Customer Reviews

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

5 star:		(37)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(9)

 

 

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.

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.

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

My husband and I read this book in the early 1990's and took it to heart. Consequently at ages 50 & 52, we have a home that is paid for, I work 16 hours a week, he works 24 hours week, and we have more than enough for anything we want. Of course, we don't want much, realizing the blessings we have in free time to enjoy the gorgeous outdoors in Montana without having to worry about being able to pay our bills. The hardest part was figuring out the medical insurance thing, but even that is addressed for now. So many are suffering from "affluenza" they don't even know why they are unhappy. This book has to potential to change your relationship with money for the best. Read it with an open heart and as more than just another finance book... Take what works for you and leave the rest, but it can make all the difference!

Overall a great book. Although some of the advice in the book is obvious (which some negative reviewers have point out), such as reduce your spending, increase your income, there is a more interesting and deeper message in the book. The idea of the fulfillment curve is what really made this book great. This curve, and the book, asks you how much material/luxuries is "enough" for you. There is a point where fulfillment drops the more and more we buy and consume. They set out a way for you to figure out what is "enough" by asking yourself three main questions: 1) did you receive fulfillment from the item in comparison to your life energy spent? 2) is the spending in alignment with your values and purpose? 3) would the spending change if you were not working?

This is the great piece of this book. It's a little bit of a philosophical approach to money. How much do you value your life (ie your time on this planet) and how much do you want to sacrifice it to buy these luxury items?

The nuts and bolts of the plan, I agree with the negative reviewers, is not as good. The original book had you invest in Treasury bonds only but the most recent edition has you consider mutual funds. This is definitely not a investment book, there are much better ones.

Again, the most interesting and best part of the book is: how much is enough for you?

If you purchased the first edition you don't need this one, this book pretty much has the same info. as the first one, but just a few up to date info. Its a good book for some one that never read the first book but a waste of money for someone that already owns the first one , it has the same info.

This book is one of the most profound and intriguing books I've ever read. Honestly. It is what introduced me to the brainwashing of our media outlets, and what brought my attention to the massive over-spending of our society. I've always considered myself to be a thrifty person, but this book helped me to see where I was still spending needlessly. And more than that, it showed me how to save and invest so that some day I can quit the rat race forever. Despite how old this book is, it is still extremely useful information that works just as well today as it did when it was written.

"Your Money Or Your Life" is essentially the Bible of the voluntary simplicity movement. They don't tell you what you can and can't buy, but they give you a lot of reason not to waste your money on things you don't need. Joe and Vicki were able to create this 9-step plan that can free you from the working world. It's a pretty simple plan, but it takes a lot of self-discipline and motivation to complete. I myself have tried to follow the plan twice and fell off the bandwagon each time. It's not for anything that the writers did; it was just me getting sucked into bad spending habits by other people and advertisements. For example, my husband has a very different view of money and thinks that money will always be there and should be spent when received, especially on entertainment and tech gadgets. So, if I stick to my miserly ways I have to deal with his disappointment.

I personally find a lot of enjoyment out of doing the graph and keeping track of how much money comes in and goes out, but I get a bit depressed and overwhelmed when I spend more than I bring in. I think that is when I get discouraged and give up. I plan to start this program again next month and hopefully I will not let anything else get in the way. I really dislike my job and would like to quit, so the faster I can get to "FI" (Financial Independence), the better. I recommend this book to all my friends, family, and even strangers. It's well organized, informative, and it works! There are many success stories if you just do a search for "FI success stories". They even include quite a few throughout the book as motivation. I hope that you will give this book a try and find out what it can do for your financial life.

Having read the original version of this book several years ago (before the financial problems of the past decade), I was interested to see what updates had been made to this book. The authors did not disappoint. Investment ideas should change with the times and the authors made adjustments to the new reality of lower interest rates and higher risk, but this book is about far more than where to invest, it offers a way to look at money (and the acquisition of it) that differs from the mainstream. This would be a great read for every graduating high school senior and anyone else who is wondering if the path they are choosing or have chosen is the right one. Highly recommended!

Your Money or Your Life is a classic that has been updated by Vicki Robin for the 21st century. The important message is still the same - take a close look at how you spend your time and your money, figure out what's important to you, and set your personal compass accordingly. Even if you don't embrace the 9 Steps as recommended in this book, using the information to frame how you think about money, work and what is important to you will impact your view of life and living.
I would recommend reading through the book once and absorbing the wisdom and suggestions within. If it resonates with you, consider going back and working through the 9 Steps.
I first was exposed to this book around 1990. We appreciated the message but didn't embrace the 9 Steps. We did follow much of the philosophy of thoughtful consumption, saving and debt avoidance, which has served us very well. I recently purchased the updated version for a refresher and to loan to family and friends if they are interested. It's a case of trying to facilitate "when the student is ready, the teacher will appear." I recommend it to anyone looking for a reasonable path to long term financial independence. It is NOT a path to "get rich quickly" or even to get rich.

I normally skip past the requests to review products, but this book was so good that I thought I'd take a few minutes to write a comment. I'm only 1/2 way through the book and it's fantastic. It's a real eye-opener and it really resonates with my wife and I. I bought 2 extra copies and gave them to friends. We're now scaling back on everything, putting more money in the bank, and looking at options to move overseas to lower cost countries. I'd say this book is having a real impact on us - far more than any other book - so I highly recommend it.