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Australians know you as the money guru worth reading. Tell us something they don’t know about you.

When I’m in the throes of a book, I sit up in my office on the farm and play Guns’n’Roses really loud. (Good for getting me in the zone. Not so good for our sleeping baby).

Why did you decide to write books as opposed to other methods of spreading your message?

Let’s be honest, short of plastering my message on a tram, or getting a neck tattoo of the Barefoot Steps, I’ve done everything else to spread my message. Why not books?

Do you enjoy the writing process? What are the best and worst parts?

It sure beats crutching sheep. Actually I really enjoy coming up with new ideas … I just struggle putting them down on paper.

When you’re head-down in writing mode what are your vices?

Sweet Child O’Mine (Slash and Myles Kennedy version) on repeat, fistfuls of almonds, and soda water.

Did you research how to write or just gave it a crack and let it flow?

Hell yes. For The Barefoot Investor For Families(Pape’s most recent release — a record-breaker just like its predecessor The Barefoot Investor) I surveyed over 10,000 parents, and went really deep on their responses. I write to help my community.

Money is a terrifying topic to many: how do you make your tips easy to read, digest and, most importantly, implement?

Easy! I don’t do tips.

Honestly, I’d rather stab myself in the eye with a fork than be told to ditch my morning latte so I can be a millionaire when I’m 80.

You will not magically become a millionaire by not drinking coffee (though a lack of caffeine may cause you to kill your colleagues).

Instead, I like to focus on the big things that really move the dial: your house, your super, and what the Jones’s are doing.

Your Barefoot books are full of jokes and funny anecdotes. How would you describe your sense of humour?

Writing is a lonely job, so I try and keep myself amused. Sometimes my wife hears me cackling away to myself, and she’ll come up and ask me what’s so funny. When I read out the humorous piece I’ve just written, she’ll often look confused and say, “actually, I don’t understand what you’re getting at … maybe you should try to be less funny and more succinct …”.

Who does the illustrations?

A Rastafarian hipster by the name of Jeff Phillips (AKA Jeff the Peff). He’s the best damned illustrator around, and rumour has it in a former life he was a financial advisor.

What do you read for downtime?

Golden Books (usually at 6pm).

What are your three favourite books and why?

I’m going to narrow this down to my favourite personal finance books:

Future Babble. Author Dan Gardner explains scientifically why most of the economic predictions made about the economy end up being wrong (and that “the more famous an expert is, the less accurate they are”). The book focuses on a University of California study, conducted in the 1980s, that gathered almost 28,000 predictions. Then they waited to see how accurate they were. “The results couldn’t have been clearer”, says Gardner. “The average expert was about as accurate as a dart-throwing chimpanzee.”

How to Get Rich. Felix Dennis started out with nothing and rose to become one of the wealthiest men in Britain. Then he died of cancer from smoking too many cigars. Several years before sucking his last stogie, he sat down in one of the most expensive homes in Europe and wrote How to Get Rich. It’s vulgar, manic, cutthroat, and one of the most brutally honest accounts of what it really takes to build a fortune. And what you have to give up to do it …

Depression: A Diary. In 1931, a 38-year-old lawyer named Benjamin Roth began writing a diary. He didn’t know it at the time, but he was living through the Depression. And that’s what makes it such a compelling read — most books on the Great Depression are written with the benefit of hindsight. What follows is the observations of an intelligent bloke from the suburbs trying to make sense of the total economic devastation that is unfolding around him.

If a film were made of the Barefoot Investor story, who would play you?

Julie Bishop.

The Barefoot Investor For Families, by Scott Pape, is published by HarperCollins Australia and you can get it at all good bookshops.

If a novel is more your speed, Trent Dalton’s Boy Swallows Universe is our Book of the Month — and readers get it for a discount at Booktopia, using code BCBT18.

And remember to share your thoughts on great titles, fact or fiction, at The Sunday Book Club’s Facebook group.