Welcome to our Recommendations Page where we have compiled the products, services, and resources that we use or have used personally and would recommend to friends, relatives, and even you, dear reader. We will continue to add to this collection as we have time and think of the recommendations that have added value to our lives. If you have any of your own recommendations please feel free to leave them in the comments. We will review them periodically and try them out ourselves. Quick disclaimer, many of these will have affiliate links, so if you purchase through the link below I may make a small commission on the sale (at no cost to you).
Books
Your Money or Your Life – the first book I read about and the best at conveying the message for financial independence.
The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business – a great book that highlights how much our habits control our lives and how we can change them for the better.
How to Win Friends & Influence People – A classic about how to effectively socialize with people. I read this early in my career and it has helped me immensely both working as a colleague and in dealing with subordinates as a leader.
The Bulletproof Diet: Lose Up to a Pound a Day, Reclaim Your Energy and Focus, and Upgrade Your Life – a great book about Dave Asprey’s journey to a healthier life and how he achieved it by hacking his biology. I currently follow a diet based on the combination of this diet and Eager 2 Motivate (E2M).
The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable – a short book dealing with five behavioral tendencies that can corrupt teams: absence of trust, fear of conflict, lack of commitment, avoidance of accountability, and inattention to results. I first read this after leading engineers and construction supervisors in various transportation projects. At the time the book resonated with me because in hindsight I could see many of the tendencies discussed.
A Random Walk Down Wall Street – I first read this early in my investing journey and I thought it provided a great picture of the stock market itself. In the book, the author, Burton Malkiel, makes the argument for a long-term point of view, portfolio diversification and low expenses typically in the form of index fund and ETFs, patience, and continuous learning. Probably the best part about this book is that the proof is in the performance of these ideals over time.
Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win – a great leadership book by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin, both former Navy SEALS. These leadership principles are universal in nature and can be applied by anyone with any level of leadership.
Investing
Index and ETF investing
Vanguard – Vanguard is the best place for investing in indexes and ETFs as they have products that are comparable to others in the market in terms of risk minimization and return, but have some of the lowest expenses. Also, it’s easier to trust the largest brokerage by assets under management which also happens to be owned by the investors themselves. We use this for the majority of our long-term investments and primarily in the total stock market index or ETF for a great balance of diversification across all U.S. equities, with a market mimicking return (better than most managed funds), with minimal expenses (Vanguard has some of the lowest in the industry).
Discount Brokerages
M1 Finance – a great discount brokerage for investors just starting off. The benefits include commission-free trades on stocks and ETFs, the ability to buy fractional shares by creating investment “slices” of a whole “pie”, and great rebalancing tools. I have a pie of high-conviction stocks that I think will outperform the S&P 500 and QQQ. I have an automatic deposit of $50 a week to this account with automatic investing in the pie (dollar cost averaging and automatic rebalancing on the buy side). Over the past four years, I have a 117.87% money weighted return on investment using this strategy.
Robinhood – Robinhood is the original commission-free discount brokerage service. It often gets a bad rap because of the shenanigans that went on with haulted trading during the Gamestop short squeeze, but remains a great way to perform long-term buy and hold investing. There is no account minimum, you can invest in fractional shares, you can setup automatic investing deposits and trading in stocks of your choosing, and they have access to some unconventional products such as cryptocurrency. I use this account for when I want to put some money towards an individual stock. I primarily use this for long term trading, but do trade in and out of stocks as my stock thesis changes for a stock.