Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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539 of 545 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
I choose my life; great book!, April 6, 2002
This book attempts to demonstrate by means of a 9-step process, how you are now making a "dying" as opposed to making a living, and how you can get back on track, and start directing your actions toward a life of fulfillment and financial independence. The 9 steps look like this:* STEP 1: Look back on your life and add up all the money you have made, and how much do you have with you (in the form of assets of some type) to account for it.
* STEP 2: Since money is something we choose to trade our life energy for (central idea of the book), determine how much money you truly get for doing your job, including the fact that you have to spend money in commuting, clothing, meals at work, etc. and start to keep track of every penny that you earn and spend. Just to illustrate the power of this step, I found myself making 25% (hourly rate) less than I thought I was by doing this exercise, and that takes into account the fact that I live 20 minutes away from my work and I half the time I bring my food from home.
* STEP 3: Tabulate all your expenses into categories, add them up and convert them into hours of life energy.
* STEP 4: Determine to what extent all the expenses you found in your categorization provide you with fulfillment, how they are in alignment with your life's purpose, and how they would change should you not have to work for a living (I start to see some frowning faces now... hold on a bit more!) This chapter brought back memories of reading Stephen Covey and Viktor Frankl, in terms of coming up with your life's mission. A very nice quote by Buckminster Fuller mentioned in it says: "I learned very early and painfully that you have to decide at the outset whether you are trying to make money or make sense -I feel that they are mutually exclusive."
* STEP 5: Maintain a chart with your income and expenses month to month, and have it in a visible place: don't hide it!
* STEP 6: Frugality and tons of ways to save money -not trying to impress other people; not just going shopping; living within your means; taking care of what you have; wearing things out; doing more things yourself; anticipating your needs; researching value, quality, durability and multiple use of things ahead of time; getting things for less (find out how!); buying used (secondhand becoming chick); following the nine steps of the program; and 101 more ways... Most readers will probably enjoy this chapter, since it gives out lots of ideas you can start applying right away, but it definitely needs to be combined with the other steps for the entire program to have success for life.
* STEP 7: Searching for ways to increase your income by valuing the life energy you put into your job, and exchanging it for the highest pay consistent with your health and integrity.
* STEP 8: Having capital money start producing an income for you until you reach the magical crossover point, the point at which your expenses can be fulfilled through your investment income, technically without needing you to make any active income. Sounds neat? Well, this is the most interesting part of the book. Several pages are devoted to how you can better spend your time beyond this point, and volunteering becomes one of the biggest things (giving back) you can do to take fulfillment in your life to a point that can't be reached by making more money.
* STEP 9: this step is about making out of you a knowledgeable and sophisticated long-term investor, so that you can manage your finances for a safe, steady and sufficient income for the rest of your life. If you think this might be a little over the authors' heads, consider the credentials of Mr. Dominguez, who had a successful career as a financial analyst in Wall Street before retiring at the age of... (are you ready for this?) thirty-one! Overall, this book shed valuable additional light on the topic of Financial Independence in ways that previous books I'd read hadn't, simply because it works on the basic paradigms out of which your assumptions come from, such as the fact that you need A TON of money to live a life of fulfillment. If you ask me, my recommendation is to get this book, but don't buy it (sorry, Amazon!) -get it from your local library! ;)
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290 of 294 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Revelation, November 3, 2002
I'm always wary of books stating that they have "9 steps to a different life" and didn't buy this book for years after after I learned of it. I picked it up a couple of months ago when a new boss caused me to look at my job in a different light. If I was fired or wanted to quit, how would I survive? If I wanted to get a lower paying job doing something I enjoyed, could my lifestyle afford it?With these things weighing on my mind, I purchased this book. Most of the steps I understood, and many of them made sense, but it was the 8th step that "hit me on the side of the head." What a revelation! I needed the previous 7 steps to fully appreciate it. I *can* change my life. This isn't some new-age feel good, think positive mumbo jumbo, but a solid plan for achieving financial independance. I tell my friends about my plan to retire early, and they say "Oh, that's nice" and "You'll never do it" and "I could never cut back my spending enough to do that." The promise, though, of not having to work for a living is keeping me motivated, and I think of it every time I spend money. Oddly enough, I recognize some of the principals as being similar to what financial guru types like Robert Kiyosaki and Robert G. Allen recommend - spend less, save more, invest what you save - yet this book, unlike those, provides a proven method for getting there. Some books I read, such as Get Out of Debt, Stay Out of Debt and Live Prosperously by Gerrold Mundis prepared me for this book, and it agrees with my personal philsophies, even though I tend to spend more money than I should. The 9th step details how to invest your money, but is now out of date because of changes instituted by the federal government. These issues are dealt with on by Vicki Robbins on a website based on this book. I've read other 'retire early' books and this is one of the best. It's also unique in that it wasn't written at the end of the 90's. Several others were written by people who were able to retire at the end of the great bull market of the 90's based on their stock investments. This book, however, was written in the mid to late 90's before there was such a thing as Internet millionaires. One of those people even wrote a book explaining why other methods don't work and how to buy his system! I guess he lost a lot of money and is looking to raise some quick cash. My girlfriend found the tone of the book overly preachy. They talk a lot about being eco and environmentally friendly in a way that some would consider heavy handed. While I felt some parts were preachy - things I would do once I had the resources to do them and wasn't spending all of my time 'making a dying,' - I found the information in this book valuable enough to read through those parts. As an experiment I'm trying to see if I can spend no money during the month of November and one of my friends who's deeply in debt is doing it with me. Just necessities and the occasional cab fare or movie. The purpose of the experiment is to see how much money I need to live on and how much I can save. I know it doesn't go much into investing and where to put your money, which is very popular now that everyone's got money in the stock market, but I consider this the single most important investment book I've ever read. I also recommend The Average Family's Guide to Financial Independence by Toohey, Nickel and Dimed by Ehrenreich, and of course, Getting a Life by Blix and Miller.
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127 of 130 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
One of very few books that have changed my life, November 11, 2000
By A Customer
This slim paperback changed my life as no other book has, financially. The most important things I learned from this book are (1) Avoid consumerism and (b) Cut your expenses, easily. I agree with readers earning $30,000 a year that it is difficult to become financially independent on that kind of salary - I also know it's difficult to live on $200k/year in NYC. (I mean it!)
I spent about $13 on the book. At the time I was technically bankrupt - unemployed, and living off a rapidly diminishing overfdraft. A month later, I got my wits together and - in one day- cancelled Call Waiting and 3-Way-Conferencing and a bunch of other options on my home phone; zapped the cell phone; cancelled my order for cable TV; joined the local library; un-subscribed to every mail-order catalog I was on; fired the maid and cleaned the place myself (quite satisfying; I mean, the latter); and lost all interest in Prada, Gucci, and keeping up with the neighbors. Immediate savings: $200 a month or more, before you get into the Prada stuff. That's the best return on investment I've ever had. And I felt nothing but satisfaction - there was no sense of loss. It was as though I had been told by someone, you must have these things, these Palm Pilots, these gadgets in the catalogs; and I learned: Wrong! Didn't need them at all. In fact, I felt quite smug about not having them.
This is not a bible for everyone. It did enable me to retire at 40. Thank you, Joe and Vicki. But whether you want to retire or just feel less owned by your job, you cannot read this book without yearning for FI and taking a cold, hard look at the ridiculous ways you are spending money today. There is so much pressure from ads to buy things you don't need. Read this and wise up. Stop driving the Beemer to the gym. Buy a pair of sneakers and walk for an hour. Do your own gardening. Stop thinking "I am what I spend". Start thinking, what would it feel like to be free?
A: Wonderful.
I am adding to this 5 years into freedom. I'm not rich. I'm not insecure, which is the best gift this book has given me. My car is worth abt $5,000 - in my dreams- and I live in a place full of Bentleys and Mercs. My car gets me around, which is what a car is supposed to do. If someone totals it, I can live with that. I do the occasional splurge - but I do it because I can. I don't track expenses. If something is expensive, I genuinely don't want it.
This book is brilliant. It has some shortcomings, but they are so few in relation to the knock on the head I got from reading it. You don't need half the stuff you have in your life. You probably don't need three-quarters of it. And, in response to the liberal-bashers on this site, you don't have to hug a tree to give the finger to the materialistic society that we live in.
Excuse the cliche but no one ever died wishing they had spent more time at the office. This little book has given me five years off to just enjoy the things I want to do. I was blessed to encounter it.
And, no, you don't have to follow a 9-step program. Heck, I think I only followed one - I was wasting money wholesale w/o even thinking abt it, and I was a slave to consumerism. Read this book.
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