For many of us, summer this year is all about staycations, lazy long weekends and days spent in the garden – all ideal opportunities to lose yourself in a good book. Holidays are also often the perfect time for some self-reflection. Here are our best holiday reads for ‘your money and your life’, whether you’re staying at home or taking a trip.

If you like your summer reads with a large helping of romance, this is a love story starring you and your money!:

Money ‘A Love Story’

Untangle Your Financial Woes and Create the Life You Really Want

By Kate Northrup

Having a good relationship with money is tough – whether you have millions in the bank or just a few pounds to your name. Just like any other relationship, your life with money has its ups and downs, its twists and turns, its breakups and makeups.

After taking the ‘Money Love Quiz’ to see where on the spectrum your relationship with money stands, Kate Northrup takes you on a journey to a better understanding of yourself and your money.

Step-by-step exercises that address both the emotional and practical aspects of your financial life help you figure out your personal perceptions of money and wealth and how to change them for the better. You’ll learn how to chart your current financial life and love your money, so you can love your life.

This  practical self-help book makes inspirational holiday reading:

The Life-Planning Workbook

Living your life by choice instead of chance

by Peggy Vaughan and James Vaughan. Ph.D

The Life-Planning Workbook is the 119-page owner’s manual you should have received when you started to make significant life choices for yourself. It unfolds in an easy-to-follow, self-paced workbook.

Parts 1 and 2 are specifically designed to help you get a deep understanding of how you came to be the way you are and what matters most to you. Parts 3 and 4 help you decide what you want to do now and make specific, realistic plans to live the life you choose.

It will challenge you to live fully—to reach for your dreams. It doesn’t tell you what to do; rather, it taps into your inner wisdom and helps you organise what you’ve learned, what you value and what you want to do with the rest of your life. For more, visit www.life-planning101.com.

Holidays are often the perfect opportunity to take some time for reflection about ourselves:

Who Do You Want To Be When You Grow Old?

The Path of Purposeful Aging

By Richard J. Leider and David Shapiro

Grow old on purpose. This book invites you to navigate a purposeful path from adulthood to elderhood with choice, curiosity, and courage.

Everyone is getting old; not everyone is growing old. But the path of purposeful aging is accessible to all – and it’s fundamental to health, happiness, and longevity.

With a focus on growing whole through developing a sense of purpose in later life, it celebrates the experience of aging with inspiring stories, real-world practices, and provocative questions. Framed by a long conversation between two old friends, the book reconceives aging as a liberating experience that enables us to become more authentically the person we always meant to be with each passing year.

We at Parkgate hope that you and your loved ones stay safe and wish you an enjoyable summer.