I’m not saying that I haven’t ever overspent or bought unnecessary crap. I have. But for years, I would look around us, look at the people my age, the ones living in $700k houses, driving $50k SUVs, and I’d scratch my head and wonder where did I go wrong? How is it they can afford all that stuff and I can’t? Now we all know, they couldn’t. And I do feel bad for those that are living a very tough lesson right now.

Another one of my favorite financial writers who has recently written about this phenomenon is Suze Orman. I really like her, love her tv show, I even went to hear her speak once. Her new book, called The Money Class, is about redefining the American dream. I do disagree with her on one point. I heard her on tv recently and she said that we all must now learn to live below our means. I would just change that to spend below our means. I live within my means, I am just able to afford more extras because I make up the difference using alternative tender-using coupons or store tender instead of cash. Using daily deal sites to buy dinners out. Of course Suze would argue that’s all well & good, but that I should be putting that into savings instead of Groupon. I get it.

She writes a lot of good stuff and saw much of this madness coming long before it arrived.

And in true Smart Spending fashion, I’ll tell you to go check out these books at your library. Or, see if they have them on tape/CD at your library and use them during your commute.