Month: November 2020

I had heard about the concept of love languages before and out of sheer curiosity for the human condition, I decided to pick this book up on Amazon one day and give it a read. It’s a short and easy read, I finished the book in two days. Here’s my quick review of it.

The Common Sense Approach to Love

This book made a ton of sense. Most marital (or relationship) problems can be chalked up to miscommunications. In other words, I may express my love language differently than my wife. When I express it, I take it as a sign that I am showing my love to her, but if my wife doesn’t “speak” that love language, she may not realize I am showing my love. After the wedding’s over, as Chapman says, and the passion of love wears off, couples revert to their default love languages, which may be opposite of each other, and this an lead to conflict that builds up over time, which could lead to unhappiness. But the good news is by reading this book, couples can rekindle their old flames.

The Five Love Languages Are:

• Words of Affirmation
• Quality Time
• Receiving Gifts
• Acts of Service
• Physical Touch

The above love languages are pretty self explanatory. Words of Affirmation would be giving your spouse kind words or compliments. Quality Time would be just spending time with your partner talking, or cuddling on the couch or just walking together. Receiving (or giving) Gifts would be surprising your spouse coming home from work with a gift or just giving flowers for no special reason as examples. Acts of Service would be when you do the laundry or wash the car or prepare dinner. Physical Touch is touching- sex is also under this one.

Whoops! I just spilled the whole book. Kidding, but this is 90% of what the book is about. 🙂

My Love Language(s)

My primary love language is words of affirmation followed by receiving gifts. There is an assessment you can take at the back of the book for both males and females to figure out your primary love language.

Results May Vary

For me, this was an interesting way to view my marriage and relationships with people overall. Now that I know about it, it’s pretty easy to see that people operate in these different love languages; example abound that I hadn’t noticed before. Maybe you’re already well versed in this, or maybe you don’t need to read it. Perhaps you have different love languages or you will have a different experience reading this book.

How Many Stars?

4 🙂

I give it 4 stars. I recommend it! Even if you have a strong marriage you can glean some pointers on where you or your spouse might be coming from. Marriage is like anything else that is important- it takes work and investment sometimes. One thing I noticed is the stories and examples are super cheesy and sound made up to me, but they get the point across.

–> Buy the book here<–

Conclusion

This book was an easy read. I recommend it if you are trying to improve your marriage or even if you are happily married. Hindsight is 2020 and this book has a lot of commonsense points but it’s an interesting and true lens to look at a marriage. If you don’t want to read the book, you can just refer to the above paragraph about love languages and go from there.

Book Details one more time

Title: The 5 Love Languages: The Secret to Love that Lasts
Author: Gary Chapman
Publish Date:  January 1, 2015
ISBN: 080241270X  ISBN-13: 978-1591842057

Book | eBook | Audio

Amazon Affiliate Disclosure:
Ryan’s Reading Reviews is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.

Updated May 29th, 2023

I’ve long been a fan of personal finance books, especially investing, so here we have back-to-back money books on the blog. Overall, I enjoyed The Path.

The Path in a Nutshell

Haha, when I just wrote that heading, I thought of that scene in Austin Powers when he says “this is me in a nutshell. How did I get into this nutshell?”. Ah, my childhood was fun. But I digress.

In summary, The Path is set up into 5 sections.

• The Journey Ahead
• Charting Your Path
• The Trailhead
• The Climb
• The Summit

–> Buy the book here <–

In The Journey Ahead, I enjoyed how the book started. It’s 2020, and we needed some positivity, in that, overall, the world is better than ever before. Sound familiar?

My least favorite part of the book was Charting Your Path. This part concerns the pros and cons of financial advisors, and estate planning. Valuable, but…BORING!

The Trailhead was the best part of the book in my opinion. This is where the authors (Tony Robbins and Peter Mallouk) make a case for investing in stocks for the long term. This topic is really my favorite part of most investing books. It’s the “meat” of investing, if you will.

The Climb is where the authors talk about what kind of portfolio you should have, and how you can move or adjust it over time and according to your goals, personal situation, and risk appetite.

The Summit is the second best part of the book, in my opinion. This is where Tony Robbins talks about happiness, and how to live, what to consider, and how to give back once you’ve made it on your financial journey. I’m not there yet, but it’s great to have things to think about once you are there, on your own path to financial freedom.

How Many Stars?

4 🙂

It was a good book, and it’s brand new, so I really couldn’t wait to get into it. It had a lot of good and valuable points, but it was not the best investment book I’ve ever read, nor was it the worst. I didn’t like it as much as Money: Master the Game. Maybe I had too high expectations.

BOOK DETAILS ONE MORE TIME

Title: The Path: Accelerating Your Journey to Financial Freedom
Author: Peter Mallouk and Tony Robbins
Publish Date:  October 13, 2020
ISBN: 1642937010 | ISBN-13: 978-1642937015

Book | eBook | Audio

Amazon Affiliate Disclosure:
Ryan’s Reading Reviews is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.