- Your Money or Your Life
With 20+ years in the financial services industry, I’ll say, quite honestly, it’s been a while since I’ve read a self-help book on money management. However, when Sue credited Your Money or Your Life by Vicki Robin, Joe Dominguez and Monique Tilford, with guiding her out of bankruptcy, I was curious.
The book’s subtitle is 9 Steps to Transforming Your Relationship With Money and Achieving Financial Independence. Certainly, the how-to figure out your net worth, your expenses, your income, sets out a logical path and most likely, if you are disciplined to stick with it, you will achieve independence. It’s not a get-rich quick scheme and it does include discussions about aligning values and purpose with how earn your living and how you spend those earnings.
I found the discussion on expenses refreshing. Instead of the standard, “cut out the luxuries” and “cut out the lattes” advice, the authors recommend you decide whether any discretionary expenditure will bring you true satisfaction. To make this decision, you first figure out your actual hourly wage rate. This isn’t simply the net pay from your pay stub divided by the hours worked. The authors want you to consider hidden costs such as commuting, dining and clothing, which inevitably lower that hourly wage. Once you have that figure, you can evaluate a new purchase in terms of the number of hours you’ll have to work to pay for it and whether that fits in with life goals.
What I liked about this approach is that it is non-judgmental and very objective. It doesn’t dismiss certain expenses as frivolous or extravagant. For me, it creates a conscious decision-making process that means I don’t have to feel guilty about a mocha latte or a pedicure splurge.
The authors do advocate tracking all your expenses to the penny. That’s something that Sue still does diligently and says she probably will do for the rest of her life. I couldn’t see myself doing this. I was thinking how tedious this would be when I realized that I am a Quicken user and since I pay for almost everything with plastic, downloading the transactions to Quicken, I do have most of this information already. That did prompt me to set up a monthly expenditure report and net worth report in Quicken and I have cut two monthly expenses that I realized I really didn’t want.
It also got me thinking about income – I work part-time and freelance and supplement that income from my savings. Seeing my savings go down each month does make me feel pressured and the stock market slide in 2008 didn’t help so I would love to generate more income. At the same time, I have two teenagers at home and really value being able to be home after school. All things considered, I’ve decided to add GoogleAds to this blog. I’m skeptical that it will generate much income but it’s a possibility and like all things blogging related, there’s is a learning curve and the sooner I start on that, the better. Since it costs me nothing to participate, and it might help build traffic, it’s worth a try.
By the time I’d finished the book, I’d concluded YMOYL has something to offer everyone. For the newly-single woman, who hasn’t handled the finances before or who perhaps hasn’t done it for a long time, the book is a great place to start. There are also seminars available around the country that could be helpful. For anyone working their way out of debt, it provides a solid framework to follow. For the recently divorced woman facing a change in her financial situation, YMOYL walks you through evaluating where changes could be possible. Just as we’re all encouraged to have a regular health check-up, a financial check-up is also beneficial and like me, you may come away with a fresh perspective.
If you’ve already read YMOYL what did you think? Did you like it? Hate it? Is there any tip that’s been a keeper for you?
