Review of The Millionaire Next Door

The Millionaire Next Door by Thomas J. Stanley
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a fascinating book! The authors spent a lot of time researching millionaires and studying their lifestyles and habits. The bottom line I gleaned from it is to be frugal, don't live beyond your means. Instead of trying to live a perceived lifestyle of the "rich" invest, be content, and accumulate wealth. A lot of time was spent on emphasizing the benefits of not buying flashy, expensive cars or other expensive "toys".

Millionaires are those that take the time to plan out their financial goals, make good budgets, and invest wisely.

There wasn't a lot of time spent on the habit of giving in this book, which was disappointing. I know that one of my goals of becoming wealthy is to be able to give away and help others with my cash.

Definitely a good book to read and glean insights from.

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The Love and Respect Experience - Review

After talking about books, I now offer you a review of a book.  The Love & Respect Experience: A Husband-Friendly Devotional that Wives Truly Love by Dr. Emerson Eggerichs. 

This is a devotional, divided into 52 small chapters, with each chapter ending with a Prayer topic and an Action to do with your spouse.  Each chapter deals with a topic common to marriage. I wanted to sit down and read the whole thing through, but since it is a devotional, that didn't seem right to me.  What I did then was to read the introduction and then bounced around the different chapters.

Dr. Eggerichs is know for talking about how men need Respect and how women need Love.  Men and women are made different, looking at the world through different eyes, but if we can learn how to meet each other's needs, our marriages will work better.

A few things popped out at me in my reading:

• Goodwill.  Our marriages need to be based on goodwill.  We need to have the intention, the purpose in our marriage to do good to our spouse.  If a disagreement happens, don't immediately think that they intended that purposefully or maliciously - give them the goodwill benefit of the doubt.  
• Money problems can dig deep and reveal our faults - how mature or immature we are.  We need to deal with the problems together, putting aside frustrations and anger; instead communicate and work through the issue together.  Show love and respect in how we handle money.
• The title of chapter 24 is "It's Hard to be Negative While Being Thankful."  He goes on to describe a tough time in their lives dealing with a son's broken leg and dream and how his wife learned to be thankful even during that hard time.  Developing a habit of thanksgiving drives the negative out - you see others in a more positive light.

All in all, I think this has potential to be a really good devotional.  It's definitely made me want to read the book these concepts come from (Love and Respect by the same author). I look forward to exploring this devotional with my wife.

"Before You Plan Your Wedding, Plan Your Marriage" Review

Greg and Erin Smalley are relationship speakers who have written this book with the engaged couple in mind. The writing style is very conversational, telling stories about how their engagement and marriage worked, giving good examples of how not to solve problems as well as how to solve those problems.

We took a long time working through this book, just because we wanted to read it aloud to one another. In the middle of wedding planning was both a good time and a bad time to try to read this book. A good time because we were dealing with some of the examples they gave. A bad time because we were simply too busy, especially the last week, to finish it. That said, we did get most of the book done before the wedding and just now finished it up.

A few of the points that I pulled from the book:

• Make a safe place. Don't be harsh to one another and cause walls to go up. If you are in a safe place relationally, that allows you to hold your heart out and trust the other person.
• Know yourself and deal with your own problems. Don't expect your spouse to solve your issues. You have a responsibility to yourself and to your spouse to be healthy, both emotionally and spiritually.
• We all have buttons that get pushed. Get to know what your buttons are and why they hurt. Deal with it and don't get caught in a fear dance. Fear dancing is basically entering into a conflict and letting your buttons get pushed and then you push the other person's and the dance goes on.
  
• Find ways to be a team and make decisions in a win-win way. What does a win look like for you in this situation? Sorta a compromise but not in a one person losing type of a way.

A lot of this book promoted good discussion between Brianna and I. I have good memories of reading a section in the car and then discussing the topic for many a mile. I definitely recommend this as a conversation starter. And it's a good communication building tool to read it out loud to each other. I would recommend this for both engaged couples and those who are already married! There are concepts in here that would benefit all couples.

Five Stars!