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The Biggest Financial Decisions of Their Lives
Pay Less for College is a college financial aid and affordability guide that lays out for parents and students a clear and practical roadmap for cutting the true cost of a college degree. Why was this an important book for you to write?
Families are often making one of the biggest financial decisions of their lives in a fog. Students and parents are rightfully overwhelmed. And the guidance they get is often cookie-cutter for a system that doesn’t financially reward a cookie-cutter approach. During our 15 years in this field we have seen and heard about the financial landmines families step on – sometimes from inexperience, misinformation, desperation, or other factors. We wanted to clear out the fog and help families create a realistic, step-by-step plan to keep college affordable. Instead of vague advice, we focus on what actually moves the needle on cost– the things families can control.
In your book, you cover the latest and upcoming changes to the FAFSA, PLUS Loans, Pell Grants, and college financial aid policies. What are some key points that parents and students need to know about these options for financial aid?
The FAFSA and Pell Grants underwent major changes that were fully implemented in the 2024-25 academic year. The book walks readers through every part of the new FAFSA and breaks down the updated undergraduate Pell Grant eligibility rules. In spring 2025, Congress passed a budget bill that changed PLUS Loans, including significantly lower annual and lifetime limits for new borrowers of undergraduate loans. This may leave private loans with their less favorable terms as the only borrowing option for parents in the student’s third or fourth years.
What are some common mistakes or oversights that people make when deciding what college to attend, and what advice do you have to help others avoid these mistakes?
Colleges should be right for students academically, socially, and financially. Students often only apply to colleges they have heard of, ones their relatives want them to go to, or the ones their friends are applying to. They fill out the required financial aid forms and cross their fingers. Those schools may be okay academically or socially but financial fit is more complicated. It is often the most misunderstood part of the college search process.
If saving money is important to you, dig into the college’s financial aid policies to see how they align with your individual financial situation. Also, look for colleges that will love you back – those where your genuine interests and capabilities meet or exceed what the college is looking for. And finally, submit an application that showcases your strengths and makes it easy for the admissions officers to see your value.
What is one thing that you hope readers take away from Pay Less for College?
That they have more control than they think. When families build a smart college list, apply at the right time and in the right way, understand how aid really works, evaluate offers carefully, and trim costs–both big and small–before, during, and after college, they can meaningfully cut the real cost of a college degree.
Author Links: Amazon | GoodReads
Choosing a college is about finding a place where you belong—a place that fits your goals, your heart, and your wallet. Paying for college may be one of the biggest financial challenges you’ll ever face–but it doesn’t have to be harder than going to college. You can honor your dreams without sacrificing your financial future.
Pay Less for College is the go-to college financial aid and affordability guide for parents and students who want to make smart, confident choices. It offers clear, actionable insights to help you save real money—often tens of thousands of dollars—by:
Finding the colleges most likely to be generous
Understanding how and why a college will love you back
Demonstrating your value to that school
Avoiding common, costly mistakes
Cutting costs, both big and small
Why pay more than you have to?
Smart strategies. Real savings. The confidence to say yes to the dream—and afford it.
_____________________________________________What’s new in the 4th Edition
Fully updated to cover the latest and upcoming changes to the FAFSA, PLUS Loans, Pell Grants, and college financial aid policies.
Expanded tools and examples that help families understand college costs, maximize need-based and merit aid, compare true net prices, and submit standout applications.
Inside you’ll find
Part I: College Costs and Financial Aid
Understand exactly what college will cost and how financial aid works.
Part II: How to Pay Less for College
Learn how to increase aid eligibility and find the most generous colleges.
Part III: Planning
Turn knowledge into action with concrete family planning tools.
Part IV: Resources and Tools
10 detailed appendices, including guides to the FAFSA, CSS Profile, Pell Grants, and financial aid if your parents are unmarried, divorced, separated, remarried, or widowed, as well as tools to help you identify your academic strengths, social needs, and college priorities, and how to make your personal outreach most effective.
Franchise Businesses
Limited Partnership Basics & More! is a practical guide to understanding how limited partnerships work, how they are structured, and how they can help finance a new company. Why is this information important to those looking to enter the entrepreneurship market, and how can it help them?
There are three ways to finance a start up a business: savings accounts, loans, and, equity investments (LPs, LLCs, stock). The lesson that we see here is that start-ups are about the high price of money. And this is an important issue in the REAL business world. Because one group of people, in the US, wants to act like a limited partner investor is really a person making a “loan”. And, of course, equity investors are not making loans. They are investors. My point? My point is this. The business world is tough. Really. And starting up a business is expensive. And if you don’t have the money to start up a business, your business idea is going to go nowhere.
Next, according to the IRS.gov website ‘over 28.4 million Americans registered their tax filings as either that of a general partner, limited partner, or member of an LLC’. What that means is that a lot of Americans are running franchise businesses. It also means that a lot of Americans are investing in local area businesses and franchise businesses – cash cows! So, my book shows people who need to raise “equity” start-up money how the limited partnership ecosystem works. The limited partnership business eco-system matches limited partner investors with limited partnership developers and franchise developers, and doing this helps local communities grow!
What is a common misconception you feel people have about Limited Partnership relationships?
Limited partnership people, in the US, are sort of like people who belong to a club. LP people like the way things work. They like stakes and cash cows, and prefer stakes to stock, quite a bit. And, they like fellow LPs a little bit.
What is the “Friendship Formula,” and how can readers make this formula work for them to achieve their goals?
The “friendship formula” is an old 1930s-40s business formula. This formula worked like this. Best friends created businesses together, and then their wives networked with their friends to secure business clients. Also, Americans were supposed to know between 200-800 people, personally, in the 1970s, too.
What is one thing that you hope readers take away from your book?
If 28.4 million Americans can do it, so can you! Give it a try. Read my book. Research things. Prepare, and then go for it. Really, if you want to be a millionaire, then you gotta GET IN – you gotta GET IN the MONEY GAME! And why not? If your attempt to start up a business fails, then you can always go back to reading the ‘want ads’ section twice a week.
Author Links: GoodReads | Facebook | Website | Amazon
Live a More Informed & Enriched Life
Down to Earth: Demystify Intuition to Upgrade Your Life is a thoughtful blend of personal stories, practical exercises, and scientific studies showing readers that intuition is not a mystical talent, but an everyday skill that can be honed. Why was this an important book for you to write?
I am convinced that tapping into intuition can help us live more informed and enriched lives. I developed simple ways to tap into intuition and wanted to share these with as many people as possible. Intuition always held a special place in my life, and became more important after a life-altering event that brought moments of deep mental and emotional peace. I talk about this in the Introduction of my book. I often came up with creative ideas and solutions to long-standing problems while I was in this mentally and emotionally calm state which activated my intuition. Curious about this process, I began researching intuition. I studied with various teachers, completed an apprenticeship, and read every book and scientific study on intuition I could find. I started offering intuitive guidance sessions and eventually developed my own approach to help clients access their intuition more effectively. As more people joined as students, I created a curriculum that later became the foundation of my book, Down to Earth: Demystify Intuition to Upgrade Your Life, published on September 15, 2025.
What is a common misconception you feel people have about intuition and a person’s ability to develop it as a life skill?
Some people think that intuition is a special skill that only highly intuitive people have. In reality, it is a readily available skill that we all have and even use without realizing it. Intuition is a form of knowing or a sensation we get about something or someone without any prior conscious thought process. It draws on the knowledge and experiences we accumulate throughout our lives. There are many activities that we engage in without consciously thinking about every move and every step such as playing a sport or cooking. There may be some parts of these activities that require conscious analysis but for the most part, we just go with what we sense and muscle memory. We also use our intuition a lot socially. We sense if someone is tense or relaxed just by noticing their posture or the pace of their breath. All of this is intuition in action. It gives us useful information that can help guide our decisions and actions when we learn how to interpret and combine it with logic and other inputs such as research for due diligence.
I loved that you used neuroscience and psychology research as well as provided readers with examples and exercises to gain a better understanding of intuition. Did you find anything in your research of this book that surprised you?
In many cases, my exercises and guided meditations were inspired by students and clients based on what they needed to figure out. I tried these exercises with others, and if they worked, I included them in my book. I also used slow intuition. This type of intuition is activated when you take a break from trying to solve a problem and do something that calms your mind and emotions. Researchers such as Kenneth Gilhooly have described how nonconscious processing occurs during these break periods as intuition gets activated. It was surprising for me to learn that stepping away for such a break right after being introduced to a problem results in more creative solutions compared to working on the problem for a while then taking such a break when you get stuck. For example, you look at what the problem is, then go for a quiet walk in nature even before making your first attempt at solving it. I talk about this in the last chapter of my book.
What is one thing that you hope readers take away from Down to Earth?
I hope that readers discover ways to tap into intuition that work well for them and combine their intuition with logic and other inputs to make more grounded decisions, improve relationships, and take better care of themselves. As people connect more with their intuition, they can understand themselves and each other more deeply. This can cultivate greater compassion for themselves and others making the world a better place for all of us.
Author Links: GoodReads | Facebook | Website
If you’ve ever wondered how to harness your intuition to make better, more informed decisions, this is the practical guide you need. In Down to Earth, intuition teacher Nil Demircubuk guides you in understanding how to distinguish your conscious thoughts from your intuition, then intentionally combine it with your intellect for everyday decision-making and personal growth.
The book introduces “priming,” a method for tapping into intuition by achieving mental and emotional calmness, offering several techniques tailored to different learning styles. As you practice reaching this state and tuning in, you’ll also learn what makes your intuition come alive through a non-conscious process.
Through easy-to-follow exercises, real-life applications, and client stories, Down to Earth helps you use your intuition to make better decisions, improve relationships, navigate challenges, and enhance self-care.
Emotions Getting Louder
The Northern Light Within is a tender, winter-lit guide that blends science, story, and simple practices into a compassionate roadmap for moving through life’s hardest seasons. Why was this an important book for you to write?
I wrote The Northern Light Within because winter has always brought up a lot for me personally. When the days grew shorter and colder, I noticed my own emotions getting louder — old anxieties, self-doubt, and a sense of heaviness that was harder to shake off.
Over the last 15 years of coaching, I saw the same thing in my clients. Winter, and “winter-like” phases in life, seemed to amplify whatever people were already carrying. The season stripped away distractions and made vulnerability more visible.
This book felt important because I wanted to offer something gentle, honest, and practical for those times. A companion for people who feel like they’re walking through their own inner winter — blending science, story, and simple practices that have genuinely helped me and the people I’ve worked with. In many ways, it’s the book I wish I had during some of my hardest seasons.
How did you decide which rituals and reflections belonged in the book?
The filter was very simple:
Does this actually help someone when they’re struggling?
If a practice didn’t pass that test, it didn’t make it into the book.
The rituals and reflections are drawn directly from my own journey and from years of working with clients. Some came from moments when I personally needed support — breathwork during anxious phases, grounding practices when my mind was racing, small daily reflections that helped me find perspective in the middle of overwhelm.
Others are tools I’ve seen work repeatedly in sessions: simple, doable steps that helped people feel calmer, clearer, or more emotionally steady during difficult seasons.
Nothing is there because it sounds nice on paper. Everything in the book has been lived, tested, and has made a real difference in someone’s life — mine or my clients’.
How did you balance scientific grounding with personal storytelling without letting one overshadow the other?
For me, the two naturally belong together.
I’ve always believed that ancient practices and modern science are speaking the same language — just with different vocabularies. In my coaching, I blend both because people today want reassurance from neuroscience, but they also want to feel understood as human beings, not just as “brains on legs.”
Over time, that blend evolved into what I call Medit-Action: a way of working where meditation, awareness, and spiritual tools are always anchored in small, practical actions and supported by what we know from research.
So in the book, the science offers clarity — why winter affects mood, how the nervous system responds to stress, what breathwork and grounding actually do in the body.
The stories — my own, and those inspired by client journeys — show how all of that plays out in real life. They give the reader something to relate to, so it doesn’t feel abstract or clinical.
I didn’t want the book to be purely academic or purely emotional. I wanted it to feel like someone sitting beside you saying, “Here’s what we know, here’s what I’ve lived, and here’s what you can try right now.”
That’s the heart of Medit-Action, and that’s how the balance found its way onto the page.
What do you hope readers feel or carry with them in the days and weeks after they finish the book?
I hope they walk away with a softer, steadier relationship with themselves.
Not a perfect life, not constant positivity — just a little more calm in their body, a little more clarity in their mind, and a sense that they’re not “broken” for finding certain seasons harder than others.
If a reader can come out of the book feeling more equipped to handle their own winters — with a few practices they actually use, a new way of understanding their emotions, and a quiet belief that their inner light is still there even on the heavy days — then the book has done what I hoped it would do.
More than anything, I want them to remember:
your hardest season doesn’t erase your light.
Sometimes, it’s the very thing that helps you see it more clearly.
Author Links: Amazon | GoodReads
When life grows cold and the light feels distant, this book becomes a gentle beacon back to yourself.
In this beautifully written and practical guide, Ashish Singh, award-winning life and wellness coach and founder of The Calm Mind, shows how even the darkest seasons can become fertile ground for growth, calm, and quiet joy.
Drawing on mindfulness, psychology, and timeless wisdom from cultures that thrive in long winters from Nordic Stillness to eastern philosophy, he introduces “The Winter Loop,” seven guiding lenses that nurture acceptance, openness, nourishment, breath, gratitude, and kindness. These simple yet powerful mindfulness practices help you rediscover steadiness and warmth from within — even amid winter blues.
Blending poetic reflection with science-backed insights, Ashish reminds us that peace and happiness cannot be postponed until spring. They begin here, in this breath, in this very season of your life. His voice is both wise and deeply human, offering gentle rituals that meet you where you are and guide you toward light, clarity, and renewal.
For anyone feeling stuck, weary, or searching for meaning, this is more than a self-help book. It is a soulful companion, one that helps you bloom in winter and shine in every season that follows.
Your light is waiting — it’s time to find it, bloom in winter, and shine in every season.
Sacred Celebrations: Designing Rituals to Navigate Life’s Milestone Transitions
Sacred Celebrations is a warm and soulful guide to marking life’s transitions with intention and love. Elizabeth Barbour weaves stories from her own life with practical teachings about rituals, ceremonies, and the ways we gather around beginnings and endings. The book moves through birth, marriage, loss, illness, and the everyday moments that often slip by. It shows how rituals can help us slow down, breathe, and feel anchored in a world that moves too fast. Her stories are tender and sometimes raw, and they shine a light on the human need for connection during joyful and difficult times.
Barbour’s writing carries an honesty that caught me off guard, and I kept pausing just to sit with her words. The scene where she describes her mother’s final days was emotional. I felt the weight of that love and conflict. I also laughed at simpler moments, like the chaos of celebrations that go sideways or the small joys tucked into everyday rituals. Her style is comforting. It’s like listening to a friend who has lived a lot and is willing to tell the truth about how messy life can be. I appreciated how she took rituals out of the realm of “big spiritual practices” and grounded them in regular life. This made the whole idea feel doable for anyone.
What struck me most was how gentle her guidance felt. She never pushes. She invites. The book nudged me to look at my own transitions, even the quiet ones I usually gloss over, and I found myself thinking about the moments I rushed through without honoring how they shaped me. Some parts made me emotional because they stirred up memories I didn’t expect to revisit. Other parts lit me up with curiosity. I kept thinking about how simple actions, like a walk to a creek or lighting a candle, can shift the way we move through the world. The book feels both practical and mystical in a way that surprised me. I kept underlining sentences and dog-ear pages.
I would recommend Sacred Celebrations to people who crave meaning in their routines, anyone moving through a major transition, and those who want to deepen their emotional or spiritual life without anything too complicated. It’s also a lovely fit for caregivers, coaches, therapists, ministers, or anyone who holds space for others. The book feels like a soft place to land, and it left me wanting to create more intentional moments in my own life.
Pages: 252 | ISBN : 0972468692
The Magic of Imperfection
The Magic of Imperfection surprised me with how quickly it got to the heart of its message. Author Jason McLennan argues that most great work reaches a sweet spot long before perfection. He calls this the ¾ baked moment, the point where an idea is clear enough to stand yet rough enough to grow. He shows how this mindset speeds up creativity, opens the door to real innovation, and breaks the grip of fear and overthinking. Using stories from architecture, mentorship, cooking, leadership, and even childhood, he makes the case that embracing imperfection helps people make more progress, take smarter risks, and actually enjoy their work.
Reading this book, I found myself nodding, smiling, and sometimes groaning because the truth hit a little too close. McLennan’s tone is warm and grounded, and he mixes personal stories with quick lessons that feel almost like friendly nudges. I liked how he ties big ideas to everyday moments, like pulling cookies out of the oven before they look done or watching asparagus cook just a little too long. These simple images stuck with me more than some productivity books stuffed with charts or buzzwords. Sometimes the message was repeated, but I didn’t really mind because each angle gave it a fresh spark.
I especially loved the honesty around failure. His stories about projects that collapsed, ideas that bombed, and designs that broke apart mid-demonstration made the book feel relatable. And his point about people who cling too tightly to perfection really landed with me. I’ve watched talented friends freeze themselves in place, and I’ve done it too. The way he talks about letting the universe finish what you start made me laugh at myself a little. The writing isn’t fancy. It’s straightforward and warm. Sometimes it feels like someone thinking out loud. I liked that looseness because it matched the whole philosophy.
Anyone who feels stuck, overwhelmed, or afraid to put their work out into the world would get a lot from The Magic of Imperfection. It’s great for creatives, leaders, students, and anyone who carries too much pressure on their back. If you enjoy books that teach through stories instead of strict rules, this one will fit you well.
Pages: 192 | ASIN : B0FGPLMPKG
Back Into Delight: Grief Recovery at the Speed of Life
Back Into Delight is a grief recovery book that blends memoir and self-help, following Paul O’Neill as he recounts the losses of his brother and later his son, and the slow work of teaching a shocked, frozen body how to move again. The book moves through the warping force of bereavement, the paralysis of shutdown, and the tools that help coax a person back toward breath, connection, and, eventually, delight. O’Neill shares stories, somatic techniques, and moments of dark humor to show how grief can bend a life but does not have to break it. It’s part personal narrative, part practical guide, all oriented toward finding motion in the aftermath of loss.
O’Neill writes with a mix of clarity and lived authority that made me lean in. He doesn’t romanticize grief. He doesn’t turn it into a neat psychological model. He just walks me through the reality of it, page by page. His descriptions of shutdown hit especially hard: the body going still, breath thinning out, thoughts getting muffled. I recognised that feeling. And I appreciated how he roots his methods in the physical, not the abstract. There is something grounding about watching him refuse to let grief stay purely conceptual. Breath, posture, voice, humor. These are small, almost embarrassingly simple interventions, but he shows how they become anchors.
I was surprised by how often I smiled. His tone shifts in a way that feels inviting. One moment he’s describing the unbearable silence of losing his son, and the next he’s talking about noodle-breaths or Stretch Armstrong or telling himself he’s not Humpty Dumpty. The humour doesn’t soften the pain so much as make space inside it. It lets the ideas land in a real, lived way. And when he brings in the tools of trance, voice modulation, and emotional repatterning, he does it without jargon. It’s practical. Warm. Sometimes blunt. Sometimes tender. The kind of writing that feels like someone reaching across the table to say, “Try this. It helped me.”
By the end, I felt steadier. Not because the book offers solutions, but because it treats healing as a practice. Grief recovery, in O’Neill’s world, isn’t a miracle. It’s a muscle. It’s a series of cues that teach the body it is safe enough to return. This is where the book’s genre really shines: it lives at the intersection of memoir and self-help, and that blend makes the guidance feel earned.
If you want a companion for the messy middle of loss, someone speaking plainly and offering tools that actually feel usable, then I’d recommend it wholeheartedly. This book is especially for readers who feel frozen in their grief, who need something gentle but not vague, and who are open to a mix of story, science, and the smallest sparks of humour cutting through the dark.
Pages: 108 | ASIN : B0F92GTHSP
Scaling Pyramids – Leadership Lessons from a Mid-Level Bureaucrat
Scaling Pyramids is a direct and surprisingly warm look at what it means to lead from the middle of a large, often clunky system. The book moves through three layers of leadership. First, you lead yourself. Then you learn to lead others. Finally, you learn to lead the whole organization from wherever you stand. Stitt uses stories from his decades in federal service to bring these lessons to life. He mixes them with ideas from behavioral science and organizational psychology, and the result reads like a field guide for anyone trying to make a difference inside a bureaucracy. He shows how real leadership often happens far below the top, and how influence grows when you understand people, values, and the way systems move.
Author Christopher Stitt admits his flaws and doubts, and that made the book feel personal and real. His stories about learning who shaped him, figuring out his values, and dealing with the limits of his own energy made me pause more than once. I felt like I was sitting with someone who had lived through the hard parts and was not trying to sound perfect. Some chapters resonated with me more than I expected. The parts about self-care, migraines, and the quiet pressure of constant rotation in new jobs felt especially relatable. I kept thinking, this is the stuff most leadership books skip. Here, it becomes the center of the lesson.
The sections on leading others also stuck with me. He talks about employees as snowflakes because no two motivations match. It sounds simple, yet the way he explains it made me nod more than once. His stories about managing discipline, building alliances, and using awards with purpose made me reflect on how often leaders get these things wrong. The tone is patient. The advice is practical. I could feel his years of trial and error behind the guidance. At times, I laughed, especially when he drew leadership ideas from Dungeons and Dragons. Other times, I felt the weight of what it means to lead in an environment where rules, hierarchy, and personalities collide.
This is not a book about heroic leaders with big titles. It is for people who grind through the middle. People who want to contribute even when they feel unseen. People who want to influence without losing themselves. I would recommend Scaling Pyramids to early-career professionals, mid-level managers, public servants, and anyone who has ever wondered how to lead when they are not in charge. The book has heart. It has clarity. It has enough grit to feel lived in. And it reminds us that leadership begins long before anyone calls you a leader.
Pages: 177 | ASIN : B0FCD28TQ3
LITERARY TITAN 