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My brother passed me this book many years ago. His instructions were simple: Read it. It'll change your life.

I read it. Did it change my life? Yes, in a manner of speaking.
There are many of out there who desperately want to learn the basics of handling money. But, pick up the latest drudgery from your local bookstore on the subject, and you'll find yourself wading through terms and calculations that may as well be a foreign language.

The Richest Man in Babylon takes a different approach. It puts the base concepts of your handling money, and puts them in a story format, whose principles are extremely easy to comprehend (at least as compared to the overblown rationale behind the other financial books) for the layman. Due to their simplicity, the concepts are very memorable and consequently easily recalled after 10 years. The last time I read this book was in 2002, and I can still remember the base concepts from the book:
1. Pay yourself first (Save at least 10% of your paycheck)
2. Don't trust a bricklayer to buy jewels (Don't get caught up in other people's excitement. Go see the experts instead)
3. Don't put all of your eggs in a single basket (Diversify your portfolio).
4. Control thy expenses. (Even the richest man has a time constraint on his life. Do what you enjoy, but don't overdo it)
5. Increase your ability to earn (That one is self-explanatory)
etc.

Keeping these base principle in mind has helped me through these economic hard-times. To me, this book has become required reading for my children and my nephews.