YOUR MONEY OR YOUR LIFE

YOUR MONEY OR YOUR LIFE:

Transforming Your Relationship with Money and Achieving Financial Independence

The title really says it all. It's about your own personal philosophy of money. Our love-hate relationship, our addictions and our continually unsatisfied needs, though we have more than we've ever had and it's better than it's ever been. We really need to change our relationship with money. Wouldn't it be nice to have enough?

The book also has sections about working and how our idea of work has changed dramatically. How we don't work for a living, but instead work for a dying. How our work should NOT define who we are or our worth. There are many things outside of our paying job that are work.

Although I bought the book used on Ebay, you can buy it at Amazon too. Though that is the 1999 publication, I purchased the mid-80's one. Some of the examples are outdated, but the principles still apply. It's almost ironic to read something written 20 years ago and many of the things he cites are even more prevalent today (over-consumption and excessive debt) than they were when the book was originally published.

On my spiffy Google Reader, I have several finance feeds. Over the past few months, I've seen several references to the book Your Money or Your Life. The Simple Dollar has a great full review of the book with a summary of each chapter. It changed that blogger's life. This post is about how it changed my life- that's why I'm blogging about it. I spent a good 5 years of my life being financially educated in the schools of "MORE". Get more, earn more, save more, invest more, have more. I've come to realize that more is never enough, and I need to redefine how I relate to money and what I want from this life.

Part of this transformation came as my faith began to grow in recent years. I've studied what God says about money in the Bible, and how He wants us to view money. I've traveled to Ecuador- where I was face to face with poor, poor happy people. I had to question my mentality that money=happiness, for that certainly wasn't the case with many people outside of the Western world. After watching An Inconvenient Truth, I've become increasingly sensitive to the vast amount of energy and goods we consume- both bad for my pocketbook and bad for the environment. This book brought all those feelings together for me, and showed me an alternative to the "more is never enough" school of thinking.

If you don't have enough time to read the book, The Simple Dollar is doing a quasi-bookclub series. He's reviewing the book a few sections at a time each day. I've found his reviews and summaries to be excellent reminders of the highlights. Take 30 minutes and read through the first eleven blog entries that he's written, then put The Simple Dollar on your Google Reader. Read a book that will change your life in as little as 2 minutes a day.

GOOD NEWS OF THE DAY: We're on our way to paying off all of our debt.