Your money or your life....

[mamaofthree]

have you read this book? if so what did you think?

so far i am about 1/2 way thru it. i have a couple issues with some of the things they talk about in the book, maybe it is because i don't see that i have a problem in these areas.
1.) if you vacation it means you are unhappy with your life and/or job. that is the impression i have gotten so far from the book. not that we vacation, but i don't see it as a bad thing to do if you enjoy traveling and you don't mind spending your life energy on it.
2.) i think that some "gazingus pins" are not bad, or maybe i haven't gotten far enough in the book yet to see that... but i would say the thing that gets us month after month is buying high quality, organic, local food for the family. it is in alignment with my values and i don't mind spending my life energy on it... except we don't have enough money for it so it screw up everything.
3.) we don't shop alot or use credit cards (we got rid of them years ago.) we do have a home depot card so we could get a new hot water heater because our broke and was leaking water everywhere. lol so some of this makes no sense to me. we have to older cars, we both work part time, and we try to live our ideals. i am not sure what i am getting from this except an obsession with counting all my pennies and making wall charts. but maybe that is what i am suppose to do.
4.) they say you don't need to understand why you need to do all the steps, you just need to do them. well, why? shouldn't i know why i am doing all of this, or understand why i am doing all of this?
5.) they seem to focus on getting rich in some areas of the book. like you will double your income... i was thinking this book would be different. i don't want to get a book on how to get rich. but then maybe that is my "issue" i need to work on. lol

ok that is all for now, must keep reading.

h

[ambersrose]

I read the book five years ago and all I remember is that it is a book on simple living. I never ever take one persons formula and use it in its entirety so I must have skipped over or ignored the "do everything we say even if you dont understand it" part. My advice is to take what you like from the book and ignore the rest.

[Juvysen]

[PPK]

I've read about 3/4 of the book and saved the last portion regarding investment strategies for when I have all my EF's saved and am ready for that step..also, I'm not sure I'll take such a conservative strategy as they suggest for investments.

I've followed the plan exactly (even estimating my life's earnings, etc), and I feel like its completely helped change my views and groundedness when it comes to money.

To answer some of your questions:

1. We love to travel, but always do it 'on a shoestring'. We've always been like this though and its because we love to camp, hike, and visit new places for the summer. However, we own an older RV, and rent our place out for the summer (we work on teacher's schedules). So really, we don't spend much for 5-8 weeks away!

I think he's referring to working a job you don't like 50 weeks a year and then trying to cram in some rest at a 10-day resort vacation over Christmas break YKWIM?

2. I don't count health foods as gazingus pins, although, this is my only real weak spot every month and so I've really cut back to "just the necessities". I don't eat meat so that helps, and cut down on any processed, convenience health-foods (except for the days I work, because it saves me time and *I'm a self-employed contractor so the hours I work I make more than I'd save by cooking from scratch.*

I think health is a priority, for all the obvious reasons. If you want to reduce it to financial terms I think of it as an investment now to help save yourself costly issues in the future..terrible rational, but we're on the topic of money

3. I've grown to like counting my pennies every month

This step of daily recording has kept me focused and *consistent* in terms of getting a handle on my financial reality instead of letting things slide and being in the dark about where my money is/has gone.

4 I think understanding them is good. For me its to give a detailed account of my spending and life priorities..plain and simple! Just like a balance sheet of a company.

5 I definatley haven't taken away the idea of getting wealthy from it, but instead improving my quality of life by not being so pinned down to a job by reducing my unconcious spending and working towards goals that will liberate me even more on that level.

I've been tracking and charting for 6 months and I've paid off all debt and getting started saving now. I really like this plan alot. I've been looking at a bit of Dave Ramsey's stuff too, but mainly stick to YMOYL. They (YMOYL) have a forum too if you google it, I don't think its very active, but perusing there was good for some insights!

Good Luck!

[enfpintj]

I really agree with ppk's explanations.

I do not think you need to follow completely the steps unless you are the kind of person who needs too. We used it for a frame of reference and a reframing of my ideas about money = life energy. We also went to a simplicity study group based on it for almost 2 years and that helped as we started in this lifestyle.

We did not chart, but tracked every penny. We did not follow the investment advice.

I think the fact that you both work only part time and live your ideals be that traveling or eating organic means that you already are spending your life energy on what you choose which is the whole premise of the book as far as I am concerned. You choosing, not blindly racing along. We always said we wanted to make conscious decisions, and we do. The book is a good resource for learning how to do that. I always recommend it even though we didn't follow it and picked and chose from it.

oh, if eating organic is screwing things up every month then you may need to think how it falls in line with all your other values if one of those is a sound financial life. I would love to eat organic, but it is not as high a priority for me as financial independence and we have structured our life around that. I think it is all about prioritizing. My dh just said it is about optimizing, not prioritizing. I think the difference went over my head.

[mamaofthree]

i do like the money= life energy, that makes total sense to me. in fact it is worth reading the book to learn this. i could have used this book years ago, lol. but in the last few years we have really made changes, and honestly, although things are tight we are living on 1/3 less income then we did last year, and are doing pretty good. (i do have my freak out moments, that is why i picked up the book from the library) i have heard about this book from a few people i know irl, and it really seemed to be something that changed their life, so i thought i would give it a read.
i think i just need to keep reading. i tend to get this way about new info... i fight it, mull it over, and then have a "light bulb" moment and then make the changes. lol

h

[annethcz]

Originally Posted by enfpintj

I think the fact that you both work only part time and live your ideals be that traveling or eating organic means that you already are spending your life energy on what you choose which is the whole premise of the book as far as I am concerned. You choosing, not blindly racing along. We always said we wanted to make conscious decisions, and we do. The book is a good resource for learning how to do that. I always recommend it even though we didn't follow it and picked and chose from it.

I agree with this. What I realized after reading YMOYL (for the second or thrid time, LOL) is that, for the most part, we're already living our ideals. We don't need to retire early in order to live our ideals. For us, the way we're living our life makes us happy.

[mamaofthree]

i agree with this. i don't think everyone needs to or wants to retire to live the life they want. i can see that some or many will want that, but i am not sure that is for everyone.
thank you all for the input.

h

[carfreemama]

It's been many years since dh and I read this book, but it has formed the basis of our financial life strategy. I know there is a new, updated version; so this thread will probably motivate me to go and get it.

The book excited me and still does, because of the "life energy" thing. It was SO great to read a book about money that framed it in these terms. From what I remember, the authors encourage you to save up enough wealth that you can retire early from your paid employment and choose how to spend the rest of your life (life energy again).

I never did the charting, either; but I think it's time for a refresher and I might do it exactly as outlined this time. The best thing to come out of this for dh and I was the ability to form a solid, shared foundation and language for discussing money and financial goals.

[enfpintj]

Originally Posted by carfreemama

The book excited me and still does, because of the "life energy" thing. It was SO great to read a book about money that framed it in these terms. From what I remember, the authors encourage you to save up enough wealth that you can retire early from your paid employment and choose how to spend the rest of your life (life energy again).

The best thing to come out of this for dh and I was the ability to form a solid, shared foundation and language for discussing money and financial goals.

The big thing for me was the life energy thing and realizing there are other ways to live your life. I always thought you had to work until 65 unless you were really wealthy. Ymoyl showed me that there were options for doing things differently. Then other books on living simply showed me that there were lots of different avenues to follow.

We did "retire" early, though it is not a traditional early retirement because we defined what would be enough for us and left when we had that though it was so much less than almost anyone would do.

Reading Ymoyl did give me a language to discuss things with my husband that he was already good at. It helped me become good at financial thinking something I wasn't before, even with an MBA. We had very few fights over money once we got on the same page, and ymoyl helped with that.

There is a follow up book that a couple wrote about their experience with the plan. Getting a Life.