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Books That Make Investing Easy

investing made easy!

Now we come to my favorite part of money management! I have finally found books tht tell us exactly what to do when it comes to investing.

I read Rich Dad Poor Dad a long time ago and it made me angry. The book did not give me clear steps on investing, saving, or actually making money. Rich DadPoor Dad did not meet my expectations. I didn't realize at the time that this was a philosophy or way of thinking type of book. Robert Kyosaki does teach us some good points.

Rich Dad tells us to buy assets instead of liabilities, he tells us to invest and make our money work for us instead of working for money. He tells us that the rich use loopholes in the law in order to avoid paying taxes.

This is all fine advice, but Rich Dad never actually tells us what to do. Rich dad never actually tells us how to invest. What do I do to make my money work for me?! Tell me what those tax loopholes are! If you are curious about the philosophy of money, take a look here.

Now, years later, after not knowing what to do, I actually found books that tell us specifically what to do! Make this as easy for us commoners as possible.

Quit like a millionaire by kristy shen

This book is amazing! Buy it right now! if you only read one book on this list, or anything on nvesting, this is the one. The more I listened to this audio book, the more excited I got. Kristy answered all the questions I had that the Rich dad could not.

Quit Like A Millionaire teaches us how to get out of debt and start saving. First rule is to always pay yourself first. Pay yourself and your savings accounts before you pay any bills or anything else. The more money you can save now, the more freedom you will have in the future.

Kristy Shen teaches us an amaizingly simple plan on how to invest and exactly what to invest in. (Index funds, always index funds.) She teaches us an easy step-by-step plan on where to put our money so it can work for us!

Kristsys' investing plan is wonderful. She helps us with avoiding stock market crashes like what happened in 2008 and the craziness that is going on with Game Stop right now ( January 2021). If we follow her plan, we won't have to deal with anything like the temporary rises and falls that some people constantly freak out about.

We also learn about the what the tax laws are and the easy way to Leagally avoid paying. We learn how to manage our money with the mindset of avoiding fees and paying least amount of taxes as possible.

This book tackles the subject of insurance and health care as well. Of course if you are stuck in the U.S. things are a little harder, but still managable.

The entire goal of Quit Like A Millionaire is to retire early so that you still have the time and energy to live the life you want without wasting your time working for money. what would you do if you didn't have to work every day? What gets you excited about living life? What would you do if you actually had all that time?

Kristy Shen is an inspiring guru and a very entertaining storyteller. I hope her book inspires you as much as it inspired me!

you need a budget by jesse mecham

Obviously this isn't focusing on investing, but I wanted to add Y.N.A.B. to

You Need A Budget is all about how to organize and save your money in a way that wont stress you out. The basic idea is to plan for every event and bill in advance so expenses don't come up as surprizes.

A yearly expense I added to my budget is Girl Scout Cookies. I know I will be spending that money every single year, and I'm gonna plan for it!

This includes anuall bills like buying new tires, or weird and random repairs that we can never expect. We might not expect it but the money we save for it can. This is why everyone tells us to have an emergency fund. We'll never know when we have another health problem or when our basement floods. What we do know is that emergencies will always come up out of nowhere and we need our moeny to be ready for it when it happens.

It is important that we plan our money for the fun things as well as our neccesary expenses. If we plan and save up for somehting fun, we won't feel guilty about spending money on it. If you enjoy buying books and minis for Dungeons and Dragons every other month, then plan for it! If you want to buy that avacado toast every morning, then put it in your budget!

Jesse Mecham has a chapter in this book all about teaching children how to budget. The earlier we learn how to plan and save, the more time and practice we will have to save. Our relationship with money is engrained in our thoughts and emotions at an early age, we need to help the next generation as much as we can as soon as we can.

The more good habits we can create, the better life we can have.

You Need A Budget shows us what we should alread know. Dealing with money can be a lot less stressful the more we can plan where our money is going and what our money is doing for us. It i

financial freedom by grant sabatier

Financial Freedom is another helpful tome that wants you to retire early with financial independence. Grant helps us figure out how much money we would need in order to retire early. We learn how we can reach that goal in the shortest amount of time as we can.

This book has great investing advice. He tells us exactly what to invest in and how to do it in order to grow our money as fast as possible.

Grant Sabatier teaches us how to earn more money with the current job and skills that we already have, and how to maximize those results.

This books gives us great advice on how to plan and start a small business or side hustle to make even more money. It isn't as hard as you think.

This book also talks in depth about simple real estate investing that other investing books don't really talk about.

Financial Freedom is great for creating the habits we need in order to create a more fullfilling and better life. We should try to focus on a life of happiness and abundance. That means spending time on what we want instead of what an uncaring boss wants from us.

Life gets easier when we get better at it.

All of these books that I have talked about so far can teach us amazing things. But knowledge is useless untill we act on it. We have to work on our life in order to make it the best one possible.

Test everything out and don't be afriad to try new things. Find out what works for you and your specific situation.

Thank You!

Here at gamesmastery.com we want to give our appreciation and support to gamers everywhere. Our mission is to inspire creativity and help everyone enjoy the best life possible.

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3 Books That Will Build Your Business

why am I writing book reviews on a site for dungeon masters?

I originally got this idea on new years eve going into 2021. I was talking with my amazingly smart and beautiful friends when at least 3 of them were talking about trying to start their businesses. I asked them if they were willing to listen to my ranting about all of the books I have read. Instead of ranting, I'm gonna write about it.

Alright nerds, listen up. It's time to get our asses in gear and start making some money. I've read a few books over the years and I want to share my insights. This list will be part of an ongoing series that is part book review and part life planning. The goal is to reccomend books with a (somewhat) short description.

Every book I mention on this site is highly reccomended and has helped me a lot in my current journey. I want to help everyone live the best life possible. I want to help people make some money and hopefully retire early.

I have recently realised that life isn't going to end very soon. I'm not going to die early. And even after some mismanaged plagues (I'm looking at you 'merica), the world isn't going to end. There won't be an apocalypse in my life time. We're here for a long time, so lets make our future something worthwhile, something worth living for.

The 4-hour work week by tim ferriss

Youv'e probably heard about this one and thought "No way! working only 4 hours is impossible." That is what I thought too, and I put off reading this for a long time. I gave this book a second chance after it was reccomended by the amazing youtube channel Charisma on Command.

This is the first book that taught me that it is possible to create a business on your own terms. And it can be a viable option. Stop working for others when your precious time could be your own.

Tim Ferriss lays out a great plan for finding a simple business that could work for whatever your gaols are. After reading this, I hope your goals will become loftier.

This books goes into detail about getting out of the office and working remotely. Tim preaches the 80/20 priciple for maximixing your time in order to be free to do what you want to do. Inactivity and being stuck in a 9-5 job is not the goal, doing what excites you and having the time to do it is the goal.

The 4-hour Work Week gives us a solid plan for automating a business that can fund us and free up our time.

I put this book first on the list for a reason. It was the first time I thought that I could actually acomplish something in life that I actually wanted to do! like write, and try to inspire people. This was the first time I realised that an early retirement could be possible.

Side Hustle by chris guillebeau

This definitly the simplest and the easiest to use business building book that I have read. The chapters are designed for you to work on one simple task each day so you can launch your business or side hustle within the course of just one month!

The steps are easy to follow. Any noob can benifit greatly from this one. You are well on your way to making a real life business, now make sure you have a real life way to get paid for it.

I love Side Hustle, this book spells out the specific things you need to do to build a hustle from scratch while also telling inspiring stories. This can be another great foundation for all of your ventures.

Chirs has a good number of books and I reccomend them all.

The E-myth revisited by Michael gerber

The E-Myth is straightforward in a different way than side hustle. The E-Myths major point is that we should be working on our business instead of working in your business. What is the point of making a busness, if you have basically created another 9-5 job for yourself. We are supposed to be freeing up our time instead of becoming just another employee at a dead end job.

Even if your goal is to create a fully automated business, the E-Myth teaches some great philosophy and insights we can apply as we build a business or a side hustle. This book talks about the stages of growth in a business and what to do to survive to the nest stage.

Gerber teaches the difference between a technician, a mangaer, and an entreprenuer. And how an owner needs to deal with these 3 personalities in themselves and their business. Most businesses fail because a technician take over and stops the entrepenuer from moving forward.

If you follow what The E-Myth has to teach, your side hustle and your life will become more focused and meaningful. Successful people work on their lives, not just in their lives.

Thank You!

Here at gamesmastery.com we want to give our appreciation and support to gamers everywhere. Our mission is to inspire creativity and help everyone enjoy the best life possible.

Disclosure: I am an affiliate of Bookshop.org and I will earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase with no extra cost to you.

Save The Cat! Book Review

My favorite book on storytelling!

I first learned about this book when I was taking acting classes back in the olden days. Our acting coach wanted us to read this as a way to understand movie story structure and teach us how to understand story and character arcs.

Save The Cat is the modern day hero's journey. It breaks down the foundations of a good story to its simplest form.

A great story can bond with our soul and embed itself with our psyche. A great story can be remembered for generations after it has been told.

Save The Cat is the decisive recipe for telling a successful and memorable story.

Although the author of Save The Cat focuses on script writing for movies, we can take his advice and apply it to any form of storytelling. Whether it is novel writing, game design or any other form of story. Save The Cat can help.

Saving the cat is a concept that Snyder proposes that needs to happen early in the story. The main character rescues a cat that is stuck in a tree, letting the audience know that the main character is a good guy. The cat is a metaphor.

At the beginning of the live action Sonic The Hedgehog movie, Sonic picks up a turtle on the road before it gets run over by a truck. The save the cat scene can be short but it is important to convey to the audience what type of character they will be dealing with.

When Han Solo shoots first, we immediately understand exactly what type of character he is. That is his 'Save the Cat' moment.

The story foundations that Snyder uses is called the beat sheet. He want us to “beat” out every scene in the story to make sure the story flows well and gets the audience invested. Each beat is a scene in your story. This is my favorite part of the book.

When I first read about the beat sheet I was entranced. This was the breakdown I needed as an actor, a writer, and a dungeon master.

Save The Cat covers a lot of writing territory. He analyses the type and genre of a story. He poses the idea that there are only 10 types of stories that have ever been told.

Snyder gives advice about the log-line, or the elevator pitch. The pitch is a single sentence that tells the audience what the story is about. If you can’t describe the story with one line, your story might be too complicated.

Save The cat also helps with complicated scenes that need to be in your narrative. He tells us how to give exposition without it getting boring. He helps us keep track of our rules for magic systems and other mumbo-jumbo.

There is a multitude of advice here for repairing parts of your story that doesn’t flow.

I love the concepts and advice in Save The Cat, and I will never get bored of re-reading it. Snyders writing makes everything simple, to the point, and comically entertaining.

Advice For Dungeon Masters

DM’s can use log-lines and short pitches for adventure hooks and quest lines. They can and should be used to entice specific players into action.

Dungeon masters can utilize the beat sheet for campaign creation. The beat sheet can be used for single session stories. You can also beat out player character development. Villains and NPCs in your game can also follow the same character structure. You will be amazed how well told your campaign will end up if you use the beat sheet. Your players will be fully engaged following each beat or scene in your story.

For more story telling ideas take a look at these adventure hook ideas.

You can use the storytelling tricks and techniques for any genre or style of rpg. Use the pope in the pool trick so your players won’t get bored with exposition.

"Representatives visit the Pope at the Vatican. And guess where the meeting takes place? The Vatican pool. There, the Pope, in his bathing suit, swims laps back and forth while the exposition unfolds. We the audience aren’t listening, I’m guessing. We’re thinking, “I didn’t know the vatican had a pool?! And look, the Pope isn’t wearing his pope clothes, He’s… He’s… in a bathing suit!”

We can use this in our D&D games all the time. Whenever you need to convey some elaborate history or a piece of lore in your world, you can use this trick. Unfold exposition during a battle, a chase scene, or when the PCs are exploring some new and interesting environment. Or you can have a very entertaining or odd NPC tell some stories for you.

DM’s should always be raising the stakes in the flow of their story and watching out for the glacier.

Snyder says, "Danger must be present danger. Stakes must be stakes for the people we care about. And what might happen to them must be shown from the get-go so we know the consequences of the immediate threat."

This rule applies to the story in your RPG game and all the players in the game, this needs to happen to the PCs and NPCs that the players care about. The threats and villains should be up on center stage instead of slowly approaching like a glacier eroding away at a slow paced story.

For more ideas to make your battles interesting, look at this.

Please enjoy Save The Cat like I did. This book gave me a huge understanding of story structure and writing advice. As a film nerd and a dungeon master, I highly recommend this book to anyone who has an interest in writing or storytelling!

Don't let fear stop you from telling your story!

Thank You!

Here at GamesMastery we want to give our appreciation and support to gamers everywhere. Our mission is to inspire creativity and help everyone enjoy the best life possible.

If you are interested in learning all that you can about being a great Dungeon Master take a look at the DM's Aresenal.

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The War of Art

The War of art By Steven Pressfield

Do you ever feel like your dreams will never come true? Are you constantly searching for energy or motivation to get things done? Are you the type of person who always ends up putting things off until tomorrow?

If you want to get something done today, Then The War of Art by Steven Pressfield is a must read for you!

This book is an inspirational tool that can help anyone get motivated. No matter what dreams you are trying to follow, or what project you want to finish, the War of Art will help you stop putting things off and get working.

One of the main reasons I want to write reviews is because of The War Of Art. Pressfields book has pushed me in a way that I have never felt before.

I write because I have a passion for it. I might not be a good writer, or a talented wordsmith, but it is what I enjoy. And if I can help inspire someone to follow their passions, all the better!

If there is anything in your life that you want to work on or improve, this book will help you do it. Whether it is a new business you want to start, running a D&D game, creating new habits, dancing, singing, painting, writing a novel, putting on a puppet show, making your own games, or any other creative endeavor.

Whatever you want to work on, you can apply the teachings in this book to help you out.

Most of us usually allow “life” to get in the way of our plans and dreams. The War of Art tells us that “life” is actually our resistance trying its best to stop us from what we really want to do.

The ‘war’ that is in the title of the book is the war within yourself, the war against the resistance inside all of us.

Pressfield talks about resistance as an enemy that we have to fight every day. Resistance fights against us in many forms. Resistance is our procrastination, our excuses to put things off until later. Resistance is self-sabotage.

Pressfield says “Resistance’s goal is not to wound or disable. Resistance aims to kill. It’s target is the epicenter of our being: our genius, our soul, the unique and priceless gift we were put on this earth to give and that no one else has but us. Resistance means business. When we fight it, we are in a war to the death.”

This book had a profound effect on me. I learned all the ways that resistance can destroy a good idea or kill dreams so they will never be followed.

I see now how much resistance I had allowed to come into my life. I see how I constantly let laziness and resistance win out over my passions and dreams.

Pressfiled wants to help us maintain a mindset that will help us survive, adapt, and win the every-day battle, within ourselves, against our resistance.

The War of Art talks about becoming a professional. In this context, a professional is someone who works everyday to practice and advance their craft, whatever it might be. A professional is humble and hard working.

“The amatuer believes he must overcome his fear; Then he can do his work. The professional knows that fear can never be overcome. He knows there is no such thing as a fearless warrior or a dread-free artist.”

I learned that one must be very serious and dedicated to their calling in order to get anything done. I found that there is a vast difference between someone with a hobby they work on casually once a month and a serious professional who works on their craft every day.

I admire everything about this book. I have fought with depression and a lack of motivation all of my life, and now I know it is the power of resistance trying to kick my ass everyday. After reading this, I see how strong resistance is, and how much I have let it take over my life.

Pressfield teaches us about invoking your muse. You can call the muse whatever you want, inspiration, creativity, a guardian angel, a calling, or simply passion to work on something.

The muse is what takes over for you, when you continue your work. Whenever you feel like you are “in the zone,” that feeling is the muse helping you out. If you want to invoke the power of your muse, you’ll have to learn what this book has to tell us.

This book is an amazing motivator and an amazing resource to continue coming back to. If you ever feel lazy or unmotivated, The War of Art can help us get back on track. We could all benefit from knowing more about how to fight resistance and follow our dreams.

This is about taking your passion seriously, the reason you get up in the morning. The War of Art can be a serious and feel-good inspiration for taking your dreams seriously. If you feel the call to follow your dreams or advance your craft, this book is for you!

Thank You!

Here at gamesmastery.com we want to give our appreciation and support to gamers everywhere. Our mission is to inspire creativity and help everyone enjoy the best life possible.

Disclosure: I am an affiliate of Bookshop.org and I will earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase with no extra cost to you.