Review of The Kilwade Tragedy

Survival Guide for the Teenage Life by R. A. Riffe

Survival Guide for the Teenage Life

Ruth Riffe is excited to share that she just released her first young adult book entitled, Survival Guide for the Teenage Life. This fictional work is a humorous look into the land of teenage crushes, best friends, the social ladder and karma.

Here is a sneak peek into the book:

“Already near the bottom of the social ladder, fourteen year old Arianna Cooper is doing everything within her power not to slip to the last rung. With a hovering mother that wants her to dress like a nun and younger siblings nipping at her heels, Arianna walks you through her not-so-typical teenage life, throwing out survival tips to help her fellow teens avoid the pitfalls of adolescence.

With her best friend Emily as her sidekick, Arianna sets out to tackle the social injustices of Maddox High School. Whether it’s confronting the school bully, Queen Ava, about her snarly attitude or trying to catch the eye of her crush, Charles Hamilton III, Arianna shares every hilarious moment.

How does she survive the drama of her first year in high school? Read her survival guide and find out!”

Books are available at 

Amazon / Barnes & Noble / Books-a-million

About RA Riffe

RA Riffe resides in the rolling mountains of West Virginia with her husband and young son. Her work with children and young adults, as well as the many children involved in her personal life, inspired her book, Survival Guide for the Teenage Life.

When she is not busy writing she enjoys spending time with her family, giving love to her fur-babies and working in her flower garden.

'The Minimum Wage Millionaire: How a Part-Time After School Job Can Change Your Financial Life' by Bill Edgar

Synopsis:

The Minimum Wage Millionaire is a must read for teenagers and parents of teenagers who want to learn about how money works. The book presents a practical approach to accumulating wealth for teenagers who are just starting to earn income with a part time job. Using simple analogies to unravel complex financial concepts allows the young mind to grasp why it is important to invest early and how to start with their first paycheck. Following a simple plan for only six years, they will have a small nest egg that will grow into about one million tax free dollars by the age of 65.

Read an excerpt:

Chapter One
Why Write a Book on Money for Teenagers?

When it comes to building wealth, the most powerful force you have on your side is time. As the days and years pass, the opportunity to build wealth by leveraging time slowly dwindles. The idea for this book came from the realization that often times kids start working their first job at sixteen, likely just a minimum wage, or near-minimum wage, job, but they haven’t been taught how to accumulate wealth. I wasn’t.

In high school, I had some basic accounting, and I learned how to balance a checkbook. We did some stock market games to learn a little about investing, but no class I took ever laid out a plan for success in a capitalist society. No class I took talked about the “Rule of 72,” or compounding return on investment over time, or tax advantaged investment accounts.

But all of those things I just mentioned are critical to understand in a free market capitalist society. They are critical to understand from the moment that you earn your first dollar. It doesn’t matter how wealthy or poor your parents are, it doesn’t matter what background you have, all teenagers in the United States, after reading this book, can set themselves on a path to build a staggering amount of tax-free cash. With just a little bit of knowledge about how money works, and the discipline to follow through, you can be in control of your financial destiny.

I’m embarrassed to admit that I have not taken advantage of the time I’ve had to accumulate wealth. Worse than that, I realize that as the years have passed and other financial obligations of adulthood have grown, setting aside extra money becomes more and more elusive. I have to acknowledge some hard facts about my own bad money habits—bad habits that stopped me from building wealth. I have to reflect on wasted opportunities and bad decisions. Finally, I have to draw some tough conclusions about the consequences of not saving and investing.

But it doesn’t have to be that way for you. After reading this book, you will have both knowledge and youth on your side. You will have an action plan on how to start accumulating wealth now. And the possibilities before you will be endless. But let’s talk about where bad money habits start.

Why?

Because I’ve sucked at money. I mean, if blowing a paycheck were a sport, I’d be Muhammad Ali—the greatest of all time. As a kid, I didn’t know any better, but it starts a pattern.

When I got my first job as a paperboy at 12 years old, I immediately took the money from my first paycheck down to the Ben Franklin, a few blocks from my house, and bought a bottle of Coke and tons of baseball cards. On the way home, I stopped at Mickey’s for a Chicago-style hot dog with all the fixings and some fries. By the end of the week, all the money I’d made was gone. Back then, it wasn’t much, but today—if I’d just invested part of that somehow—I’d have enough to buy a small island in the Bahamas. I was too young to know it, but that was my first big missed opportunity.

If that’s not painful enough to look back on, I’m sad to say it didn’t stop there. When I started my first real job in high school (bagging groceries), after work, the arcade ate quarter after quarter. And then there were movies (I thought everyone went to see Raiders of the Lost Ark 20 times!), gas for the car, games for Atari, and the occasional burger, french fries, and Coke. It all added up.

Paycheck after paycheck was burning a hole in my pocket. I wasn’t saving or investing anything, but at least I had to stop when there was no money left. Credit cards would later solve that problem. After college, I moved to California, bought a new car, new furniture, new wardrobe, and lots of new grown-up toys. I started getting my hair cut at a trendy salon with a French name, moved into an apartment in the “hip” part of town with a pool table and a pop-a-shot.

You know what’s truly sad? It took me a LONG time to learn from my mistakes. As I got older, people warned me to start saving. I can remember my dad getting near retirement age and shaking his finger in my face at the dinner table on Thanksgiving, saying “You’d better invest your money for retirement, or you’re gonna end up working until you die!” but I ignored him. The years rushed by, and then, with my net worth still bobbing near zero, my wife and I got pregnant with our first baby.

As I sat in the hospital in Chicago—never again. I must change. I must be a good example. I can’t let them suffer the same mistakes I made. I started saving like crazy in my company retirement plan. And that lasted for a few years, but the economy changed, and I was not prepared. I was unemployed for a while—longer than I ever imagined. The mortgage, the bills, it consumed far more than the unemployment check.

I began working a part-time job for minimum wage at the local big box store, but unlike my teenage years, the meager paychecks didn’t help much with all the bills. As the Great Recession continued, I eventually cashed out the retirement money, penalties and all, so I could keep paying the mortgage. It still wasn’t enough. In the end, I lost it all, the house, the savings, and Best Buy even stopped by to get their TV back. I was sick to my stomach.

Listen. I honestly wasted all my opportunities to build wealth and have the choices, the options, to retire rich, so that I don’t have to work until I die, so that I can spend my time with my family. Now, knowing how easy it is to get there if you start early and seeing the principles in this book work for so many people, I’m ashamed of my past actions. But you don’t have to have my same regrets.

So how does a guy who lost everything know so much about creating wealth? That’s a valid question, and I’m glad you asked. Learn from your mistakes. As you grow up, you’ll likely hear that over and over from your parents, teachers, and coaches. It’s what I’ve had to do myself. Learn from my mistakes. So the rest of this book is about what I’ve learned.

In life, there are no do-overs. I can’t go back and make things better for me. But for every teenager out there, hope springs eternal. If this book can make an impact on just one kid (besides my three beautiful daughters), I’ve accomplished more than I could possibly imagine. I’ve created this book is to help you understand what an amazing opportunity you have right now. Time is on your side, and every day that goes by, you lose a little bit of your opportunity. Don’t make that mistake. Don’t make my mistake. In the following chapters, I will lay out for you exactly what you need to do to build wealth.

I warn you, it won’t come quickly, and it won’t be easy all the time. In fact, there will be moments in your life when you question whether or not what I’ve told you is true. You’ll want to go back to your old ways and you’ll have pressure from friends to spend, spend, spend!

When in doubt, just remember, the tools you’re using are the same principles that thousands of people have used time after time to become the wealthiest people in the world. You’re in good company.

My great hope is that you’ll realize just how incredible an impact a little bit of savings and planning will have on your life. If you can just avoid my mistakes and save smart, you can really, truly become a minimum-wage millionaire.

Available on Amazon

About the Author:

Bill Edgar is the author of The Minimum Wage Millionaire: How a Part Time After School Job Can Change Your Financial Life. He is passionate about helping youth understand how to become wealthy. He lives in Elburn, Illinois, with his three nearly teenage daughters (who will all be required to read his book). Connect with Bill on Goodreads (https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/696268.Bill_Edgar) and Twitter (https://twitter.com/AuthorBillEdgar).

'Advice For Teenage Girls: A Guidebook of Answers on Boys, Relationships, Health, Your Body, Social Media, Sex, and Mean Girls' by M. Ryan

Blurb:

Are you a teenage girl, or parent of one, who is struggling with the angst and drama of the teenage years? 

Advice for Teenage Girls offers an essential guidebook for teens on subjects and issues that they face in and out of school during the teenage years. 

Teens and their parents can read it together and start a dialogue of the topics. If you are parenting teenage girls, it's a must read. 

Teens will get straight-to-the-point advice and information on: 

● Sex 
● Pregnancy 
● Boys and Relationships 
● Social Media 
● Mean Girls 
● Health and Body 

This is one of the good books for teenage girls beginning when they are about to turn 13. These teen answers and questions are essential reading for girls and the adults who love them.

Available on Amazon

Currently with 5 *s!

Meet the Monsterjunkies! Popular teen read about bullying and being yourself!

Hey all you Hipsters, fantasy / paranormal/romance fans, mmm... Meet the weirdest family in the world with the coolest parents and pets, house and friends.

Meet the The Monsterjunkies, an American family odyssey ,The book explores the one issue every teen and young adult faces no matter his or her social status or economic condition: How can I fit in? Great story and very funny - just 99 cents this week on Amazon.  Download it today!

Blurb from Amazon:

 

The Monsterjunkies prepares your child to deal with bullying!

 

Teen angst, monsters, bullying, strange animals, stranger house!

 

Tucked away in a remote cul-de-sac is a place where the strange is normal, and the bizarre, is everyday. This is a place, where, if you do not have an open mind, you will loose your mind in its reality and truths. This is the home of The Monsterjunkies, An American Family Odyssey. "A modern day Addams family."

Residing at this place, is Crow and his sister, Indigo, along with their friends, go down a reality curve to arrive at the harsh truth of the indelible hurt bullying, emotional abuse and prejudice can foster. The family faces ignorance combined with aggression at every step as they try to build a life for themselves in the home of their ancestors.

We are all Monsterjunkies and wear masks during our daily lives, in school, during work, hanging out with friends, imitating, being people who we look up to and admire, or those we want to be. It is those people who take off their masks and show the real person inside who are the ones that truly find the meaning of their lives.

The Monsterjunkies an American Family Odyssey, defines growing up through a cast of quirky yet engaging characters who also experience the same anxieties as any other family, enduring the issues that portend 'coming of age.' Not all angst and agony, it marks a clear path to the ultimate form of acceptance, the approbation of self.

Read some review snippets - 4.8 out of 5 stars!

I grew up a huge fan of "the Adams family" and "the Munsters" - the author of "Monsterjunkies" gently tips his hat to them while taking the concept in an artfully new direction. It makes wildlife rehabilitation sound like a wonderful adventure to be adored and appreciated. ~~ dramateacher

I loved it. The story teaches you that it is okay to be different or unique. It also shows great respect for animals and nature.  ~~ Nancy Cataldi

This is the addictive tale of the weirdest family in the world. Brilliantly descriptive, the authors paint their strange world in vivid colours making their tale believable and engaging. ~~ Conrad Jones

Erik Shein has created a fascinating world of otherworldly beasts, cared for by an eccentric but close and loving family. The stage is set for adventure. ~~ Bluestalking Reader

Buy it on Amazon

 

Erik Daniel Shein was born Erik Daniel Stoops, november 18th 1966 He is an American writer, and film producer, screenwriter, voice actor, animator, entrepreneur, entertainer, and philanthropist, Pet enthusiast and animal health advocate . He is the author and co authored of over 30 nonfiction and fiction books whose writings include six scientific articles in the field of herpetology. His children’s book, “The Forgotten Ornament” is a Christmas classic, and was endorsed by Hollywood legends Mickey and Jan Rooney.