Your Money or Your Life: Transforming Your Relationship With Money and Achieving Financial Independence

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Summary: An excellent tool for getting your life & finances in shape
Review: I first discovered this book while watching TV, believe it or not. A local newscast was doing an article about people retiring at an early age (say, 30 years old) and one of the interviewees mentioned this book as their guide. I went to the library immediately, and took it out. Two days later, I purchased it. Odd, considering that the exercises that I had done in the book would have told me that it was not worth the time invested, as I could get it from a cheaper source (free, from the library). But it is a book that I will refer to for the rest of my life - not just for guidance, but for reinforcement and support of the choices I have made. This book provides step by step instructions on how to adapt your relationship with money to acheive your dreams - and not just the financial ones. This is by no means easy, but definately acheivable. Don't get me wrong, this book is not about "getting it for less", even if there are many references to that. It is about living within your means, happily. It has helped me to get a grasp on what is truly important in my life. Not a large book, but an extremely informative one. I highly recommend this book to anyone, especially to people who are searching for more balance and genuine happiness in their lives.

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Summary: Some excellent advice, but the whole program has flaws
Review: The first few chapters of this book are great: they offer a fresh perspective on why we work so hard to make money but are never satisfied, and the authors' advice about balancing your expenses against your expenditure of life energy is excellent.
However, I have several problems with the "program" the authors recommend. (1) It's far too easy for frugality to become an end in itself. I know ex-Yuppies who are now as obsessive and self-righteous about penny-pinching as they used to be about owning the latest and greatest espresso machine, and I frankly don't see that as an improvement. (2) The program requires minute attention to detail, and not everyone is capable of this. That doesn't mean (as the authors imply) that they "don't care" about managing their money or achieving financial independence -- but there ARE other ways of achieving these goals besides the authors' "one size fits all" program. (3) As other critics have pointed out, the authors' recommendations on how to invest your money are rather dubious: it's much safer, and potentially more profitable, to diversify. (4) The authors seem to set up a false dichotomy between "your job" and "what you want to do with your life," and imply that you have to get out of the work world to achieve the latter. I don't think the two are necessarily incompatible -- some of us actually like our jobs, and would just like to change our hours or work in a less stressful atmosphere. I think, too, that if there's something wrong with the world of work, it's better to stay in it and try to IMPROVE it than to drop out. (Relevant reading here: Matthew Fox's "The Reinvention of Work," Marsha Sinetar's books.)

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Summary: A 'money diet'. If you hate diets, you'll hate this book.
Review: This is like a 'money diet' book - you realise you're overspending, so you count all your calories (pennies) every day forever. It's a thought provoking book, and I enjoyed reading it, but it's a little obsessive for my taste. If you want a fresh perspective on your finances and lifestyle, buy it. But if you hate diets, you'll hate this book.

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Summary: It will change the way you look at life
Review: This book will make you see how ridiculous it is to work your whole life to buy a bunch of junk you don't need, and the biggest possible building (house) to put it in.

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Summary: Excellent
Review: I read this book 6 months ago, and decided to take all the advice seriously including the tracking of every penny, every day every month. I now know the dimensions of my family's expenses. My wife joins me in the effort to track everything. More than the financail part of the program, to achieve financial independence, I'm interested in the spiritual aspect of simple living and the meaning of work as part of our individual meaning in life. Financial independence is a goal within reach. It will be frugal without being cheapo. Using the bibliography I eventually was lead to two other books which are incredibly helpful in the spititual side: The Artist's Way, by Julia Cameron, and Zen and the Art of Making a Living, by Laurence Boldt. I am aggressively reading them to figure out what I want to DO when I retire early.

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Summary: Your Money or your Life
Review: I found this book to be a nice departure from the usual "get rich quick" books. Dominguez and Robin give an alternative to the 9 to 5 "making a dying" lifestyle of most Americans. Their book makes us examine why we want money and material objects while showing how these pursuits lead to depletion of the word's resources and our own depletion of money. I read the book once and put it on the self only to rediscover it and ask myself why I had done so. It is full of excellent advice for reducing the cost of living and investing money(treasury bills). Some of the advice may not be practical, such as keeping track of every single penny that you spend for a month. Of course anything worth while isn't easy. I've attempted to follow the ideas in "Your Money or Your Life" and it isn't easy but if people make a true effort it is worth while.

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Summary: A new perspective on money and its cost.
Review: I found the book to be refreshing and gives a new insight on how money can be viewed. The cost of money is our life energy. By knowing your optimal position of utility on the satifaction curve, you can see what you really don't need. I am in the process of following the steps in the book, and have found them to be extremely helpful. My wife and I have been tracking our expenses and we are now almost out of debt. There is a little too much tree hugging and saving the planet doctrine in the book, but over all it is a must read!

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Summary: Helpful... but a bit retentive
Review: Good book that you can use as life long reference. However, I know very few folks that are going to record EACH and every penny on a wall chart until they reach FI (Financial Independence).

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Summary: A book worth reading and re-reading
Review: I have read this book more than once, loaned it to friends and read it again. I confess I haven't followed all the steps, but it has really made me think about how I spend (and save) money. This book has helped me align my spending with my priorities and values.

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Summary: Great book on reducing expenses, but light on investing
Review: The first 291 pages on reducing living expenses, and accumulating capital was excellent. Chapter Two, especially the section on how to calculate your "cost of working" was inspiring. Every wage slave in American needs to make this calculation and decide if working is worth it. But the authors break down when they discuss how to manage your finances in Chapter Nine. The advice to avoid financial salesmen and to be careful in selecting advisors is well taken. However, putting your whole nest egg into U.S. Treasury securities while safe, could leave you vulnerable to inflation. Readers would be well advised to put at least 50% of their retirement money in the stock market