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Want to win a $50 Starbucks Gift Card? (5 Winners!)

The Books I Want to Read in January

My Top 4 Favorite Reads From 2024

Want to win a $50 Starbucks Gift Card? (5 Winners!)

Happy New Year! To say thank you for continuing to show up here, we’d like to gift five of you a $50 Starbucks gift card!

$50 Starbucks Gift Card Giveaway!

We’re doing a giveaway for FIVE $50 Starbucks gift cards! Enter as many ways as possible to increase your chances of winning:

1. Go follow us on Facebook and leave 3 comments on your favorite deals we’ve posted to our Facebook page recently. Leave a comment on this post saying you did so.

2. Go follow our @msmdeals Instagram account. Leave a comment on this post saying you did so (or letting us know that you’re already a follower!)

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4. Join our Facebook group. Leave a comment on this post saying you did so (or letting us know that you’re already a member!)

5. Leave a comment telling us what kinds of deals/content/posts you’d love to see here as we move into the 2025 new year!

That’s it! We’ll pick five of you at random from the comments on this post to win a $50 Starbucks gift card and notify you by email.

Giveaway ends Thursday night, January 2nd, at midnight. Good luck!

Giveaway is not sponsored and the gift cards are personally provided by Money Saving Mom, LLC. No purchase necessary to enter the giveaway. Three winners will be selected at the end of day, January 2, 2025 and be contacted by email.

The Books I Want to Read in January

Yesterday, I shared my top 4 favorite reads from 2024 and on Saturday, I shared the 40 Books I Read in 2024 (I made a page with all of them in my Amazon if you’d love to see all the covers at a glance!) Today, I’m sharing my promised list of books I want to read in January.

If you saw my post on my goals for 2025, you’ll know that I’m doing monthly goals instead of yearly goals this year. So I didn’t set an overall reading goal for 2025, but I am planning to set monthly goals.

For January, my goal is to finish 6 books. However, I picked out more than 6 books in case I finish some of them early and need some extra reading material (too many good books and never enough time to read them all, right??). If I don’t get all of these finished in January, I plan to add them to my February stack.

At the end of each month, I plan to share reviews on the books I finished that month + my book stack for the next month, so since many of you have begged for me to bring back my book posts here on the blog. I’ll also be sharing more in real-time what I’m reading over on Instagram stories and on the podcast and in my personal email newsletter.

The Books I Hope to Read in January

Cultivating Deeper Connections in a Lonely World – This looks so good! And I LOVE Becky!
In Peril on the Sea – My mom gave me this and highly recommended it!
Adrift – My mom also gave me this one!
The Frozen River – My sister raved about this one!
A Higher Call – One of you all said I had to read this book.
Breaking the Patterns That Break You – I get to interview the author of this one soon!
Habits of the Household – SO many people have said this book is a must-read.
Co-Intelligence – This was a gift from Megan Hyatt Miller who leads my mastermind.
Here Be Dragons – I love Melanie Shankle and am looking forward to this one!
Sabbath Soup – Kathi is a long-time friend and I get to interview her soon!
The Love Your Life Project – I got to see an early copy of this to endorse and want to read the finished copy!

I’m also hoping to finish Word Before World, the devotional I’m reading in the mornings as part of my Bible Reading time (I am going through the She Reads Truth studies again this year).

For those who ask when I read: I always have a few books going at once and I read a few pages to a chapter of a Christian inspiration book + a business book every morning. Then, my goal is to read at least 30 pages of a some type of more fun reading in the evenings before bed — memoir, fiction, etc. But that didn’t happen much in 2024. My big hope in 2025 is that my goal of unplugged evenings (more on that in my Word of the Year post!) will help to facilitate more reading!

What are you planning to read in January? I’d love to hear!

Coming tomorrow: My word for 2025 and how I’m planning to set things up to live it out!

My Top 4 Favorite Reads From 2024

Yesterday I shared the 40 Books I Read in 2024 (I made a page with all of them in my Amazon if you’d love to see all the covers at a glance!) I promised you that today I’d share my Top 4 Favorite Books from 2024.

I chose these 4 titles based upon which books most stuck with me, most challenged me, and the ones I found myself talking about and recommending after I read them.

My Top 4 Favorite Reads From 2024

Through the Eyes of the Lion — While I’ve never experienced the loss of a child, I felt this book was packed with practical encouragement for anyone who has found themselves feeling gutted by grief and brokenhearted. It is the story of the Lusko family losing their 5-year-old daughter right before Christmas as the result of an asthma attack.

It is heartbreaking and honest, but also infused with hope and points to Jesus again and again. I really feel like every Christian would be personally inspired by reading this message of walking though horrific circumstances without losing your faith in Jesus. It also helped me have a tiny window into what it would be like to lose a child and how to walk well with someone who is going through this devastation.

Nothing is Wasted — In 2015, Davey’s wife Amanda and their unborn child were murdered. In this memoir, he shares more about what it was like to walk through that horrific loss, the real and raw emotions he felt, and how changing his perspective from bitterness to compassion gave him the ability to forgive the perpetrators.

He candidly discusses his initial rage and the complexities of forgiveness – both of others and himself, taking through the challenges of rebuilding amidst deep loss, including the unexpected closure of the church he and Amanda founded. Through it all, Davey shares how he felt God’s presence even in the darkest moments.

One of the most impactful parts of this book for me was when Davey shares about how empathy for those who caused him unimaginable pain and stepping into their stories transformed his perspective on grace and redemption. His insights are a powerful reminder of God’s ability to bring beauty from ashes, reshaping our understanding of suffering and resilience!

I was so honored to get the opportunity to meet Davey this past year and interview him on my podcast. His episode was one of the most-loved episodes I shared on the podcast this year and I would highly recommend it! Listen here.

Slow Productivity — I savored this book slowly (the title alone makes you want to be sure not to fly through it!) and it resonated with me at a deep level. I will be mulling over the suggestions for years to come. It’s already challenged me to rethink the way I set up my days and weeks (especially in light of one of the big premises of the book which is to do fewer things!) and it’s also really made me think about the best way to set up our business and systems.

It was so simple and yet so profound. If you are a business owner, work in any sort of profession, and/or struggle with finding your worth in productivity or feel like crossing things off your list and packing your days as full as possible is what “productivity” is, definitely consider reading this book!

The Unplugged Hours — This was one of those books that will likely challenge and stick with me for a very long time. And it was one of two books that inspired my word for 2025 (more on that in a few days!). I especially loved how the book felt inspiring and doable, not guilt-ridden or legalistic! It made you want to unplug more because of how it would enrich your life and relationships not unplug because you felt like you must or you should or that all technology is bad.

Inspired by this book, I set the goal of unplugging 1000 hours over the next year and to enjoy a more untethered life. I’ll share more what that’s going to look like in my Word for 2025 post!

By the way, I got to do an Instagram Live with the author of this book all about The Unplugged Hours. It’s very worth listening to/watching if you have a little time! Go here to listen.