Your Money or Your Life – How to Alter Your Mindset To Money

Your Money or Your Life

Your Money or Your Life (1992) is a nine-step guide to gaining control of your finances so you can live life rather than just make a living. You’ll discover how to change your attitude toward money and time, get out of debt, start saving, and eventually achieve Financial Independence.

Your money or your life 9 steps

1. The money trap: the old money road map
2. Money isn’t what it used to be, and it never was.
3. Where is it all going?
4. How much is enough? The nature of fulfilment
5. The American dream on a shoestring
6. For love or money: valuing your life energy
7. Work and income
8. The crossover point: the pot of gold at the end of the wall chart
9. Now that you’ve got it, what are you going to do with it?

Your Money or Your Life – How this book came to be

This book is not founded on theory, sound reasoning, or a novel philosophy. It is the result of 50 years of combined experience in living the principles presented here (30 years for Joe Dominguez and 20 years for Vicki Robin). This book did not just happen; it evolved.

Joe Dominguez was a successful Wall Street financial analyst before retiring at the age of 31, vowing never to accept payment for any of his work again.

Vicki Robin graduated from Brown University with honors and later left a promising career in film and theater in New York.

Her open mind enabled her to see the value in Joe’s new money road map and apply it to her own life.

He and Vicki Robin founded the New Road Map Foundation, an all-volunteer, non-profit organization dedicated to promoting a humane and sustainable future for our planet.

On January 11, 1997, Joe Dominguez passed away. His work and message live on in the lives of program participants all over the world.

Your Money or Your Life – Why should you read this book?

The fundamental philosophy

The book begins by discussing the typical lifestyle of people in our society: working long hours, feeling stressed, not seeing their families. All to support a luxurious lifestyle and material possessions. Does this sound familiar? If that’s the case, this book is for you.

The book then discusses how valuable our time is, how little of it we have, and how we are exchanging our lives for money to buy possessions. If this transaction does not satisfy you, they recommend that you reduce your living expenses, increase your income, invest the difference, and retire early.

Your Money or Your Life is filled with examples, stories, and personal experiences from people who have followed their nine-step program to financial independence.

Ask yourself these questions:

• Do you have enough money?
• Are you spending enough time with family and friends?
• Do you come home from your job full of life?
• Do you have time to participate in things you believe are worthwhile?
• If you were laid off from your job, would you see it as an opportunity?
• Are you satisfied with the contribution you have made to the world?
• Are you at peace with money?
• Does your job reflect your values?
• Do you have enough savings to see you through six months of normal living expenses?
• Is your life whole? Do all the pieces — your job, your expenditures, your relationships, your values — fit together?

If you answered ‘no’ to any of these questions, keep reading.

Your Money or Your Life’s goal is to change your relationship with money. That relationship includes not only your earnings, spending, debts, and savings, but also the time these functions take up in your life. Furthermore, your relationship with money is reflected in the sense of fulfillment and satisfaction you can derive from your connections to your family, community, and the planet.

Your Money or Your Life – What to anticipate from this book

• We know some of the ways people’s lives have been enriched by following the program in this book from the hundreds of letters we’ve received.
• They have finally grasped the fundamentals of money.
• They reconnect with old dreams and find ways to make them come true.
• They learn to distinguish between the essentials and the excess in all aspects of their lives, and how to unburden themselves, with a great sense of freedom and relief.
• Their relationships with their friends and children improve.
• Their new financial integrity helps to resolve many internal conflicts between their values and their lifestyles.
• Money is no longer an issue in their lives, and they finally have the intellectual and emotional space to address more pressing issues.
• On a practical level, they are able to retire their debts, increase their savings, and live happily within their means.
• They increase their ‘free time’ by cutting back on expenses and working less hours.
• They stop trying to buy their way out of problems and instead view them as opportunities to learn new skills.
• Overall, they heal the schism between money and life, and life becomes one integrated whole.

Your Money or Your Life – Who Should Read It?

Everyone should read it, in my opinion. Despite the fact that it is marketed as a personal finance book, it answers much deeper questions than “How do I save more?”

We all learn certain money stigmas as we grow up, which leads to unhealthy spending and earning habits.

This book debunks all of these myths and teaches us why and how to treat all of our purchases as a trade of our life energy – that is, the time we spend earning money. It’s not so much about personal finance as it is about making our lives more deliberate, meaningful, and, yes, productive, because after reading this, you won’t be able to spend another minute on things that push you towards dying rather than living.

Your money or your life summary

To maintain financial security, you must understand how you spend your time. You also require income outside of your job. Financial independence entails developing a source of income that is distinct from how most people get money and pay their bills.

Work is essential in people’s lives. It gives them a sense of self and purpose, but it can also deprive them of time with their friends and family. Americans typically work more than 40 hours per week; factor in commuting time, and there are few waking hours left for anyone to be “human.”

Despite their efforts, most Americans have not saved much money. People are now saving less and owing more than ever before. This way of life is exhausting, stressful, and detrimental to your health, relationships, and family. What motivates you to work so hard?

To obtain more than you require in order to be happy. Consumerism destroys the environment as well as individual lives and mental health. The growing disparity between the haves and have-nots is a recipe for disaster because it is not sustainable in the long run; there will come a time when we won’t be able to sustain our consumption levels due to environmental issues like climate change, which can’t be fixed quickly enough or at all without radical changes in lifestyle habits across society—and those aren’t likely any time soon! Humans are wired (hard-wired) for imminent danger, but they struggle to put things into perspective, such as impending global crises; they’re simply not prepared for that kind of thing.

A common misconception is that money can solve all problems. If you believe that “more is better,” you will never be satisfied with what you have. On a larger scale, this concept translates into society’s belief in unending growth and an ever-expanding market. These ideas have transformed “citizens” into consumers who see consumption as their right, despite the fact that consumables deplete the earth’s resources. In reality, everyone must live within his or her means (budget), so acting accordingly makes sense. In three parts, summarize your money or your life.

Making Peace with the Past

The first step is to assess your attitudes toward money and what it can buy. Human nature prefers to stick to familiar routines, including routine thoughts.

It doesn’t help that advertising constantly convinces you that you need more. It’s so easy to get caught up in the race for more stuff that you don’t even notice when you’ve had “enough,” and you just keep accumulating. When you reach a point of sufficiency, the things you accumulate only complicate and impede your life. At some point, we have enough of what we need and want, as well as the luxuries we want – perhaps not so much that managing them all is stressful, but enough.

Being Present – Keeping Track of Your Life Energy

We all have a concept of money. It’s a medium of exchange that pays our bills. Budgets, credit cards, investments, and bargains are also on our minds.

Our feelings and family influences shape our ideas. For some, money represents security; for others, it represents power or social approval. Financial independence means having enough money to live on without worrying about running out.

Calculate how much time and money you spend on work-related activities to gain a better understanding of your relationship with money. Begin by adding up the number of hours you spend at work each week, followed by commuting time, childcare costs, shopping for work clothes, and so on. Consider how much “life energy” is expended in keeping up with what everyone else has (keeping up with the Joneses). You can gain financial integrity by calculating your true hourly wage and meticulously tracking every cent you spend.

The start of a new financial road map

There is a word that can help you transform your relationship with money. We use it every day, but we are practically incapable of recognizing it when it is right in front of us.

‘Enough’ is the word. Enough to ensure our survival. Enough solaces. There are also enough ‘luxuries.’ We have everything we need; we don’t need anything else. It is fully appreciating and enjoying what money brings into your life while never purchasing anything that is not required or desired.

So, what’s the point of all that? It’s anything that doesn’t serve you but takes up space in your life.

Clutter! Getting rid of clutter isn’t deprivation; it’s lightening up and making room for something new to happen. Enough of a broad, stable plateau. It is a place of vigilance, creativity, and liberation. Being suffocated under a mountain of clutter that must be stored, cleaned, moved, disposed of, and paid for on time.

Publisher’s Summary

All-new for 2018: A completely revised edition of one of the most influential books on personal finance ever written, with over a million copies sold.

“The best book on money. Period.” (Founder of Millennial Money Grant Sabatier on CNBC Make It)

“This is a wonderful book. It can really change your life.” (Oprah)

Your Money or Your Life has been considered the go-to book for reclaiming your life by changing your relationship with money for over 25 years. Hundreds of thousands of people have followed Vicki Robin’s nine-step program, learning to live more deliberately and meaningfully.

This fully revised and updated edition, with a foreword by “the Frugal Guru” (The New Yorker) Mr. Money Mustache, ensures that its time-tested wisdom applies to people of all ages and covers modern topics such as investing in index funds, managing revenue streams such as side hustles and freelancing, tracking your finances online, and having difficult conversations about money.

Your money or your life will teach you how to do the following

• Get out of debt and start saving.
• Reduce your clutter and live well for less.
• Invest your savings and start building wealth.
• Reorganize material priorities and live well for less
• Problems can be turned into opportunities to learn new skills.
• Obtain a complete way of life and
• Save the planet while saving money

The Crossover Point is a key concept in the book. This is how it works:

• Track your living expenses on a graph and try to reduce them as much as possible to lower the line on your graph.
• Track your income and try to increase it above your living expenses.
• Take the difference between your income and your expenses and invest it.

Watch your investment income rise on your graph until it crosses over your living expenses — the Crossover Point.

Critic Reviews

“Vicki Robin wrote the book on retiring happy. Now a whole new generation is taking her advice. [She is] the millenial money whisperer.” (Money Magazine)

“Vicki Robin’s Your Money or Your Life offers readers the gift of meaningful, applicable advice so that they can achieve true financial independence on their terms. It is deservedly one of the most acclaimed and referenced financial advice books of our time and will undoubtedly continue that legacy for generations.” (Farnoosh Torabi, best-selling financial author and host of the award-winning podcast So Money)

Publisher’s Summary

Vicki Robin is a well-known innovator, writer, and public speaker. Robin has been at the forefront of the sustainable living movement in addition to coauthoring the best-selling Your Money or Your Life. She has received awards from Co-Op America and Sustainable Northwest, and she was featured in the book Visionaries: People and Ideas to Change Your Life, published by Utne Magazine.

She also wrote Blessing the Hands That Feed Us: What Eating Closer to Home Can Teach Us About Food, Community, and Our Place on Earth. She lives on Washington’s Whidbey Island.

Joe Dominguez (1938-1997) was a successful Wall Street financial analyst who retired at the age of thirty-one by following the nine-step program he devised for himself. He taught this formula for many years and preserved it in Your Money or Your Life for future generations. Since 1969, he has been a full-time volunteer, donating all of his teaching profits to transformational projects.

Your money or your life quotes

1. If you live for having it all, what you have is never enough.― Vicki Robin
2. Americans used to be ‘citizens.’ Now we are ‘consumers.― Vicki Robin, Your Money or Your Life
3. Waste lies not in the number of possessions but in the failure to enjoy them.― Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin
4. 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
5. He who knows he has enough is rich.― Vicki Robin
6. 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
7. Money is something we choose to trade our life energy for.― Vicki Robin
8. 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
9. Once we’re above the survival level, the difference between prosperity and poverty lies simply in our degree of gratitude.― Vicki Robin
10. 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

Frequently Asked Questions on your money or your life

What is the book Your Money or Your Life About?

Your Money or Your Life (1992) is a nine-step guide to gaining control of your finances so you can live life rather than just make a living. You’ll discover how to change your attitude toward money and time, get out of debt, start saving, and eventually achieve Financial Independence.

What does your money or your life mean?

“Your Money or Your Life” (YMYL) pages are a Google term that refers to pages that Google believes may have an impact on “the future happiness, health, financial stability, or safety of users.”

Is your money or your life still relevant?

It’s more important than ever in these times to understand the difference between making a living and making a life. Your Money or Your Life is even more relevant today than it was when it first hit the shelves, and a great publicity campaign will introduce this already popular book to a whole new audience.

Who is the author of the book Your Money or Your Life?

Vicki Robin

Joseph R. Dominguez

What is Your Money Your Life content?

Your Money or Your Life Content (YMYL)

Your Money or Your Life (YMYL) content is information that, if presented incorrectly, untruthfully, or deceptively, has the potential to directly impact the reader’s happiness, health, safety, or financial stability.

When was your money or your life published?

It was published in the year 1992

Conclusion on your money or your life

You’re well on your way to reclaiming the power you’ve given to money — and money experts. You are prepared to be a responsible, loving, and knowledgeable steward of your life energy. Our greatest hope is that you will apply these steps to your own finances and devote your life energy to addressing the challenges that our species and planet are facing. We wish you the best of luck.