The National Realtors Association keeps an up-to-date database of recommended books on real estate and personal finance. Check out their Weekly Book Scan for some good reads, many of which you may never have heard of before.

Last night, I picked up “The Everything Homebuying Book” at my local library. As a real estate agent, I expected this book to be as dry and mundane as my real estate courses were. But the book was surprisingly to the point with tidbits scattered throughout.

The book covers everything from buying a fixer upper to selecting your town (with consideration to taxes, schools, and community programs) and determining the perfect home and finance strategy. The only thing the book lacked from my opinion was sample paperwork. What does a deed look like? How about a buy/sell agreement or rental contract when I rent out a bedroom?

We have an article on Aridni that might be useful to you, too.

And when you’re thinking of buying a home, this book may be invaluable to you… especially if you can get it for free at your local library, too!

Todd and I both made a lot of money at casinos that allowed us to go to school and buy the things we wanted. For us, casinos provided a guaraneed increase of wealth. Oh how I loved the wad of cash in my pocket when I walked out the door!

Of course, we were casino employees, not patrons. While I’d typically stick to the theory that the only people at casinos who make money are:

(1) employees (who don’t then gamble at the end of their shifts)
(2) owners

But it turns out that every so often, casinos produce another winner:

(3) turns out one gambling couple actually did profit at a casino in North Dakota… to the tune of $3 million in one 75-cent bet.

I didn’t even know you could win that much in one bet. In Montana, the max is $800.

Today we celebrate blog action day with 15,500 other blogs. The focus—our environment.

Many businesses say that they’d love to follow practices that are better for our environment and local community… but they say that those ideas simply cost too much. I doubt that. Most environmentally aware companies actually make MORE money through their efforts.

The immediate expenses would be higher during your implementation, sure. But in the long run? I bet your business would benefit even more. The same goes for any huge purchase like equipment and training courses. Bigger initial cost, better long-term results.

A lot of small town businesses aren’t going to make these changes on their own. You, the consumer, have to urge them. I have made it a habit to speak to managers and owners of local businesses. I tell them my concern and ask if it’s something that they’re addressing or planning on doing something about. Local produce? Locally-made foods? Recycling? Pesticide-free products? Programs that give back to the community’s development and sustainability?

Most employees just shrug me off. Mangers listen (or at least seem to pretend to!). If you keep going home miserable, complaining to yourself, nothing will change. If you start speaking out, things can start to change.

After years of Styrofoam at every function, my local church has quit purchasing Styrofoam. We spoke up. Today shouldn’t just be a day to post about the environment. Blog Action Day means we ought to be taking action, don’t you think?

The SBA (U.S. Government’s Small Business Association) even offers two environmental loan programs to (1) help engineer, manufacture, market, install, or service energy conservation measures or (2) allow the ability to plan, design, and install a pollution controlling facility. So what’s the excuse?

And how about all those local businesses that keep handing out Styrofoam…

What would the world look like if everyone lived like you and me? The reality is, of course, that the world would be pretty disgusting. We consume a heck of a lot. Luckily, all 6.6 billion people on the world don’t live like you and I do.

But what are the consequences of our decisions? A great site, Sustainability.org, will calculate how many earths we would need if everyone had the life that you have, from the foods we eat, homes we live in, and amount of trash we generate. Go play the game for yourself.

A lot of Gen Y Americans score around 7 earths or more, so I thought I’d be set–I don’t eat meat or drive alone much. I recycle and use programable thermostats… and we’d need 2.7 earths to sustain people like me. With all my effort, I’m still failing.

Go check out your score and share your thoughts with us.

Last week, I found myself critiquing and tisk, tisking the coffee selections at an organic grocery store. I don ‘t even drink coffee!

But I was in the progress of reading, Pour Your Heart Into It: How Starbucks Built a Company One Cup at a Time. I picked up the book to learn about fast-growing startups and found myself picking up a few tips on the best roast and coolest coffee house colors from the Starbucks point of view. So what did I learn (besides the perfect foam spread) from “one of the most amazing business stories in decades”?

There is no more precious a commodity than the relationship of trust and confidence a company has with its employees. If people believe management is not fairly sharing the rewards, they will feel alienated. Once they start distrusting management, the company ’s future is compromised.

In daily life, you get so much pressure from friends and family and colleagues, urging you to take the easy way, to follow the prevailing wisdom, that it can be difficult not to simply accept the status quo and do what ’s expected of you. But when you really believe in yourself, in your dream you just have to do everything you possibly can to take control and make your vision a reality. No greater achievement happens by luck.

To any entrepreneur, I would offer this advice: once you’ve figured out what you want to do, find someone who has done it before. Find not just talented executives but even more experienced entrepreneurs and business people who can guide you. They know where to look for the mines in the minefield. If they have thought and acted boldly in their own careers, and proven successful, they can help you do the same.

One of the most fundamental aspects of leadership, I realized more and more, is the ability to instill confidence in others when you yourself are feeling insecure.

Success is not an entitlement. We have to earn it every day. Just because Starbucks has achieved all its goals in the past didn’t mean that we were immune to mistakes. We had to be in a mode of constant renewal and recognize that the future of our company was not based on what we achieved yesterday. We had to preserver, even when our near-term targets seem out of reach.

So would I recommend this book? I ‘m not sure. The first hundred pages were great; I couldn’t stop reading. Of course, I also don’t know if I’ve ever been in an actual Starbucks, so I was seeing the business as more than a conglomerate giant that is consuming America and the world. I saw the company from the personal and passionate vantage point of the CEO. I enjoyed wearing the rosy glasses. And I enjoyed the constant reflections the stuff you and I can gain from in our own lives.

But then the book started to drag on. I didn’t see so much reflection, just a lot of bragging. The rest of the book took me weeks to finish, and I didn’t get much out of it. The last two chapters wrapped up in the typical “we ‘ll keep working to be the best and live happily ever after”. I wasn’t reading Disney, though!