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Book Review: You Can Stay Home with Your Kids!: 100 Tips, Tricks, and Ways to Make It Work on a Budget by Erin Odom

I think most mothers envision staying home with the kids at least for some time. And then reality kicks in and the need for a second paycheck, the adult conversations and just being able to leave the house. This book attempts to address some of these concerns and wants to enable more mothers to stay at home with kids.

Coming from Germany, with 2 years of job security while allowing mothers to stay home, it always struck me as strange that kids in the US are dropped off at daycare within months of their birth. So I was interested in how this book attempted to tackle the habit of starting daycare before the kids are even one year old. Unfortunately this book only addresses one aspect of the stay at home dilemma, the budget question. The author presents a mix of making some money, not spending money and saving money on expenses while still enjoying life and spending time with kids. From assisting new moms with a budget that does not feel cutting short the needs of the family to finding honest and reliable work from home opportunities, the author does a good job of guiding moms throughout the book in a way that is to the point and easy to understand. Most importantly, the author provides enough hints, tricks and tips that every reader has options as to what to adopt without changing their life too much. There are some ideas about getting adult time in a well, just catalogued under the heading of not overspending.

Overall, I liked this book a lot. Not only is it good for new moms, but it can be used after the kids are grown and you simply want to save money. The tips are easy to follow, fit into most schedules - no matter how busy you are-, and you will end up saving money. Reducing the financial stress alone will often improve your outlook on life.

available on amazon.com

Disclaimer: I received a free copy of the book in exchange for an honest review. The opinion expressed is solely my own and has not been influenced by any third party.

Book Review: Putting It Together Again When It's All Fallen Apart: 7 Principles for Rebuilding Your Life by Tom Holladay

 We all experience at some what seem like an existential crisis from which we need to recover. How to do that and find another purpose in life and being able to put one foot in front of the other may seem impossible, but somehow people manage. This book is intended to help find that new beginning after everything seems lost. The author suffered significant loss when the church and the houses of his family and those of his church members were destroyed. Based on the experience and how he and his community went about finding a new purpose and a new beginning, the author provides the reader with guidance on how to manage a significant crisis or loss.

The 7 principles are:

• Find the strength to start
• Take the first step
• Appreciate others
• Expect and reject opposition
• Build on your successes
• Celebrate to sustain your joy
• Dedicate it to God

With the exception of the last step, the first 6 can be generally applied to people of all denominations and the book is written in clear and easy to follow steps. Using plain language, the author does intend to make the book useful for everyone and I believe he succeeds at that. I found the book almost like a guide to recovery from a personal crisis and I realized just by reading the book that no matter what obstacles you face, chances are someone else has been in a similar situation and recovered from it. 

I recommend this book to just about anyone, if you have not experienced a total breakdown, chances are you or someone else in your community will and can benefit from this book.

available on amazon.com

Disclaimer: I received a free book in exchange for an honest review. The opinion expressed is solely my own and has not been influenced by any third party.

Book Review: Supernatural Power for Everyday People: Experiencing God’s Extraordinary Spirit in Your Ordinary Life by Jared C. Wilson

This book was rather disappointing to me because it was very focused on religion and Christianity. I cannot stress enough how focused this book is on religion. This is somewhat sad and actually disappointing because this book like other books provides generally good advice for people of all walks of life. Shortchanging the author by focusing the audience unnecessarily in my opinion on a specific group, such as Christians, will deprive others of getting the lessons in these books.

The author is a pastor, so that certainly explains the focus on Christians, but the thought behind the book is a book to provide advice to readers on how to handle the challenges in everyday life. Whether a mother has problems juggling housework and work and family or an office worker wonders whether he is just a number in the call center or is he really making a difference? These people, in the words of the author, nee to hold on to hope, even on their darkest days.

While the book is intended to be practical, it is only practical, if you have the bible handy and can read the bible. What surprises me is the fact that either the author thinks only Christians struggle with this issue or he thinks that only Christians can find a solution to the problem because they have the bible handy.

Overall, I cannot stress how much I would hope that these books were written in a more general way, so that more readers could enjoy the book and Christians are not perceived as such an elitist group.

available on amazon.com

Disclaimer: I received a free book in exchange for an honest review. The opinion expressed is solely my own and has not been influenced by any third party.