Quotables: Your Money or Your Life -- Chapter 1, Part 2

Here are some final quotes from the first chapter:

• We haven't just borrowed from "the bank." We've borrowed from future generations... (p11)

• And many of us are out there "making a dying" because we've bought the pervasive American myth that more is better. (p 12)

• Americans used to be "citizens." Now we are "consumers"--which means people who "use up, waste, destroy and squander." (p 15)

• Whoever dies with the most toys wins. Life, liberty and the pursuit of material possessions. (p 17)

Quotables: Your Money or Your Life -- Chapter 1 (part 1)

I've not fallen down on my reading of Your Money or Your Life...I've just neglected the opportunity to post interesting and helpful quotes from the chapters.

Today, let's begin looking at Chapter 1: The Money Trap the Old Road Map for Money.

• "Your money or your life." If someone thrust a gun in your ribs and said that sentence, what would you do? Most of us would turn over our wallets. The threat works because we value our lives more than we value our money. Or do we?

• Even the best of jobs have trade-offs. Midlife comes and we discover we've been living our parents' agenda. Or worse, we've been filling teeth for twenty years because some seventeen-year-old (was that really me?) decided that being a dentist would be the best of all possible worlds.

• And they call [the modern career path] making a living? Think about it. How many people have you seen who are more alive at the end of the work day that they were at the beginning? Do we come home from our "making a living" activity with more life? Do we bound through the door, refreshed and energized, ready for a great evening with the family? Where's all the life we supposedly made at work? For many of us, isn't the truth of it closer to "making a dying"? Aren't we killing ourselves--our health, our relationships, our sense of joy and wonder for our jobs? We are sacrificing our lives for money--but it's happening so slowly that we barely notice.

• Even if we aren't any happier, you'd think that we'd at least have the traditional symbol of success: money in the bank. Not so...The savings rate was 4.5 percent in 1990 [I have an older edition ;)]...The Japanese, by the way, save over 15 percent of their disposable income.

The book does an excellent job of living up to its subtitle, "Transforming Your Relationship with Money..." How we view money will determine how we treat money.

I'll post more quotables from chapter 1 later...

Check out the Prologue if you missed it last month...

Quotables: Your Money or Your Life -- Prologue

I am currently reading Joe Dominguez & Vicki Robin's Your Money or Your Life: Transforming Your Relationship with Money and Achieving Financial Independence and reading Trent's (The Simple Dollar) extensive reviews.

As I finish each chapter, I will post some of the quotes I find interesting and helpful. Think of it as letting the authors reviewing the book themselves.

Today, we flip through the Prologue:

• What [most money] books have in common is that they assume that your financial life functions separately from the rest of your life. This book is about putting it all back together. It is about integration, a "whole systems" approach to life (xviii).

• Even though we "won" the Industrial Revolution, the spoils of war are looking more and more spoiled...the old road map for money has us trapped in the very vehicle that was supposed to liberate us from toil (xx).

• FI (financially independent) thinking is about cartography--making your own map, one that accurately depicts the terrain of your life as it actually is today (xxv).

• FI (financially independent) thinking will lead naturally to Financial Intelligence, Financial Integrity and Financial Independence (xxv).

The authors make the point that much of our financial shortcomings today have resulted from using the "old road map"--born from the Industrial Revolution--in a time where a much different map is needed. I think it's a strong and plausible argument.

I also appreciate how their approach is designed for individuality. Too many people (especially the most famous ones) in personal finance try to give virtually the same advice no matter the situation.

WYTI Links: 08.24.07

It's Friday!!! Here's some material to check out...

• Life is Like a Game of Chess (via Money, Matter, and More Musings) I love a good analogy...this is nice.
  

• What Does an Insomniac Who Has a Personal Finance Blog Do at 2 AM? (via No Credit Needed) Very simple--but helpful--guide to making purchases.

• 20 Great Nuggets of Personal Finance Advice (via Get Rich Slowly) Nice collection of quotes...

Car Corner:

• Free Crash Test Videos from Consumer Reports (via Get Rich Slowly) I personally think safety is the most overlooked aspect in considering the cost of a car. These are helpful if you're in the market for a vehicle.

• You Can't Trust That CARFAX Report! (via Clever Dude) This is a little scary, actually. We just bought a car back in May, so we went through the whole CARFAX process. It's a shame it might be unreliable.
  

A Great Quote

Eleanor Roosevelt had it right when she said,

He who loses money, loses much; He who loses a friend, loses much more; He who loses faith, loses all.

That quotes states the priorities of this blog very well.