Book Review: Your Money or Your Life

Throughout the years, feedback from individuals continued to underscore the idea that this course was not simply about retiring early but about thinking in new ways.

~ Prologue, Your Money or Your Life

Update: This review was included in the Forethought Edition of the Festival of Frugality #280 at Penniless Parenting. Thank You!

This book has become a personal finance classic with a bit of a cult following. It first came out in 1992, but a new edition was released in 2008. With Phase I of the financial crisis unfolding at the time, I guess it just looked as if we really needed it again.

The book was originally written by Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin. It was based on principles that Joe used to retire at age 31. While Joe unfortunately died in 1997, Vicki worked with Monique Tilford on this updated version of the book . Here are some of the major themes:

9 Steps

The book offers “9 steps to transforming your relationship with money and achieving financial independence“. Most people like books that include steps. They hope to achieve some substantial goal by following a clearly defined sequence of actions. They hope it will make attaining the goal faster and easier.

These aren’t really those kinds of steps. Don’t get me wrong. The steps are clearly outlined in the book. It’s just that they’re not quite as concrete as some might like, and they certainly wouldn’t be easy for all of us to implement.

The point here is to get us to think about money and our relationship with it differently. That’s easier said than done, but the authors do a great job giving us a shove in the right direction with plenty of case studies and real life examples. Major changes in perspective don’t come quickly or easily, but can be well worth the effort.

Sustainability

The idea that we are, both individually and collectively, limited by a finite quantity of resources is a thread that’s woven throughout this book. We have only so many natural resources on our planet. Oil, metals, trees, and food are not unlimited. Nor are health, money, or life itself. We have only so many years in which to realize our goals and dreams and only so many hours a day in which we can earn income.

“Waste lies not in the number of possessions, but in the failure to enjoy them“. Frugality is about value, not quantity. It’s OK to have a lot of stuff if you truly enjoy every item to its fullest. The problem today, say the authors, is that we have become a society of consuming more faster. Consumption is a form of destruction rather than creation and we are not replacing our resources in order to make them last.

Do the Math

While a great deal of this book emphasizes ethereal (and unfortunately endangered) concepts like integrity, accountability, sustainability, and responsible stewardship of both our life energy and earth’s resources, there’s plenty of hard core but simple financial math here. The authors go into great detail on how to tabulate your net worth, track your spending, save money, and invest for the future.

Here’s another book that goes on and on about how budgeting doesn’t work and then turns around and spills a great deal of ink on how to track every penny you spend. If I had one bone to pick with this book, that might be the one. But it’s by no means a deal-breaker, and maybe I’m just not getting what they’re trying to say.

The Golden Mean

Here’s a concept that’s near and dear to the Balance Junkie manifesto. The Golden Mean has many definitions and implications, but for our purposes, it basically connotes the virtue of balance. How much is enough? This is a question that pops up throughout the book, and the authors take great pains to distinguish between frugality and self-denial.

Your Money or Your Life is about integrating the concept of money into your life as a whole so that you don’t necessarily need to view your years on this earth as a choice between the two. One of the persistent themes here at Balance Junkie is the idea that your financial balance sheet is only one part of Your Life Balance Sheet.

My 2 Cents

I guess the bottom line of a book review should tell you whether the book is worth your time or not. I wouldn’t be so presumptuous as to make that decision for you. But I can tell you that I’ve read and heard about people who have said that this book literally changed their lives. That’s no small claim and reason enough to pick it up and give it a chance. It’s not long, but very high on the valuable information : words ratio.

I didn’t really find this book life-altering myself. Maybe that’s because I had already considered and come to grips with a lot of the ideas presented. But if I had read it at a different time in my life, or if I had a different personality make-up, I could definitely see how this book might shake your tree a bit. Either way, it did make me think and I always love a book that can do that!

If I had to sum up Your Money or Your Life, I would say that it’s a nice, but kind of odd balance between a financial planning seminar and a speech by a New Age guru. It’s sort of like balancing your cheque book while listening to California Dreaming in the background. It’s not expensive, and who knows? Maybe it will change your life.

Have you read this book? How would you describe it? Does it sound like you might want to read it?