Who doesn’t like a blast from their past? Recently, Vicki Robin, co-author of Your Money or Life has been in the press discussing the updated version of the 1992 classic Your Money Or Your Life.
For me, this book sparked my imagination and inspired me after reading just a few pages when I came across it in the library in 1997. Retrospectively, I realized how I missed this book when it first came out because we were pretty busy raising very young children while keeping a job that required overnight travel.
Bottom Line #1. I’ll cut right to the chase. Read the recent article on what all of this FIRE hubbub is all about.
I was approaching the threshold of what some people call a mid-life crisis. This was not about going off the deep end and going out and going out and buying a Chevy Corvette. For one, I’m not a Chevy guy, and two, the 1998 Corvette model year, to me, was uninspiring. I did, however, ask myself the age-old question: Is this all there is? (Recent college grads will first experience this feeling about 1.5 years into your first job out of school and your youthful exuberance will carry you through it easily).
I wanted to engineer my own “re-invention” on my own terms and didn’t know how to change my tact and focus until I read this book. This book changed my approach to the modern American way of hunting and gathering through consumerism. It changed how I wanted to spend my time. Like it or not, there’s no way to make more time. My only regret is that I did not find this book sooner, like in my mid-twenties. Several of the concepts became the foundation of a personal business plan that still runs today. If my place of employment has a business plan, why can’t I do the same for myself?
The book,will be a pretty quick read for some, a reference for others, and for the curious and motivated few, it will start you down your own path of research and execution. My favorite concept that I still use today to rationalize a purchase is to do a very quick calculation of how many hours I have to work to purchase a non-essential item. For example, I was in the the market for a new TV to replace an old tube version that weighs about 200+ lbs. I’ll have to work about 40 hours at my job to earn the money to buy this thing outright. Do I want to spend 40 hours working (life energy cost) to procure a new TV? Hmm, let me think about that, or better yet, wait until after the Super Bowl and find one on sale and knock down my life energy cost, down to 25-30 hours.
That Corvette I mentioned previously, today, that 2020 Stingray looks pretty menacing to me in a very appealing way. I’ll have to work well over 10,000+ hours to save the money to buy it so it can sit in my garage. Do I really want to spend 50+ weeks working for a depreciating asset? Ah, No!
If I banked that cash or invested in an S&P Fund and put it to work, I can take a year off work and live along a sunny and warm ocean learning how to Kite Surf! The point is, the money you earn provides you with options that you can influence and control. It puts accountability in your back pocket. Your Money Our Your Life will help you write your personal business plan, and this blog has some of those tools to help.
Pick up the book online or head to the library and borrow it for free. Don’t only read it, apply a few of the basic ideas.
Bottom Line Line #2.
There are no short cuts. One has to do the work to get results that you are looking for. One has to decide to do the work and then take the first steps to start the work.
Bottom Line #3.
I didn’t know anything about personal finance or even how to start spending and saving effectively until I finished this book. Your Money Or Your Life provided three necessary lessons for me.
a. It demonstrated that anyone can learn and easily apply this stuff.
b. It provided the first set of basic tools and ideas to get started.
c. It’s never to late to start. At age 37, I wish I had found this book five years earlier when it first came.
