Book Review: Your Money or Your Life
The major earth-rattling revelation in Your Money or Your Life: Transforming Your Relationship with Money and Achieving Financial Independence by Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin is that money is something we choose to trade our very finite life energy for, i.e.:
Money = Life Energy
I know it sounds like a lot of hippy-dippy, new-agey pablum, but the authors back up their thesis in the pages that follow. They also ask you to calculate your real hourly wage vs. what’s written on paper:
Most people look at this life-energy/earnings ration in an unrealistic and inadequate way: “I earn $440 a week, I work 40 hours a week, so I trade one hour of life energy for $11.”
It’s not likely to be that simple.
Think of all the ways you use your life energy that are directly related to your money-earning employment. Think of all the monetary expenses that are directly associated with the job. In other words, if you didn’t need the money-earning job, what time expenditures and monetary expenses would disappear from your life?
Subtracting the costs of commuting, “costuming” (i.e. your work clothes), meals, recreational activities for you to decompress from work, vacations and expensive playthings, job-related illness, and other job-related expenses from your usual pay, your real hourly wage is likely to be a lot lower than what you think you are getting. So you might be selling an hour of your life energy for $4, rather than the apparent $11.
The corollary figure is also interesting. In this example, every dollar you spend represents 15 minutes of your life. Think of that figure next time you’re shelling out your money for yet another gazingus pin1. Ask: Is this item worth 120 minutes of my life energy?
And, if you’re one of the millions of people who are merely “making a dying,” as Dominguez and Robin put it, and the amount of money you’re spending is inversely proportional to how fulfilled you feel, then it’s time to reevaluate the time and expenses incurred to maintaining a lifestyle that consumer culture says matches your job. Another question to ask: Are you willing to accept a job that pays $4 per hour (or whatever you’ve calculated in that last step)? Could pursuing your real desires and goals actually SAVE you money, while improving your health, sense of well-being, and relationships with others?
Then, to evaluate your spending, the authors suggest asking three questions:
1. Did I receive fulfillment, satisfaction, and value in proportion to life energy spent?
2. Is this expenditure of life energy in alignment with my values and life purpose?
3. How might this expenditure change if I didn’t have to work for a living?
These steps, and the others listed in the book (which, if you haven’t already guessed, I heartily recommend reading), may lead you to conclude that spending money in ways that might bring superficial happiness, but don’t contribute to lasting fulfillment or support your values, is actually frittering your finite life energy. Questioning whether your actions are in line with your values will also help you clarify your life’s purpose and lead to a greater sense of satisfaction, wholeness, and integrity. Cavorting with goats and other assorted livestock on a kibbutz in Utah fit in better with your overarching purpose in life? Trade in your briefcase for a feed sack and more power to you.
Okay, so the book can get a little kumbaya-ya on you, but you’ll find very little in it that isn’t the God’s honest truth about the way we live, work, and most importantly, spend.
Goats, regretfully, are not included.
1A “gazingus pin,” according to the authors, is anything that you can’t pass by without buying. They’re usually the little tchotchkes placed closest to the cash registers, from “pocket calculators and tiny screwdrivers to pens and chocolate kisses.”
Frances said,
February 26, 2007 at 3:36 pm
I’m curious to know whether you’re actually following the steps, or just reading for advice, revelations, etc. I’m nearly done with my first read of the book, and trying to decide how many, if any, of the steps I want to do, and how practical they will be at this point in my life (i.e., just moved to rural AZ from NYC, gardening, freelancing, not doing too much “making a dying,” or spending, for that matter).
Not that simply reading the book is such a terrible way to go, but their arguments can be so…alluring.
This Single Spark said,
February 26, 2007 at 5:56 pm
Here’s a plug. I went to college from ‘95-97. In ‘98, I was working at an NGO making the fabulous intern wage of $10 an hour (and wondering why I gave up the glamour of working in a bookstore for only slightly less). I read this book on work time (hey, there weren’t paying me enough to work hard) and actually did what the authors recommended. Within two years, I paid off my $11,000 student loan and still managed to have a life. Of course, I’m now back in school and racking up debt again, so perhaps it’s time to revisit this book. Anyway, I thought it was fantastic and it really helped me get my finances under control. Read it, read it, read it!
green la girl said,
February 27, 2007 at 1:53 am
I read this book a while back, and it’s what really made me more skeptical about what people said about not being able to afford living near where they worked (and thus drove to the suburbs instead). If you count the hours spent commuting — not to mention the money spent on gas these days — the costs of living in a suburb really skyrocket, unless you actually work in said suburb. It’s one of those things that our capitalist culture encourages one NOT to think about –
Emdashes said,
February 27, 2007 at 1:24 pm
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The Worsted Witch » Tips for the Frugal, Luxurious Life said,
August 29, 2008 at 2:56 pm
[...] asked me if Frugal Luxuries, which I quoted from earlier, trod the same ground as Your Money or Your Life—it almost seemed that way in the beginning, but as Tracey McBride began to neatly (and [...]