Your Money Or Your Life Transforming You

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This book sparked the modern simplicity movement. It remains one of the pre-eminent sources for how to create financial freedom by separating your needs from your wants. This is not a get rich quick scheme. It is the progeny of Thoreau’s “On Walden Pond”. The Harvard-educated Thoreau freed himself from the business world by by taking the extraordinary measure of changing his life from pencil manufacturer to squatter. Dominguez and Robin suggest a less drastic change by helping you re-direct your prosperity from consumer driven wants to enough wealth to stop working.

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If one or more of the following applies to you: --You hate dealing with money --You think the current economic situation sucks for everyday people --You think the current economic situation sucks for the environment --You'd rather work for yourself than someone else, doing something you enjoy --You have trouble making ends meet, even when you're adequately employed, and you aren't sure where all the money goes Then you need to read this book. My husband has been bugging me to read this for months. Now I see why. I was hooked as soon as the authors, very early in the book, made it clear that the economic parameters most people are working in were created early in the 20th century, and that these parameters won't work in the current economic situation we're in--we're using outdated tools and knowledge. In fact, this theme continues throughout the book as the authors outline more up to date, effective practices. Take environmental sustainability, for example. Many of the topics that are covered include a lot of focus on the effects our decisions make on the natural environment, and how we can be both sustainable and self-sustainable. It's probably one of the most progressive guides to finances out there in this regard. Additionally, the authors are very much in support of self-employment, or at least employment that you enjoy. They really ask us to figure out how much our time is worth, and whether the work we're doing is worth it. They also help to figure out how much of the paycheck goes into maintaining employment, and whether one could survive without a job--as well as the costs it brings. If you're seriously considering going off-grid, or simply contemplating self-employment, there are a lot of important points discussed here. Finally, and probably the most difficult for some people to deal with--buying less stuff. The authors' notions of frugality include taking a hard, but necessary, look at our "gazingus pins"--"any item that you just can’t pass by without buying. Everybody has them". Do you really need a brand new cell phone every two years that has internet access, a state of the art camera, Bluetooth, gewgaws, and all in a cheap plastic case that has the life span of a romance novel? What about all those magazines? Or DVDs you'll watch once and then stuff on the shelf? How much money do we lose out of the leaks in our financial boats caused by pointy, sharp gazingus pins? Hands down, this just became my number one recommended book on finances. Many of the concepts are already coming in handy--as well as showing us what we've already been doing right--as we prepare to go down to one primary income while I focus on grad school. Rather than dreading the possibility of failure, with the help of Your Money or Your Life we've been able to look at the future as a challenge to buck the two-income "requirement" of this economy.