Your Money or Your Life

"I will say this book had an interesting approach to money and it is somewhat implementable for everyone. However, I have the same gripe with this financial independence strategy that I do with all FI experts, it isn’t highly effective for those who are lower middle class. It can absolutely help with getting closer to FI, but to say everyone can achieve FI this way, I think, is naive."

"You can pass on "Your Money or Your Life" - you’re better off going to Mr. Money Mustache or reading something more serious like [b:Early Retirement Extreme: A Philosphical and Practical Guide to Financial Independence|9519944|Early Retirement Extreme A Philosphical and Practical Guide to Financial Independence|Jacob Lund Fisker|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1413133513s/9519944.jpg|14405891]. There just aren't many ideas in this book and the tone is quite patronizing!<br/><br/>Here’s the main idea: figure out what your definition of “enough” is, cut wasteful spending, and spend your “life energy” on things that bring meaning into your life. OK, glad we got the platitudes out of the way. Anything else? No? Alrighty then....<br/><br/>I do give the book a couple stars because it’s not awful and could provide _some_ direction to someone just getting started (although there are certainly better starting places). The book also gets some points for raising important questions about the intersection of meaning-life-religion-jobs, and what we do when we don’t have to work anymore.<br/><br/>Some of the best quotes below.<br/><br/>#######################<br/><br/>In 2005, the personal savings rate in the United States fell below zero for the first time since the Great Depression.<br/><br/>Today, the average CEO in the United States makes more in a day than the average worker makes in year. This isn’t said to fuel envy of the wealthy and demand a piece of the pile for the poor. Rather, it’s to point out that while absolute poverty deprives our bodies of necessities, relative poverty—being so much poorer than people no smarter or more willing to work than we are—makes us dissatisfied with our lot in life no matter how much we have. It corrodes society and the psyche—saps our belief in justice and fairness and hope. It makes us poor amidst plenty. We feel left out, lonely and are more likely to give up on the dream that we can have a better life than our parents. While many work for more economic fairness, Your Money or Your Life helps us get out of this competitive game and helps us look more pragmatically at what would actually make our lives better. We shift from comparing ourselves to others to considering our real needs and desires. We shift from “more” to “enough” and ultimately get more of what money can’t buy. Priceless.<br/><br/>One tangible outcome of Financial Intelligence is getting out of debt and having at least six months of basic living expenses in the bank.<br/><br/>They stop buying their way out of problems and instead use such challenges as opportunities to learn new skills. Overall, they heal the split between their money and their life, and life becomes one integrated whole.<br/><br/>The perfect work life would offer enough challenge to be interesting. Enough ease to be enjoyable. Enough camaraderie to be nourishing. Enough solitude to be productive. Enough hours at work to get the job done. Enough leisure to feel refreshed. Enough service to feel needed. Enough silliness to have fun. And enough money to pay the bills . . . and then some.<br/><br/>Do we ask whether our classmates are fulfilled, living true to their values, or do we ask them where they work, what their positions are, where they live, what they drive and where they are sending their kids to college? These are the recognized symbols of success. Along with racism and sexism, our society has a form of caste system based on what you do for money. We call that jobism, and it pervades our interactions with one another on the job, in social settings and even at home.<br/><br/>Debt is one of our main shackles. Our levels of debt and our lack of savings make the nine-to-five routine mandatory. Between our mortgages, car financing and credit-card debts, we can’t afford to quit.<br/><br/>Somehow the consumer solution satisfied both the industrial hedonists hell-bent on achieving a material paradise and the puritans who feared that unoccupied leisure would lead to sin. In fact, the new consumerism promoted all the deadly sins (lust, covetousness, gluttony, pride, envy) except perhaps anger and sloth.<br/><br/>In 2006, advertising in the United States was a nearly $300 billion industry—roughly $1,000 for every U.S. citizen.<br/><br/>We need to shift from an ethic of growth to an ethic of sustainability, which will certainly require each one of us to transform our relationship with money and the material world. Transforming our relationship with money and reevaluating our earning and spending activity could put us and the global commons back on track.<br/><br/>There’s a very interesting place on this graph—it’s the peak. Part of the secret to life, it would seem, comes from identifying for yourself that point of maximum fulfillment. There is a name for this peak of the Fulfillment Curve, and it provides the basis for transforming your relationship with money. It’s a word we use every day, yet we are practically incapable of recognizing it when it’s staring us in the face. The word is “enough.” At the peak of the Fulfillment Curve we have enough (see Figure 1-3). Enough for our survival. Enough comforts. And even enough little “luxuries.” We have everything we need; there’s nothing extra to weigh us down, distract or distress us, nothing we’ve bought on time, have never used and are slaving to pay off. Enough is a fearless place. A trusting place. An honest and self-observant place. It’s appreciating and fully enjoying what money brings into your life and yet never purchasing anything that isn’t needed and wanted.<br/><br/>Clutter is anything that is excess—for you. It’s whatever you have that doesn’t serve you, yet takes up space in your world. To let go of clutter, then, is not deprivation; it’s lightening up and opening up space for something new to happen.<br/><br/>Indeed, some people would say that, once we’re above the survival level, the difference between prosperity and poverty lies simply in our degree of gratitude.<br/><br/>But if money is power, how do you account for the power of someone like Gandhi? The kind of power that freed India from the British had nothing to do with money, but with what Gandhi labeled satya-graha, or “soul force.” Money had no potency when faced with the indomitable will of Gandhi and his followers, people who lived a life of what we would call poverty and yet experienced irrepressible joy and exerted tremendous influence. While in our culture there is some validity to the notion that money is powerful, if we act from this myth we miss the many opportunities to exercise “soul power”—and are vastly weaker for the error.<br/><br/>What is the one consistently true statement we can make about money that will allow us to be clear, masterful and powerful in our relationship with it? Money is something we choose to trade our life energy for.<br/><br/>Life energy is all we have. It is precious because it is limited and irretrievable and because our choices about how we use it express the meaning and purpose of our time here on Earth.<br/><br/>John Stuart Mill once said, “Men do not desire to be rich, only to be richer than other men.” In other words, as soon as rich becomes available to the likes of us, it will no longer be rich.<br/><br/>Financial Independence is an experience of freedom at a psychological level. You are free from the slavery to unconsciously held assumptions about money, and free of the guilt, resentment, envy, frustration and despair you may have felt about money issues.<br/><br/>In The Millionaire Next Door the authors, Thomas J. Stanley and William D. Danko, note that people who have achieved a high net worth relative to income know how much they are spending on clothes, travel, housing, transportation, etc., and those who don’t achieve high net worth relative to income have no idea how much they spend. It’s a stark contrast.<br/><br/>As one wise person said, you can never get enough of what you don’t really want.<br/><br/>ask yourself the following questions:<br/>What did you want to be when you grew up?<br/>What have you always wanted to do that you haven’t yet done?<br/>What have you done in your life that you are really proud of?<br/>If you knew you were going to die within a year, how would you spend that year?<br/>What brings you the most fulfillment—and how is that related to money?<br/>If you didn’t have to work for a living, what would you do with your time?<br/><br/>In this step you evaluate your spending by asking three questions about the total spent in each of your subcategories: <br/>1. Did I receive fulfillment, satisfaction and value in proportion to life energy spent? <br/>2. Is this expenditure of life energy in alignment with my values and life purpose? <br/>3. How might this expenditure change if I didn’t have to work for a living?<br/><br/>George Bernard Shaw, so the story goes, once said to a society matron, “Madam, I’ll wager you would go to bed with me for five pounds.” She was instantly indignant. How could he think such a thing? He paused as if thinking and asked, “What if I offered you one hundred thousand pounds?” She hesitated—and her silence gave her away. “So,” Shaw said, “we aren’t arguing about the act, but merely about the price.” Money is an extremely compelling measure for all of us—even those dedicated to lofty ends.<br/><br/>And the Tao Te Ching, the ancient Chinese book of wisdom, puts it this way: “He who knows he has enough is rich.”<br/><br/>Waste lies not in the number of possessions but in the failure to enjoy them. Your success at being frugal is measured not by your penny-pinching but by your degree of enjoyment of the material world.<br/><br/>When Thorstein Veblen published The Theory of the Leisure Class in 1899, it didn’t make a big splash. But the term he coined, “conspicuous consumption,” has made it into the heart of our culture.<br/><br/>In the foreword to Veblen’s book, social commentator and writer Stuart Chase summarized his thesis this way: People above the line of base subsistence, in this age and all earlier ages, do not use the surplus, which society has given them, primarily for useful purposes. They do not seek to expand their own lives, to live more wisely, intelligently, understandingly, but to impress other people with the fact that they have a surplus . . . spending money, time and effort quite uselessly in the pleasurable business of inflating the ego.<br/><br/>If when I think “freedom” I think “travel,” what am I really looking for? What values or desires lie behind that core need? Often it’s novelty and stimulation and getting out of daily and sometimes deadening routines. It’s needing some aimlessness and idleness in contrast to my norm of purposefulness. It’s learning—new languages, cultures, facts. Meeting new people. A slower pace with less stress. Swimming in a different sea of assumptions, getting jolted out of narrow-mindedness. Tasting new foods. Indulging in a novel during a long flight. It’s being out of town and unavailable for all the meetings and decisions that tend to whittle down my store of daily joy. But do I need to travel to faraway places to experience these things? Remember, substitution as a frugality strategy isn’t about downgrading pleasure. It’s about ensuring that I get precisely what I am seeking at half the cost—or no cost at all. I’m not limiting myself (waaa!), I’m focusing myself (yum!). Freedom from my daily routines might involve letting go of rigid standards (let the house be less clean), some burdensome responsibilities (don’t always say yes to those requesting my help), and some entrenched habits (why not go out to eat with friends more often)? With rising gas prices, people are traveling locally—seeing the sights within a day’s drive—and discovering exotic people and places nearby. Staying closer to home also reveals some hidden treasures in your own backyard, or over the backyard fence—like your beautiful flower garden or your neighbor’s interesting stories. Stay put long enough and the details and delights of where you are become more evident. See, substitution isn’t deprivation, it’s about getting creative.<br/><br/>Michael Phillips and Catherine Campbell’s book, Simple Living Investments for Old Age,12 dispels the myth of aging as a decline into decrepitude and suggests four strategies for living well while living long. The first is to be active in pursuit of health (don’t just be a pill-popping, insurance-dependent senior). The second is to cultivate new friends, especially younger ones, and to participate in community—both of which remind you daily that you are alive and valued. The third is simplifying possessions while regarding inevitable changes within you and around you as the next adventure rather than the last straw. Finally, attend to traditional investments like owning a house and having enough—but not more than enough—income.<br/><br/>The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that it will cost the average American family approximately $200,000 to raise a child to the age of eighteen (not including any college expenses). Although the numbers are staggering, there are plenty of FI parents who are successfully reducing those costs. Let’s start with the biggest expense first: college. The book Frugal Living for Dummies has a solid section on how to reduce college costs. Among the recommendations: have your child take Advanced Placement or CLEP tests to get early college credits and thereby get through college quicker. The tests cost less than $100 and can save thousands of dollars per credit earned. With enough credits, your child could even enter college as a sophomore. He or she could also attend a community college for two years (taking advantage of the cheaper tuition) before transferring and graduating from a four-year school.<br/><br/>CHECKLIST: THINK BEFORE YOU SPEND 1. Don’t go shopping. 2. Live within your means. 3. Take care of what you have. 4. Wear it out. 5. Do it yourself. 6. Anticipate your needs. 7. Research value, quality, durability, multiple use and price. 8. Buy it for less. 9. Meet your needs differently. 10. Follow the steps of this program.<br/><br/>Benjamin Kline Hunnicutt, in Work Without End, illuminates the doctrine of “Full Employment”: Since the Depression, few Americans have thought of work reduction as a natural, continuous, and positive result of economic growth and increased productivity. Instead, additional leisure has been seen as a drain on the economy, a liability on wages, and the abandonment of economic progress.<br/><br/>So here we are in the twenty-first century. Our paid employment has taken on myriad roles. Our jobs now serve the function that traditionally belonged to religion: they are the place where we seek answers to the perennial questions “Who am I?” and “Why am I here?” and “What’s it all for?”<br/><br/>The real problem with work, then, is not that our expectations are too high. It’s that we have confused work with paid employment. Redefining “work” as simply any productive or purposeful activity, with paid employment being just one activity among many, frees us from the false assumption that what we do to put food on the table and a roof over our heads should also provide us with our sense of meaning, purpose and fulfillment. Breaking the link between work and money allows us to reclaim balance and sanity. Our fulfillment as human beings lies not in our jobs but in the whole picture of our lives—in our inner sense of what life is about, our connectedness with others and our yearning for meaning and purpose. By separating work and wages we bring together the different parts of ourselves and remember that our real work is just to live our values as best we know how. In fact, mistaking work for wages has meant that most of our “jobs” have gotten neither the attention nor the credit they deserve—jobs like loving our mates, being a decent neighbor or developing a sustaining philosophy of life. When we are whole, we don’t need to try to consume our way to happiness. Happiness is our birthright.<br/><br/>For the Greeks, leisure was the highest good, the essence of freedom—a time for self-development and for higher pursuits. Yet here we are in the early twenty-first century unable to really relax and enjoy our leisure. Even our language betrays us by calling it “time off” as though leisure were just a few minutes of recuperation before we’re back “on,” a once-again productive (i.e., real) human being. If we did not identify so strongly with what we do for money, we might honor and enjoy our leisure more. It’s okay to play.<br/><br/>He wants to do this not only for himself but for the larger community. He sees the small farmers disappearing. Every year the population in his part of the country goes down while the average age goes up. He wants to change that through his own example. Perhaps, he muses, young people could go to the city for ten years to become financially independent, return to the heartland with their cash needs taken care of and then regenerate subsistence farming and small-town living. Perhaps his small efforts could create a good life not only for his family but for other families and rural America as well.<br/><br/>Volunteers remind us about the best part of being human—precisely because they work for love, not money.<br/><br/>But while “inflation” may be a macroeconomic reality, this does not mean that it automatically rules your microeconomic life. Your choices, attitudes, beliefs, habits, tastes, fears and desires can have an enormous effect on your bottom line.<br/><br/>Treasury Bonds Treasury bonds are the ideal investment vehicle for FIers with a low risk tolerance because they protect principal, provide a steady stream of income and are relatively easy to understand. In addition, they are exempt from local and state taxes, can be bought and sold almost instantly with minimal handling charges, and are protected by the full faith and trust of the U.S. government.<br/><br/>CHECKLIST OF THINGS TO CONSIDER WHEN INVESTING 1. Is this investment in line with my values? 2. What are the federal, state and local tax implications of this investment for me? (Is it tax efficient for my income bracket or situation?) 3. How easily can I liquidate (sell out of) all or part of this investment? 4. What sales charges/penalties (if any) will I incur in getting into or out of this investment? 5. Does this provide the current/future income I need? 6. Does this provide overall diversification for my investments? 7. Is this investment in line with my tolerance for risk?<br/><br/>Whatever level your monthly expenses settle in at, you will want six times that amount readily available in a bank account or money market fund. You are not financially independent until you have a cushion to handle spikes in expenses."