Category: General

Books & Money

I wrote an email to a friend describing two books about money I read towards the end of my education that I found rewarding to read and extremely useful.

They should not be the only two books people read about personal money management, but they make a great start for people who are just starting to think about their money in terms beyond only paying their bills.

Here are the books:

Get A Financial Life

This is a personal finance book written for people in the 20’s & 30′, as well as other people just starting out. It is non-stuffy. It does not read like a textbook, it is enjoyable to read, but nonetheless informative. I also discovered by looking it up that the authors put out a new edition since I last read it. You can read it in a weekend or two and the advice will literally bring you significant benefits.  It gets updated every few years so make sure you have the latest edition.

Your Money Or Your Life

This is a book about the “Voluntary Simplicity” movement and “down shifting”. You may not want to do many of the things listed in the book, most people do not. However, this is an incredibly valuable book to read because it makes you think about the deeper meaning of money, work, and how they relate to where you want to go in your life. It isn’t written by a hippy, but by someone who was a successful financial adviser in NYC who decided it was time to think about money beyond paying the bills and building investments as ends in themselves. The thoughts he suggests you contemplate can give you a powerful way to look at your life.

If anyone reads or has read either of these books let me know what you think. 🙂

Cat and dog honored as heros

NEW YORK – When Debbie Parkhurst choked on a piece of apple at her Maryland home, her dog jumped in, landing hard on her chest and forcing the morsel to pop out of her throat. When the Keesling family of Indiana was about to be overcome by carbon monoxide, their cat clawed at wife Cathy’s hair until she woke up and called for help.

For their nick-of-time acts, Toby, a 2 1/2-year-old golden retriever, and Winnie, a gray-eyed American shorthair, were named Dog and Cat of the Year by the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

In addition, five humans were honored Thursday for their actions toward animals in the past year, including a Bronx firefighter who saved a dog and cat from a burning building.

snip…

Both pets were themselves rescued in infancy — Toby as a 4-week-old puppy tossed into a garbage bin to die, and Winnie as a week-old orphan hiding under a barn, so helpless that Keesling’s husband, Eric, had to feed her milk with an eyedropper.

As the Keeslings recalled it, a gas-driven pump being used to remove flood waters from their basement in New Castle, Ind., last March malfunctioned, spreading carbon monoxide through the house. By the time Winnie moved into rescue mode, the couple’s 14-year-old son, Michael, was already unconscious.

“Winnie jumped on the bed and was clawing at me, with a kind of angry meow,” Cathy Keesling said. “When I woke up I felt like a T-bar had hit me across the head.”

State police and sheriff’s officers responding to her 911 call said the family was only minutes from death, judging by the amount of poisonous gas in the house.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071102/ap_on_fe_st/odd_animal_rescues