This book will change your relationship with money for the better. You will use it for what it is meant to be.
I highly recommend that you read this book: Your Money or Your Life 9 Steps to Transforming Your Relationship with Money and Achieving Financial Independence by Vicki Robbin and Joe Dominguez
Working for a Living
In history, mankind go to work to make a living. However, in modern times, we unknowingly dedicate our lives in our work. We wake up early, prepare, commute and even after arriving at our house, we decompress from work. We even introduce ourselves as our profession or work. We do not say, I do plumbing but instead I am a plumber. It appears that instead of working for a living we are working for a dying.
Concept of enough
“If you live for having it all, what you have is never enough.”
― Vicki Robin, Your Money or Your Life
“He who knows he has enough is rich.”
― Vicki Robin, Your Money or Your Life
Our rate of satisfaction or fulfilment decreases from the material possessions we buy after we exceed the level of sufficiency. The fulfilment is greatest from survival up to comfort but diminishes when we acquire things for luxury. It is called fulfilment curve. Based on research, in America it is earning $75,000 per year. I can relate this to the Psychology of Money, savings = income less ego. There are purchases that after the survival and comfort, the reason for buying is for the perceived respect and admiration from other people.
Life Energy
“Money is something you trade your life energy for. You sell your time for money. It doesn’t matter that Ned over there sells his time for a hundred dollars and you sell yours for twenty dollars an hour. Ned’s money is irrelevant to you. The only real asset you have is your time. The hours of your life.”
― Vicki Robin, Your Money or Your Life
“Money is something we choose to trade our life energy for.”
― Vicki Robin, Your Money or Your Life
Money equals life energy. Life energy is time plus energy. Every time we buy material possessions we should compare its price to our hourly rate. If your hourly rate is $10 and the price of a camera is $1000, then the life energy equivalent of the camera is 100 hours. Is that worth it?
Guiding questions:
- “Did I receive fulfillment in proportion to the life energy spent?”
- “Is this expenditure of life energy aligned with my values?”
- “How might the expenditure change if I didn’t have to work for money?”
“Waste lies not in the number of possessions but in the failure to enjoy them.”
― Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin, Your Money or Your Life
“The key is remembering that anything you buy and don’t use, anything you throw away, anything you consume and don’t enjoy is money down the drain, wasting your life energy and wasting the finite resources of the planet. Any waste of your life energy means more hours lost to the rat race, making a dying. Frugality is the user-friendly and earth-friendly lifestyle.”
― Vicki Robin, Your Money or Your Life
Crossover point
The objective, just like on what was discussed in Rich Dad Poor Dad book, is to accumulate income generating businesses and investments like interest income, dividend, capital gains, rents and royalties. When the income from those income generating assets meet the monthly expenses, that is called cross over point. We should aim to reach that point of financial freedom.
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Quotes from the book
“Frugality is enjoying the virtue of getting good value for every minute of your life energy and from everything you have the use of.”
― Vicki Robin, Your Money or Your Life
“It is easier to tell our therapist about our sex life than it is to tell our accountant about our finances.”
― Vicki Robin, Your Money or Your Life
“put your life in service to your values rather than putting your time in service to money.”
― Vicki Robin, Your Money or Your Life
“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.”
― Vicki Robin, Your Money or Your Life
“four rules for getting off the diet-go-round: Eat when you’re hungry. Eat exactly what your body wants. Eat each bite consciously. Stop when your body has had enough.1 Very simple. All you have to do is be conscious”
― Vicki Robin, Your Money or Your Life
“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. Why else would we consider housewives second-class citizens? Or teachers lower status than doctors even though their desk-side manner with struggling students is far better than many doctors’ bedside manner with the ill and dying?”
― Vicki Robin, Your Money or Your Life
“The only real asset you have is your time. The hours of your life.”
― Vicki Robin, Your Money or Your Life
“As you take your eyes off the false prize (of more, better, and different stuff), you put them on the real prizes: friends, family, sharing, caring, learning, meeting challenges, intimacy, rest, and being present, connected, and respected. In other words, those best things in life that are free. Like all things natural, building this wealth takes time, attention, patience, and reciprocity (that volleying of giving and receiving that builds relationships).”
― Vicki Robin, Your Money or Your Life
“What kind of society turns its young people into a profit center for the debt industry?”
― Vicki Robin, Your Money or Your Life
“training away the money-wasting habits”
― Vicki Robin, Your Money or Your Life
“Consumption seems to be our favorite high, our nationally sanctioned addiction, the all-American form of substance abuse.”
― Vicki Robin, Your Money or Your Life
“You’ll flatten your debt and develop a natural resistance to spending more than you have for things you don’t want to impress people you don’t like (to paraphrase Robert Quillen).”
― Vicki Robin, Your Money or Your Life
“A 2015 US Federal Reserve Board report found that 47 percent of Americans would have to borrow money or sell something to cover a $400 emergency expense.”
― Vicki Robin, Your Money or Your Life
“Endless desire is one of the pitfalls of human nature, and one of the first things you need to cure if you want to get ahead more quickly.”
― Vicki Robin, Your Money or Your Life
“Money is not really the thing you’re after—after all, would you lock yourself in a dark, silent box forever in exchange for becoming a billionaire?”
― Vicki Robin, Your Money or Your Life
“happiness increases heart health, strengthens the immune system, combats stress, reduces aches and pains, reduces chronic illness, and lengthens our lives.”
― Vicki Robin, Your Money or Your Life
“Did you ever think about that?” Joe would ask. “That you have a relationship with money?” He’d get on his knees, begging money to love him. He’d exhibit mock terror, shrinking from the evil hundred-dollar bill. He’d hold it out like a carrot and run around after it, reaching but never grasping it. “This is what your relationship with money looks like! Think about it. If you were money, would you hang out with you?”
― Vicki Robin, Your Money or Your Life
“Don’t ask yourself what the world needs, ask yourself what makes you come alive, and then go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive. —Howard Thurman, philosopher and theologian”
― Vicki Robin, Your Money or Your Life
“One day a young girl watched her mother prepare a ham for baking. At one point the daughter asked, “Mom, why did you cut off both ends of the ham?” “Well, because my mother always did,” said the mother. “But why?” “I don’t know—let’s go ask Grandma.” So they went to Grandma’s and asked her, “Grandma, when you prepared the ham for baking, you always cut off both ends—why did you do that?” “My mother always did it,” said Grandma. “But why?” “I don’t know—let’s go ask Great-grandma.” So off they went to Great-grandma’s. “Great-grandma, when you prepared the ham for baking, you always cut off both ends—why did you do that?” “Well,” Great-grandma said, “the pan was too small.” Just as we can get caught in outmoded habit-patterns passed down through generations, we can also get trapped by our habitual thinking just as much as—and just as erroneously as—people who maintained until recently that the earth was visibly and verifiably flat. We also get stuck in unconscious and invisible boxes that limit our ability to think in new ways.”
― Vicki Robin, Your Money or Your Life
“Passion, pain, what’s at hand—these are doorways to finding a purpose beyond material acquisition.”
― Vicki Robin, Your Money or Your Life
“But hey, what’s another $20,000 when I have a full-time job?”
― Vicki Robin, Your Money or Your Life
“Waste lies not in the number of possessions but in the failure to enjoy them.”
― Vicki Robin, Your Money or Your Life