Ruby Loves Adventure

How to Retire with Enough Money: And How to Know What Enough Is by Teresa Ghilarducci
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

It was an okay book, not something I will want to read again though.
The book's premise revolves around how to plan for retirement. As an early 30-something year old, why am I planning for retirement as early as now? Surely I can do this later on when I'm old(er) and wiser?

The thing is, myself and Peter are aiming to become Financially Independent as soon as we can, just so we can be "retired" and we can use that spare time in pursuing other interests, like traveling the world and building businesses that we are passionate about. So, picking up this book is adding to my agenda of learning more about retirement, and properly preparing for it.

First off, this book is catered to the US setting - so, sorry if you live in another region, you may not be able to relate much to the tips, such as:

1. Putting the maximum yearly in your 401k.
2. Maximizing your contributions to IRA (if you don't have a 401K)
3. Investing in low-fee funds (hello Vanguard)
4. Hacking away at your debt (in our case, we only have a mortgage which we are starting to hack away slowly by putting a quarter of our side hustle money in it)
5. Having an emergency fund of at least 3 months to tide you over (in our case, we are saving 6 months of our home emergency fund as a couple. I already have my own personal emergency fund, and we're working on Peter's) - having an emergency fund is a lifesaver!
6. Saving for a car as early as now - because where we live (Jacksonville, FL), it's almost impossible for us to get anywhere without a car. We are going to do the bicycle route eventually when our workplace moves closer to our home, but I'll need to learn how to cycle first (yes, I don't know how to bike) and we'll also need to buy bikes, which is an additional expense.
7. Being more frugal and only living within our means

While those tips seem great, we've already been putting them into action for the past two years, so I'm not sure how the book changed my mind or convinced me to do a change in lifestyle otherwise.

However, the book is fairly thin and is a quick read, so might be worth perusing over.

I'd give this book 3/5 stars because it may help other people, but I for one, don't find it so useful or life changing to entail a 5/5 stars.

The book was borrowed from my local library (Jacksonville Public Library)



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A King's Ransom by Jude Watson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

After reading the first 11 (12?) (13?) 39 Clues Books a few years back when I was still living in Manila, I decided to give it another go because I was looking for something fun and light to read when i was having such a bad month. This time, it picks up where book 1 left off - Vesper One still has Amy & Dan's family/friends hostage and they still have to steal another priceless artifact for him, in this case the Da Virga map. It takes them through Europe - Geneva, Neuschwanstein Castle & Prague in search for the map, along the way trying to dodge people who may want to harm them (the Vespers), and Interpol.

While it is an interesting read for me because I've personally been to Neuschwanstein and can definitely imagine the characters running around trying to find it through the passageways, the book tackles murder and well, sabotage - which I don't think is great for really young readers. I do love the fact that it tackles historical people & of course, the travel part from city to city.

Reading this book made me pick up the next book in the series from the library, which I'm due to pick up sometime soon. Now, this book is also one of a few more published/planned to be published in the franchise, so I think those who like the series will have something to look forward to.

I gave the book a three stars mostly because I'm getting annoyed at having a lot of questions yet not enough answers to them. I'm sure it'll be revealed during the last few parts of the book (or on consequent sequels), but it just hooks you to it. It kind of sucks if you have to buy the books as there are so many of them, but hey, I've got my local library to help me out!

Book was borrowed from the Jacksonville Public Library.

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**Would I recommend this book? Why yes, it is a great series -- but would only do it if you have a public library that has all the books. It's going to cost too much time & resources (ie money) if you want to collect all the books yourself! What if it never ends, you know?

The Bride's Guide to Wedding Photography by Steve Sint
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Finally finished this book as I was researching and trying to learn more about things I need for my wedding day. I was actually shocked at how much wedding photographers cost - if I wanted someone really good, it will eat up more than half of the original budget I intended, so I thought of staying away from having a professional and just let my friends do the photos. Yes, regardless if people say that I will want to look back at it and I'm paying someone for the creative styling, it just doesn't make sense to spend that much money for just one day.

Yes I know it's also once in a lifetime, but hey, my money can last me longer than that one day if I saved it and invested it, right?

Back to the book - it is dated, it was still talking about film, and really - who uses film nowadays (except maybe for Instax or Polaroid) - and with the new day & age of everyone having smartphone cameras with huge megapixels and HDR, then again, what is the point of having professional photography right?

Instead of the book trying to sell me a photographer, it actually said an option I liked, to skip it all together!

So, would I recommend this book? Probably not - because it's not really that useful in this day and age right now, plus you can see excellent photos from magazines instead.

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Minions Volume 2: Evil Panic by Stéphane Lapuss'
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It was a great, quick read - there is literally no dialogue in this book, just the illustrations of the minions, but it was cute and fun to read. I love the minions, they make me happy - so reading this after a long day at work makes it all the more better! This is also my first book read for 2016, so many more books to come, hopefully!

You don't need to pick up the first book in order to get what's happening in the second book as their stories stand alone from each other. The theme of this book is the evil minion - where one spray can actually cause your good, old minion friend to turn into a purple evil minion that wants to eat everything!

Of course there are plenty of other stories in the middle that makes it even more entertaining.

Definitely recommend reading this book - but probably not to buy it, as the price is a bit steep. I picked it up from my local library (Jacksonville, FL) - I'm always in the library a couple of times a month (sometimes even multiple times a week!)

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