I like free stuff. I like free stuff a lot. I especially like useful free stuff. I love when companies are giving away useful promotional items, like fancy pens, chip clips, and nice magnets.
I also love books. Free books are a bit harder to come by. That said, the internet contains a wealth of free books, and it’s all legal! Project Gutenberg contains thousands of books that are in the public domain, all typed up for you to download and read. This is a great way to check out some of those novels you always thought you would read and then never got around to picking up. You can print out the file if you want, though that negates some of the “free” part, plus it seems like a bit of a waste of paper. You can also read online, which is what I do. This is also a great asset for people who do book clubs by e-mail or online chat.
Sometimes, though, you just don’t have the time to sit down and read a whole eBook. Or perhaps you don’t want to spend that much time staring at a computer screen. That’s where DailyLit comes in.
DailyLit takes books that are in the public domain (and some that aren’t – but you have to pay for those subscriptions) and breaks them down into small chunks. You subscribe, and every day at a time of your choosing, DailyLit e-mails you a chunk of that book. You can also sign up with your RSS reader. Each chunk takes about five minutes to read, and contains a link at the end to request the next segment be sent immediately, just in case you absolutely can’t wait til tomorrow to find out what happens next.
I signed up for a few classics on DailyLit and am having a great time with these novels. DailyLit allows you to select the days you want to receive e-mails, and they also have a vacation feature. You can always pause your subscriptions if you find that you’re falling behind in your reading, and if you hate a book, no worries, you can always delete a subscription as well.
I love to read, but some days I find that I just can’t find the time to pick up a book. DailyLit ensures that I get a little bit of culture every day, either as I’m perusing my e-mail in the mornings or on my Blackberry on my Metro ride home. I’m currently reading Accelerando and Age of Innocence through DailyLit, two very different and very intriguing stories. There are lots of genres available.
DailyLit doesn’t seem to be a great source for free personal finance books, though there is one called 100 Ways to Succeed/Make Money. Can’t say as I’ve checked it out, as the reviews aren’t favorable, but hey, it’s free! If anyone decides to read it, let me know what you think!
Megan is a 40-something government employee in the Washington, DC area. She got interested in Personal Finance when she got out of college and realized that her paycheck wasn’t going to go as far as she had hoped. Since starting this blog, she has managed to buy a house and make a solid start on her retirement goals, and hopes to help others do the same. Here is her story:
In 2007, I was a gainfully employed 20-something with no debt but not a lot of knowledge about personal finance. It was a co-worker’s comment about Roth IRAs that sent me to the internet, searching for information. It was then that I realized that I really didn’t know a whole lot about personal finance and that my current financial situation was due a lot to inherent frugal tendencies, generous family members, a fear of debt, and good luck. While that was working for me, clearly I needed a better plan.
While I had no debt, I was also pretty much living paycheck to paycheck and not worrying about going over budget (I say this as if I had a real budget) because I had an emergency fund set aside to cover any overages.
Except that’s not what an emergency fund is for.
So I did a lot of research, read a lot of blogs, and decided that I needed a plan. I needed to budget. I needed to know what I was spending my money on. I needed to prepare for the future.
I decided to create a blog not only to make myself accountable to others but also to share the knowledge that I gained along the way. I’ve learned so much from my fellow bloggers, and I hope that my readers can find something useful in what I have to share as well.
