The book follows the path of two fictional characters, Ryan and Christine, and they try to “regain control and to successfully manager finances in today’s society”.

This finance book is targeted at people “seeking a blueprint for achieving long-term financial wellness”, which I think is the audience that pretty much every personal finance book ever written is targeted.

Here is a quote from the site about what the book is about:

“Ryan and Christine Richardson once enjoyed a solid relationship. They were educated, had a good income, and were focused on successfully raising a family. Like so many in their situation, they had allowed financial stress and frustration to erode their happiness. Join them on a journey as they transform their lives and begin to understand how to live within their income, stop accumulating debt, and build a solid financial future.”

It looks like the free book is a lead up to, “Money for Life Success Planner”, which “with this companion piece, the Money for Life Success Planner, you too can easily follow the same 12-week financial fitness program to reach your objectives. A program that makes your journey to financial security more manageable, predictable and even enjoyable”.

There also appear to be adds in the actual book for some of the products and tools used to get their financial budget under control, like mvelopes.

Money for Life looks like it should be an interesting read, and since it’s free for download, which you can do here, I’ve got nothing to loose by trying it out ..

The post Free Budgeting and Personal Finance Book first appeared on Blog About Books.

I’ve seen some interesting designs using books, and even seen a shelf made from a hollowed out and strengthened book, but really, you imagination is the limit with using books as decorative features.

You can read about a few different ideas of book decoration over at the Home Improvement Blog: Decorating with Books.

The post How to use Books for Decorating first appeared on Blog About Books.

One of his latest reviews is of the book The Incredible Secret Money Machine by Don Lancaster. Although the book is now 30-years old, being published in 1978, the book still has some fantastic and relevant tips.

The book is about starting and running a small business. It isn’t a book about earning millions, but rather a book about earning a comfortable income doing something that you enjoy doing.

The book states that to build a “money making machine” is to stay true to four basic principles:

1. You have to be heavily into a technical or craft trip on a total lifestyle basis
2. You must want to stay in control
3. Your income goals should be just enough to keep going
4. Be gentle

There are other tips that he shares for building a money machine:

• Have as many different sources of income as possible
• Have complementary sources of income
• Deal directly with the customer
• Work toward deferred income
• Know the difference between cold cash, imaginary money, and megabucks
• Separate frugality from stupidity
• Avoid psychic energy sinks

J.D. Roth comes to the following conclusion about the book:

Some of the advice in The Incredible Secret Money Machine now seems quaint, 30 years after the book was published. The author’s “hip” language and many of his examples are outdated. But smart readers can extrapolate, and still learn a lot. You have to be able to read Lancaster’s advice on letterhead, for example, and think of it as advice for web sites.

Although Lancaster believes that you must be into your money machine on a total lifestyle basis, I’m not sure that’s true. I think you can have a part-time money machine. A full-time money machine will be more profitable, of course, but a part-time money machine is a great way to start.

You can read his full review on his blog: Get Rich Slowly – personal finance that makes cents – The Incredible Money Making Machine.

The post The Incredible Secret Money Manchine by Don Lancaster – Book Review first appeared on Blog About Books.

Very well presented in a story narrative about a fictional character named Amy who is living with an all consuming amount of debt. Rob Parsons doesn’t preach in this book, but presents life principles in a way that makes it relevant and possible to overcome personal debt.

My personal favourite story was the story of Alice, who used cups to put her money in at the beginning of the month. Each cup represented a category of spending, just as rent, food, etc. At the end of each month she only spent what was in the cup, and nothing more, because there was nothing more to spend.

The story of Alice contrasts quite a lot with our modern world of living of credit card debt. Here in Australia the average credit card debt currently sits around $2200.00. This isn’t a problem if it you can pay it off each month (which we thankfully do), but it is a very large problem if you do not pay if off each month.

So what’s the secret of the “The Money Secret”? Well, put very simply, the secret is to spend less money than you make!

Even though I have told you the secret I would still very highly recommend that you read The Money Secret by Rob Parsons. It has some extremely valuable hints and tips about debt management and how to get out and stay out of debt.

You can read more reviews on Amazon.com about The Money Secret by Rob Parsons over at .

Technorati Tags: the money secret, Rob Parsons, book review, debt book

The post The Money Secret by Rob Parsons – Book Review first appeared on Blog About Books.

That neither nature nor nurture bears exclusive responsibility for a child’s characters is self evident. But generalizations about genes are likely to provide cold comfort if it is your own child, who just opened fire on his fellow algebra students and whose class photograph – with its unseemly grin- is shown on the evening news from coast to coast. If the quesiton of who is to blame for teenage atrocity intrigues news-watching voyeurs, it tortures our narrator, Eva Khatchadourian. Two years before the opening of the novel, her son, Kevin, murdered seven of his fellow high school students, a cafeteria worker, and the much-beloved teacher who had tried to befriend him. Because his sixteenth birthday arrived two days after the killings, he recieved a leniet sentace and is currently in a prison for young offenders in upstate New York. In relating the story of Kevin’s upbringing, Eva addresses her estranged husband, Frank, though a series of startingly direct letters. Fearing that her own shortcomings may have shaped what her son becamed she confesses a deep, longstanding ambivalence about both motherhood in general – and kevin in particular. How much is her fault? We need to talk about Kevinoffers no pat explanations for why so many white, well to do adolesents – whether in Pearl, Paducah, Springfield, or Littleton – have gone nihilistically off the rails while growing up in the most properous country in history. Instead Lionel Shriver tells a compelling , absorbing and resonant story with an explosive, haunting ending. She considers mootherhood, marriage, family and career – while framing these horrifying tableaus of teenage carnage as metaphors for the larger tragedy of a country where everything works, nobody starves, and everything can be bought but a sense of purpose

The post We Need To Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver first appeared on Blog About Books.