I was given the opportunity to preview and write a review for Ruth Soukup’s new book Living Well Spending Less: 12 secrets to the good life. If you are unfamiliar with Who Ruth is she is a blogger at Living Well Spending Less. I’m a huge fan of her blog and was thrilled to be able to read her book and be a part of her book launch team.
I want to be honest with you all in that Ruth is a Christian and there are a lot of bible verses in her book. I’m not a very religious person but I am spiritual and enjoyed reading how the verses she chose supported what she was writing about. I just wanted to be upfront about that in case you are someone who would have a problem reading a book that includes religion.
I love how open and honest Ruth is in her book. Describing how she is not a naturally thrifty person but someone who wanted to spend and have the best of everything. I think many of us can relate to that. She started getting out of control with spending which caused a lot of friction in her marriage. This lead to needing to be on a budget.I know I could really relate to having money issues in my marriage and spending too much,, how about you? She started looking for ways to stretch her budget so that she’d have money left over for fun things. This is all very familiar to me and I admire the honesty of which she shares her struggles with money and wanting more.
This book is full of life lessons about how to go about creating your own life that you’ll love. About being content with what you have, finding your passion in life, being ok with failure, because it’s going to happen at some points. The book also focuses on improving your life by taking a look at setting goals and getting your priorities straight so that you are focusing on what’s most important.
So much of this book focuses on topics that I blog about such as budgeting, saving money at the grocery store and keeping a clean house. Ruth is very honest with her struggles in these areas as well as how she improved and how you can get better at cleaning and saving money as well. I love learning all I can about these topics so I can get better at them and so I can share these ideas with you.
At the end of each chapter I enjoyed that she had a little challenge section where she asked you to think about some questions that were covered in the chapter. It got me thinking of how to put what I just read into place. Which is the important part. It’s great to read it but if you don’t apply what you learn than life stays the same.
She writes about how we don’t tend to give enough of the good parts of ourselves to the people in our lives and how we could go about being more kind and loving. Even though I love my husband and daughter with my whole heart that doesn’t mean I don’t have room for improvement. I could give them a little more attention, I could speak kinder and more loving. It’s a really great lesson in this book and one I really want to try working harder at.
So if you are looking for a book to read to get you ready for the new year and start you off on a more positive note, this is the book for you. I read it in two days and really enjoyed it and learned a lot from Ruth. Who doesn’t want to live a good life and have some new tips on how to get that better life. I have a good life but I want 2015 to be better and this book will help.
*It’s also available on the Kindle if you prefer to use an e-reader.
