Your Money or Your Life: 9 Steps to Transforming Your Relationship with Money and Achieving Financial Independence: Revised and Updated for the 21st Century [Paperback]

Vicki Robin (Author), Joe Dominguez (Author), Monique Tilford (Author)

Book Description

Release date: December 10, 2008

"The seminal guide to the new morality of personal money management" (Los Angeles Times(on the first edition))

In an age of great economic uncertainty when everyone is concerned about money and how they spend what they have, this new edition of the bestselling Your Money or Your Life is an essential read. With updated resources, an easy-to-use index, and anecdotes and examples particularly relevant today-it tells you how to:

? get out of debt and develop savings
? reorder material priorities and live well for less
? resolve inner conflicts between values and lifestyle
? save the planet while saving money
? and much more

In Your Money or Your Life, Vicki Robin shows readers how to gain control of their money and finally begin to make a life, rather than just make a living.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"In this time of crashing markets, soaring prices, tent cities, and melting ice caps, no book is more useful to readers and to the planet than Your Money or Your Life."
-Mary Pipher, author of The Shelter of Each Other and Seeking Peace

Product Details

• Paperback: 368 pages
• Publisher: Penguin Books; Revised edition (December 10, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0143115766
• ISBN-13: 978-0143115762
• Product Dimensions: 5.1 x 0.6 x 7.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.9 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (86 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #10,110 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #22 in Books > Business & Investing > Personal Finance > Budgeting & Money Management

More About the Author

Vicki Robin is a prolific social innovator, writer and speaker. She is coauthor with Joe Dominguez of the international best-seller, Your Money or Your Life: Transforming Your Relationship With Money and Achieving Financial Independence (Viking Penguin, 1992, 1998, 2008). It was an instant NY Times best seller in 1992 and steadily appeared on the Business Week Best Seller list from 1992-1997. It is available now in eleven languages.

Blessing the Hands that Feed Us; Lessons from a 10-mile diet (Viking/Penguin 2013) recounts her adventures in hyper-local eating and what she learned about food and farming as well as belonging and hope.

Called by the New York Times as the "prophet of consumption downsizers," Vicki has lectured widely and appeared on hundreds of radio and television shows, including "The Oprah Winfrey Show," "Good Morning America" and National Public Radio's "Weekend Edition" and "Morning Edition"; she has also been featured in well over 100 magazines including People Magazine, AARP, The Wall Street Journal, Woman's Day, Newsweek, Utne Magazine and the New York Times.

The President of the Atlanta Women's Business Network said of Vicki's 2009 presentation: Vicki, your talk last night was brilliant; we have not had so much fun in years and any speaker who can teach "money lessons" in the midst of the current economic woes AND have her audience laughing deserves praise - and attention!

Vicki has helped launch many sustainability initiatives including: The New Road Map Foundation, The Simplicity Forum, The Turning Tide Coalition, Sustainable Seattle, The Center for a New American Dream, Transition Whidbey and more. In the 1990's she served on the President's Council on Sustainable Development's Task Force on Population and Consumption.

In addition to her sustainable consumption work, Vicki has been a leader in the field of dialogue. She co-created the Conversation Cafés method and initiative, promoting it first in Seattle and then throughout the world. Conversation Cafés are hosted conversations among diverse people in public places on subjects that matter (www.conversationcafe.org). Vicki has spoken at workshops, conferences and to the media (Readers Digest, National Public Radio, Utne Magazine, The New York Times, The Seattle Times and many local media) about the Conversation Café method and its possibilities for revitalizing our public life.

For fun, Vicki is a comedy improv actress, appearing frequently with her troupe, Comedy Island.

Born in Oklahoma in 1945, Vicki grew up on Long Island and graduated cum laude from Brown University in 1967. She received awards from Co-op America and Sustainable Northwest for her pioneering work on sustainable living. Vicki's one of 61 visionaries featured in Utne Magazine's book, Visionaries: People and Ideas to Change Your Life. A&E Entertainment's show "Biography" honored Vicki as one of ten exceptional Seattle citizens. She currently lives on Whidbey Island in Puget Sound.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

226 of 233 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Ok, but not great November 26, 2009

By Sachmo

Format:Paperback

The fundamental premise of this book is pretty good. The idea is as follows: You devote a given amount of time a day into work (say 10 hours). You earn an hourly wage, let's say for argument's sake it is $16 / hour. But there are many hidden costs associated with having a job.

For example, you may spend 30 min. commuting to and from work. After you get back from work, you may spend an additional hour "decompressing" - as in mindlessly watching TV in order to relax. You may also spend maybe another 30 min. or so talking about your work situation to your significant other.

So when you calculate your REAL hourly wages, you have to take all of this extra time into account. After all, you wouldn't be doing all of this stuff if you didn't work at this particular job.

Also, there are monetary costs to working. Such as spending money on nice work clothing. Buying lunch in the afternoon, because it would be too time consuming to prepare lunch every night. If there are things that you might do yourself but don't because of your job (taking care of your lawn, car, house, etc), you have to subtract the monetary costs of outsourcing all of this work.

What the book points out is that your REAL hourly wage is often much less than you think it is. In the example above, $16/hour could easily fall to $10 or $11/ hour.

The book then goes on to argue that when you start looking at stuff to buy - you should think about the cost of a new iPod for example in terms of hours spent working for it, not money. So for example, if you buy a $200 iPod, and you REAL hourly wage is $11/ hour, you've just spent about 18.2 hours of your life working away for that iPod. It really puts things into perspective.

The book does not tell you not to spend, but rather to be conscious of what you are actually spending, which is literally your life energy.

They have a "9 step program" but really it amounts to this:

1) Calculate your REAL net worth. All assets minus all debts. For many people its negative, because they have accumulated so much debt during their lifetime.

2) Become aware of your real hourly wage, and your spending patterns, and you will find that you naturally stop buying frivolous things. They recommend tracking EVERY single cent that you spend on goods. Pretty extreme, but I understand why. People in this program supposedly paid off seemingly large loads of debt in stunningly short time periods.

That's pretty much the gist of the book. The reason why I've given it 3.5 stars is because the manner in which this is all presented is not that great. The writing attempts to make the message seem very profound, when in fact it may not be so deep a truth as all that.

There is also a *LOT* of negative generalization about how everyone lives an over-stressed, under-paid lifestyle and it keeps coming up, over and over again in the book. It's this part that I really don't like. It probably all together takes up maybe 75 pages of the book, and it really only needs to be stated once. I think some brevity could have made this book really amazing, but it is still ok.

Finally, I strongly disagree with the investment chapter at the end of the book, and I think it will lead a lot of people astray. It recommends that you should only invest in long-term US treasury bonds that pay very marginal rates, because they are the only thing 100% guaranteed over time. A slightly "riskier" strategy is to invest in lifecycle funds.

Let me state plainly that to invest in only US treasury bonds would be akin to shooting yourself in the foot. Many things (like your job), are not 100% certain over long periods of time, and by using some common sense and effort you can do MUCH better than treasury bonds by making wise choices with index funds, stocks, bonds, and real estate.

Lifecycle funds are ok, but it is also perfectly ok to invest in stocks if you are willing to invest the time to do a little bit of research. "The Intelligent Investor" is the best book hands down for teaching you about stock selection and bonds, and I'd look there first if you are interested in learning about investing.

52 of 54 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Great book, creative & motivating ideas. January 23, 2010

By Trinity the Voracious Reader

Format:Paperback

I got this book after reading in several blogs how good this book is. Now I know why. To start with, the nine steps mentioned in this book are:
(1) Making Peace with the Past;
(2) Being in the present - Tracking Your Life Energy;
(3) Where Is It All Going? (The Monthly Tabulation);
(4) Three Questions That Will Transform Your Life;
(5) Making Life Energy Visible;
(6) Valuing Your Life Energy - Minimizing Spending;
(7) Valuing Your Life Energy - Maximixing Income;
(8) Capital and the Crossover Point;
(9) Managing Your Finances.

You really gotta do the steps! Sure the steps take times and discipline to implement, but once I started, I got a lot out of it. Some of the shifts that I experienced:
1. A way of thinking that "money is simply something you trade life energy for".
Because I really want to know how much I trade my life energy for doing my job, I become very discipline in tracking my spending and created many new categories in my Quicken to be able to answer the the 3 Questions in step 4.

2. The attitude of "no shame no blame" when evaluating what one had done with one's finance. The book mentioned many times this mantra that helped whenever I felt bad about my previous decision, I would tell myself "no shame no blame" and no regret (my own addition).

3. The hope of being financial independence. The step of charting and making life energy visible were very helpful. I am looking forward to the time when my monthly investment income crosses over with my monthly spending. The book gave examples of people who successfully crossed over this point which are very motivating. It is also realistic in saying that we may have set back because there is nothing guaranteed with investment, but if we are conditioned to have control over our spending and income, we would be more confident in handling the setback.

This book is not an investment technique book, so if you are looking at a more technical way of managing your finance such as Asset Allocation by Gibson, you will not get it. This is also not like Needleman's book (Money and the Meaning of Life) that is philosophical. This book I would classify it as a hybrid between the psychology of money and the pragmatic ways of managing money so that you can reach financial independence. For me, the shift in thinking that I got from reading this book, made this book very very worth it.

37 of 38 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Your Money or Your Life - One of the best personal finance books I've ever read February 7, 2011

By James Ryan

Format:Paperback

Your Money or Your Life is one of the best books I've ever read on personal money management.

In Your Money or Your Life, money is introduced from a refreshingly new perspective. The book argues that you are currently making a "dying", as opposed to making a "living". A 9-step process is introduced to get you back on track toward living a fulfilled life through smart spending and financial independence.

The basic premise of Your Money or Your Life is that life is too valuable to waste away working 40+ hours every week, one week at a time for the rest of your life... Just so you can have enough money to buy all those material possessions to keep up with the Jones's.

The book goes on to make an eye-opening connection between money and your personal life. Basically, you only have so many hours of life - which the book refers to as Life Energy - and the fulfillment we get out of life depends on how we spend those precious few hours. Most people trade a significant amount of their Life Energy in exchange for money to buy things - unimportant, unfulfilling, and at times even wasteful things.

Your Money or Your Life goes through the exercise of having us determine the number of hours each of us has to work in order to make a purchase. The book doesn't suggest budgeting, but instead uses the connection to force us to make conscious decisions about how we spend our money. You're actually encouraged to spend money on the things that are meaningful and fulfilling to you. On the flip side, the book argues that you should reduce your spending as much as possible on the things that are meaningless to you. Any money you save from reducing your meaningless expenses should be invested toward early retirement.

We are caught in a never ending trap... A sort of self-induced slavery. We go to work everyday to "earn" money, which we then trade for the possessions in our lives. Since our materialistic society has us brainwashed into always wanting more, we gladly accept a mediocre existence of wage slavery in exchange. The more money we make, the more we buy - more cars, bigger houses, bigger TVs, more cable channels, etc. And the more we buy, the tighter the chains becomes. It's no wonder that we go through life in a walking daze.

In summary, you trade Life Energy for dollars, which you then use to buy things. If you buy the things that are fulfilling to you, and minimize wasteful spending, your life will almost immediately become more enriched. More fulfilled.

There is much more to this book than I've described, and it's well worth the money. I believe this book is a must read for anybody who is serious about becoming financially independent and living a fulfilled life.

Your Money or Your Life. I chose Life.
-James Ryan, PostponedLife com