by Joe Dominguez, Vicki Robin
What are the big ideas? 1. The Unique Budgeting System: This book introduces a unique budgeting system where every cent is accounted for and tracked, helping indivi
Want to read ebooks, websites, and other text 3X faster?
From a SwiftRead user:Feels like I just discovered the equivalent of fire but for reading text. WOW, WOW, WOW. A must have for me, forever.
Takeaways
Quotes
“We shift from comparing ourselves to others to considering our real needs and desires. We shift from “more” to “enough” and ultimately get more of what money can’t buy. Priceless.”
“One day a young girl watched her mother prepare a ham for baking. At one point the daughter asked, “Mom, why did you cut off both ends of the ham?” “Well, because my mother always did,” said the mother. “But why?” “I don’t know—let’s go ask Grandma.” So they went to Grandma’s and asked her, “Grandma, when you prepared the ham for baking, you always cut off both ends—why did you do that?” “My mother always did it,” said Grandma. “But why?” “I don’t know—let’s go ask Great-grandma.” So off they went to Great-grandma’s. “Great-grandma, when you prepared the ham for baking, you always cut off both ends—why did you do that?” “Well,” Great-grandma said, “the pan was too small.” Just as we can get caught in outmoded habit-patterns passed down through generations, we can also get trapped by our habitual thinking just as much as—and just as erroneously as—people who maintained until recently that the earth was visibly and verifiably flat. We also get stuck in unconscious and invisible boxes that limit our ability to think in new ways.”
Takeaways
Quotes
“Along with racism and sexism, our society has a hidden hierarchy based on what you do for money.”
“Along with racism and sexism, our society has a form of caste system based on what you do for money. We call that jobism, and it pervades our interactions with one another on the job, in social settings and even at home. Why else would we consider housewives second-class citizens? Or teachers lower status than doctors even though their desk-side manner with struggling students is far better than many doctors’ bedside manner with the ill and dying?”
“National Opinion Research Center surveys reveal that the percentage of Americans who describe themselves as “very happy” has been steadily declining since the late 1950s.”
“If you live for having it all, what you have is never enough.”
“As people and as a planet we suffer from upward mobility and downward nobility.”
“Americans used to be 'citizens.' Now we are 'consumers.”
“Instead of leisure being simply “relaxed activity,” it was transformed into an opportunity for increased consumption—even consumption of leisure itself (as in travel and vacations).”
“Government institutions such as the progressive income tax and the GI Bill fostered a growing middle class and a sense of social cohesion.”
“It is easier to tell our therapist about our sex life than it is to tell our accountant about our finances.”
“We hit a fulfillment ceiling and never recognized that the formula of money = fulfillment not only had stopped working but had started to work against us. No matter how much we bought, the fulfillment curve kept heading down.”
“Once you catch on to what clutter is, you’ll find it everywhere. Isn’t meaningless activity a form of clutter? How many of the power lunches, cocktail parties, social events, and long evenings glued to your screens have been clutter—activities that add nothing positive to your life? What about disorganized days full of busyness with no sense of accomplishment?”
“Find out how much money you have earned in your lifetime—the sum total of your gross income, from the first penny you ever earned to your most”
“put your life in service to your values rather than putting your time in service to money.”
“Statement of earnings from Social Security”
“So much dissatisfaction comes from focusing on what we don’t have that the simple exercise of acknowledging and valuing what we do have can transform our outlook.”
“Once we’re above the survival level, the difference between prosperity and poverty lies simply in our degree of gratitude.”
Takeaways
Quotes
“But hey, what’s another $20,000 when I have a full-time job?”
“happiness increases heart health, strengthens the immune system, combats stress, reduces aches and pains, reduces chronic illness, and lengthens our lives.”
“Money is something we choose to trade our life energy for.”
“Money is not really the thing you’re after—after all, would you lock yourself in a dark, silent box forever in exchange for becoming a billionaire?”
“So what if you’ve been blowing every paycheck on “rewarding” yourself for surviving another week?”
“Money is something you trade your life energy for. You sell your time for money. It doesn’t matter that Ned over there sells his time for a hundred dollars and you sell yours for twenty dollars an hour. Ned’s money is irrelevant to you. The only real asset you have is your time. The hours of your life.”
Takeaways
Quotes
“four rules for getting off the diet-go-round: Eat when you’re hungry. Eat exactly what your body wants. Eat each bite consciously. Stop when your body has had enough.1 Very simple. All you have to do is be conscious”
“training away the money-wasting habits”
Takeaways
Quotes
“Truly maximizing their potential, some students do two years of college in high school through the Running Start program.”
“Having an internal yardstick for fulfillment is actually one part of what we call Financial Integrity. You learn to make your financial choices independent of what advertising and industry have decided would be good for their business.”
“For so many people, the stronger the evidence of failed strategies, the deeper they cling to their ways.”
“remember that there is no single act of greatness, just a series of small acts done with great passion or great love,”
“Passion, pain, what’s at hand—these are doorways to finding a purpose beyond material acquisition.”
“He who knows he has enough is rich.”
Takeaways
Quotes
“As you take your eyes off the false prize (of more, better, and different stuff), you put them on the real prizes: friends, family, sharing, caring, learning, meeting challenges, intimacy, rest, and being present, connected, and respected. In other words, those best things in life that are free. Like all things natural, building this wealth takes time, attention, patience, and reciprocity (that volleying of giving and receiving that builds relationships).”
“Did you ever think about that?” Joe would ask. “That you have a relationship with money?” He’d get on his knees, begging money to love him. He’d exhibit mock terror, shrinking from the evil hundred-dollar bill. He’d hold it out like a carrot and run around after it, reaching but never grasping it. “This is what your relationship with money looks like! Think about it. If you were money, would you hang out with you?”
Takeaways
Quotes
“Frugality is enjoying the virtue of getting good value for every minute of your life energy and from everything you have the use of.”
“Waste lies not in the number of possessions but in the failure to enjoy them.”
“To be frugal means to have a high joy-to-stuff ratio. If you get one unit of joy for each material possession, that’s frugal. But if you need ten possessions to even begin registering on the joy meter, you’re missing the point of being alive.”
“You’ll flatten your debt and develop a natural resistance to spending more than you have for things you don’t want to impress people you don’t like (to paraphrase Robert Quillen).”
“Consumption seems to be our favorite high, our nationally sanctioned addiction, the all-American form of substance abuse.”
“What ideas—practical to wild—do you have about how you’d pay off all your debt?”
“Don’t ask yourself what the world needs, ask yourself what makes you come alive, and then go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive. —Howard Thurman, philosopher and theologian”
“human happiness buttons that can be pressed—the same basic factors such as friendship, health, community, overcoming challenges with your own ingenuity, and feeling in control of your life. These work for everyone. At the same time, most of us are tempted by the ideas of convenience, status, and luxury, and buying ourselves treats to satisfy these temptations. And we’re really good at justifying some of these trinkets as our true passions.”
“sustainably produced. A less obvious suggestion includes creating a “price book.” Kept by thrifty housewives for decades and made famous by Amy Dacyczyn, author of The Tightwad Gazette,10 a price book enables you to recognize quickly the cheapest”
“Getting Away As your handling of money gets clearer and your life becomes more satisfying, you will have less of a need to “vacate.” Consider”
“No matter how much you have, that voice of “more would be better” drives you to make acquisition the name of your game. Greed is one of the many strings in the human heart, and it can be pro-survival, but unchecked by a sense of fairness, balance, and love, it can gut our capacity for joy.”
“The key is remembering that anything you buy and don’t use, anything you throw away, anything you consume and don’t enjoy is money down the drain, wasting your life energy and wasting the finite resources of the planet. Any waste of your life energy means more hours lost to the rat race, making a dying. Frugality is the user-friendly and earth-friendly lifestyle.”
Takeaways
Quotes
“The push for full employment, along with the growth of advertising, has created a populace increasingly oriented toward work and toward earning more money in order to consume more resources.”
“karoshi (death by overwork).”
“A 2015 US Federal Reserve Board report found that 47 percent of Americans would have to borrow money or sell something to cover a $400 emergency expense.”
“The world needs you to show up and follow your dreams.”
“You want more money so that you can have more freedom to be yourself without worrying about the money. Likewise, you don’t want more money to boost your self-esteem. You want more money as an expression of your self-esteem, of valuing your life energy.”
“To be successful, cultivate positive attitudes of self-respect, pride in your contribution to your workplace, dedication to your job, cooperation with your employers and coworkers, desire to do the job right, personal integrity, responsibility, and accountability—and do it just because you value your life energy.”
“Not satisfied to just learn the ropes, he analyzed the game,”
Takeaways
Quotes
“it isn’t the stuff. It’s what the stuff means.”
“What kind of society turns its young people into a profit center for the debt industry? I”
Takeaways
Quotes
“Endless desire is one of the pitfalls of human nature, and one of the first things you need to cure if you want to get ahead more quickly.”
Takeaways
What do you think of "Your Money Or Your Life"? Share your thoughts with the community below.