Customer Reviews

Getting a Life: Real Lives Transformed by Your Money or Your Life

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I loved YMOYL and hoped this book would be as good. While I did learn a few things, I wished they had spent more time talking about others and less time talking about themselves. They were typical rich yuppie types with more money and stuff than they knew what to do with. The poor things have $9,000 a year in IRA interest alone besides the number of other investments they had. Not to knock having money, but I'm a starving artist type that had never bought into the yuppie dream. I would have liked to maybe hear about someone like me or more about people with lots of debts that need ways to get out from under them. (thankfully, I have no debts). :) It just seemed like they needed two books, one for the yuppies with lots of money, who suddenly become socially aware and want to divest themselves of their things, and one book for people who are naturally frugal, or poor, or in debt. If you're in the last category, this book won't appeal to you as much.

I really enjoyed this book. It deals with two middle class people who lived a typical american lifestyle. they had high paying high stress jobs, a beautiful home and lots of toys. They decided to trade in the overconsumption lifestyle for a more fullfilling and more simple life without a paycheck and stress from employment. If you are looking for how to get by on $600 a month, this book will disappoint you (see other reviews below). The authors live on $3000/month which may seem outrageous if your current standard of living is half of that. Their lifestyle includes more than the basic necessities such as food and shelter to stay alive. They go on vacations and trips, have hobbies, own an economy car, go out for dinner occasionally, live in a normal house in a decent neighborhood, read the newspaper etc.. Their life is simplified but still includes most comforts and some luxeries of today's society. Living more simply does not mean deprivation to them, but removing clutter (especially "stuff") from their lives and focus on what they enjoy in life and have TIME. The book goes into detail on what kind of life they lead, standard of living etc. and detailed financial balance of their $3000/month budget. I would only not recommend reading this book if you plan to lead a complete bare bone life or if you are in a very low income segment. The only criticism I have is that they do not think inflation is an issue. Although that may be the case for some basic food items and electronics, I think the ever increasing healthcare premiums will skyrocket as you get older.

After I read this, I was left with a pretty sour taste. A lot of the book is taken up with "See how rich and extravagant we were, and now we're on the YMML program and see how wonderful we are", definitely not the kind of story I want to read if I'm stuck in debt trying to get out.

After reading "Your Money or Your Life," I was primed for delving into this book. It has changed my life! While I loved YMOYL, this book revealled practical means of achieving simplicity and happiness. The honesty of the authors was amazing in today's world of plastic-like people trying to "get ahead." Plus, the change is truly my thinking, so everyday changes will manifest as a result. In fact, I made two changes today (thanks to the book) in an effort to slow down life to make it more meaningful. However, I now need advice on how to get a "financially proficient" husband to understand simplicity when he doesn't have time to read! (He's caught in the catch-22 of the American Dream). Basically, this book makes sense and made a lasting impact on me. I highly recommend it.

I am so glad this book is available! For those of us who have read _Your_Money_or_Your_Life_ but have had nagging doubts/questions, this book goes a long way toward making it clear that, yes, even _I_ can follow the 9-step program and make it work! Blix and Heitmiller do not give us any new theory in this book, and for those looking for such, they will no doubt be disappointed. But what _are_ abundant in the book are examples, examples, and more examples of how different folks have approached the 9-steps and made (often dramatic) changes in their lives. This book dares to ask the really glaring questions left over after reading YMOYL; questions like: "What do I do about health insurance?" "Can I _really_ follow the steps if I have kids?" "Is it better to follow the program in a city, or in the country?" "How much do _real_ people find they need to live fulfilled lives? I _can't_ live on $550/month...can I?" "Do real people following the program _really_ just invest in Treasury Bonds, or do some folks go a different route?" All these questions and more are answered in Getting_A_Life_, if not by the immediate stories of Jacque and Dave, then by the stories of some of the thousands of other folks that have followed the program. Several of those in our Voluntary Simplicity Study Circle have said they wish they had read this book _before_ YMOYL, so that they could really see how dramatically people's lives were changed by the program. A good, _practical_ follow-on.

This books provided good summaries of how people may tailor the "Your Money or Your Life" program to different circumstances. It was highly beneficial by emphasizing the need for flexibility in applying the program's tenets and identifying "lessons learned" from the authors' own experiences. It was also nice to see another viewpoint which substantiated the viability of achieving financial independence and its personal rewards.

If you are interested in simple living, this book is a must (together with its companion volume, "Your Money Or Your Life"). It gives the personal and human side of the process of breaking away from the high-paced consumer culture. Interviews with others going through the process show how many different paths people are taking. At first I thought a quick skim through this book would be enough, but I've found myself coming back to it again and again in the last two years. The few negative reviews below don't seem to have much to do with the book, which is pleasant and unpretentious.

The authors expand more deeply on the material that is available in money or life. It is packed with many real life examples with some gut wrenching situations which can only question what a person has learned during lifes learning process. The book is dedicated to Joe Dominguez who died recently - I only found out in this book - I am sure he would have loved this book it is genuine! The authors write in a sincere helpful manner which makes it an easy read. I like the depth and ideas which the book gives. It is well researched which must have taken a long time to produce. The audio version of this book which I have listened to on a number of occasions is well worth the investment. It is well produced and extremely professional in its presentation. I was concerned that it would be to similiar to Money or Your Life however the material is different with deeper examples on how the principles have been applied. I recommend this book highly the authors are sincere, genuine and truly "Walk the Talk"

I loved Your Money Or Your Life and was just beginning to read it for the second time and work even harder on putting the principles into action, when I found this book at the used bookstore. I picked it up, hoping for some additional inspiration on this path.

Unfortunately, I was bored from the get-go by the authors' tales of yuppie excess and idiocy. I have never lived the high roller lifestyle and so cutting out manicures and fancy cars has never been an issue for me. I didn't relate to the people profiled and found the suggestions unhelpful since they don't bear any relevance to my life.

What this book does is it shows profiles of people who have used the program successfully and also paraphrases Your Money Or Your Life and restates the instructions. But reading the book alongside, I found that the original was inspiring, fresh, to the point, and made me feel urgent about continuing, while this book made the whole process feel tiresome and stale. The beauty of YMOYL is its simplicity. Adding loads of explanations and obvious disclaimers took away from the experience rather than added to it.

I'd recommend YMOYL highly, but leave this one behind unless you find the pace of YMOYL too fast for you and wished someone would explain its points slower or give more examples of how that life might look after transitioning from the high life.

Getting a Life is a companion piece to the better known Your Money or Your Life, a pioneering book of the "voluntary simplicity" movement. Jacqueline Blix and David Heitmiller, a married couple who successfully worked through the nine-step program outlined in Your Money or Your Life, here recount their own experience with the process and discuss the real life experiences of numerous others who have used that book to simplify their own lives.

Not too many years before writing Getting a Life, Blix and Heitmiller were living the good yuppie life to which most Americans still aspire. They were homeowners who drove late-model cars and owned a boat. They took expensive vacations every year. But they had come to realize that "standard of living" and "quality of life" were two different things, and they were searching for alternatives when they discovered Your Money or Your Life (written by Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin) and found in it the inspiration they needed to take charge of their lives.

They decided that they were on a treadmill to nowhere if they continued to chase "the good life" by constantly upgrading all of the toys that surrounded them. The desire to always drive late model cars, to have the latest high-tech electronic gadgets and to vacation in the current hot spots was costing them more than money. Blix and Heitmiller came to the realization that they were trading all of their life energy for "stuff" that they didn't even have the time to enjoy anymore. And they wanted to do something about it.

They decided what was important to them and what was not and, in the process, they realized that they could live on a fraction of the income they were earning by simply cutting out all the frills that they really didn't need or enjoy anyway. Both were able eventually to quit their jobs in corporate America and to substitute part-time work as self-employed writers to supplement the interest earned on their savings. Opting out of the rat race allows them the time to do volunteer work and to spend enough time with friends and family to really get to know them. For Blix and Heitmiller, "less is more" is not just cliché. It's their way of life, and they are happier now than ever before.

Getting a Life is a good starting point for anyone looking for a way out of the fast lane. It offers a concise summary of the nine-steps originally offered in Your Money or Your Life and it provides the encouragement of real life success stories of people who have made those principles work for themselves. The book does tend to get a little repetitive at times and the personal stories all begin to sound too much alike, but the message is a good one.