This is the book that started it all for many people. It is often the book that is attributed to starting the Financial Independence Retire Early movement as well. Your money or your life changed things. Today, we get to enjoy a review of this monumental book. This review of Your Money or Your Life was originally written on Physician on FIRE.
I knew it was a book I would likely enjoy reading, but I wasn’t all that interested in reading a book published 20 years ago. A lot has changed since, then, and to be honest, I thought it was quite a bit older than that based on some of the buzzwords like “life energy” that were being tossed around in reference to YMOYL. What kind of hippie talk is that?
This spring, however, I ran out of excuses. The book had been updated for 2018 with a foreword by the aforementioned Mr. Money Mustache, and I was offered a copy to review by the publisher. I couldn’t say no to that!
So I got out my pet rock, lit some intense incense, and got comfy in my bean bag chair to dig into this groovy guide to a better life.
Your Money or Your Life? Both, Please.
The subtitle of this book is “9 Steps to Transforming Your Relationship With Money and Achieving Financial Independence.” I would say the target audience is the reader in a financial rut, living paycheck to paycheck, and wondering how to somehow get ahead or why it’s important to do so.
In other words, the target audience is not me. And if you’re well on your way to financial independence, or you’ve already achieved financial freedom, it’s not you, either.
While this book was first published in 1992, it’s roots are in the 1970s, which helps explain the new-age vibe that survived the more recent update. The co-author, Joe Dominguez, who sadly lost a battle with cancer in 1997 at age 58, actually retired at age 31 from his job as a financial analyst in Manhattan. He was Mr. Money Mustache before Mr. Money Mustache was born. And yes, he had a mustache.
Not long after Joe retired as a young man, he and Vicki Robin teamed up to help others learn to think about money and life in a new way. They put on seminars, recorded cassettes, and eventually published YMOYL after about 20 years of teaching, changing lives, and raising money for their non-profit, the New Road Map Foundation.
The premise of the book is to examine your relationship with money and answer the question of what’s more important: your money or your life? Assuming you choose life, the book goes through the nine steps to help you achieve financial independence for yourself.
I won’t detail the individual steps — that was done well in some of the reviews linked in the introduction, but I will share some of what I learned, what I liked, and what I didn’t like in the newly revised 2018 version of YMOYL.
It’s only fair to point out that when it comes to either your money or your life, the book doesn’t really force you to choose one or the other. In fact, on page 4, you’ll find:
There is a way to live an authentic, productive, meaninful life–and have all the material comforts you want or need. There is a way to balance your inner and outer lives, to have your job self be on good terms with our family self and your deeper self. There is a way to go about the task of making a living so that you end up more alive. There is a way to approach life so that when asked, “Your money or your life?” you say, “I’ll take both, thank you.”
What I Learned from Your Money or Your Life
I want to reiterate that there is so much that can be gleaned from YMOYL if you’re naive to the concept of financial independence and haven’t yet begun to master money. If I weren’t reading this from the perspective of being “post-FI,” this section would be a few thousand words long.
Still, every day is a school day, and I still learned a number of interesting tidbits, and many of my money beliefs were reinforced by what I read in these 300-plus pages.
For example, in their seminars, they would ask people to jot down how much money they had and how much money would make them happy. They were also asked to rate their happiness on a 1 to 5 scale.
The results? Everyone, regardless of their current status, would be happy with about 50% to 100% more, regardless of their starting point. And their current level of happiness level didn’t vary by income or net worth.
Similarly, when asked for monthly income and a 1 to 5 life rating, the ratings at their seminars did not improve with increasing income.
Life Rating
1
2
3
4
5
Uncomfortable
Dissatisfied
Content
Happy
Joyous
Income
$0-1500
$1501-3000
$3001-4500
$4501-6000
Over $6000
Avg. Life Rating
2.81
2.77
2.84
2.86
2.63
adapted from Figure 1-1, YMOYL
A related fact is that those who complete the 9 steps report reducing their spending by an average of about 25%. In spite of the lower “standard of living,” most feel happier and find their relationships with family and partners improve.
Do you see how there might be a disconnect between happiness and money?
From Vickie and Joe, “These results astounded us. They told us that not only are most people habitually unhappy, but they can be unhappy no matter how much money they make. Even people who are doing well financially are not necessarily fulfilled.”
Sadly, we’re a sad lot, and according to YMOYL, the number of people who describe themselves as very happy in the United States has been steadily declining for the last 6 decades.
What I Liked About Your Money or Your Life
The book and its steps are truly a great roadmap to transforming the way you approach money and improving your life’s circumstances if you’re not where you’d like to be in terms of saving, spending, and living.
There is a great section on how marketing has stressed the importance of consumption for the better part of a century.
in the first chapter, the 1929 progress report from Herbert Hoover’s Committee on Recent Economic Changes was quoted:
“The survey has proved conclusively what has long been held theoretically to be true, that wants are almost insatiable; that one want satisfied makes way for another. The conclusion is that economically we have a boundless field before us; that there are new wants which will make way endlessly for newer wants, as fast as they are satisfied… Our situation is fortunate, our momentum is remarkable.”
That was written nearly 90 years ago, and it holds true to this day. It’s only become truer as time has marched on.
In another oldie-but-goodie quote, we have a 1955 quote from retailing analyst Victor Lebow:
“Our enormously productive economy… demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfaction, our ego satisfaction, in consumption… We need things consumed, burned up, worn out, replaced, and discarded at an ever-increasing rate.”
The revised edition also cleverly incorporated lessons from books published in the interim, including one of my favorites, The Millionaire Next Door. She mentions how Drs. Stanley and Danko noted that “people who have achieved a high net worth relative to income know how much they are spending on clothes, travel, housing, transportation, and so on, and those who don’t achieve high net worth relative to income have no idea how much they spend. It’s a stark contrast.”
The movie The Matrix also gets some love. After quoting Morpheus describing The Matrix to Neo, including the excerpt “You take the red pill–you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.”
She says that understanding that money is life energy is the equivalent of taking the red pill. You can see your choices and their consequences more clearly. Taking the blue pill would be akin to maintaining a work, consume, replace, repeat sort of existence where you carry on without intention or financial progress.
I also like the fact that the final step, Where to Stash Your Cash for Long-Term Financial Freedom, was updated. When Vicki and Joe were traveling the country giving seminars, treasury bonds offered high-single-digit to low-double-digit returns. The 1992 book pointed to them as an easy way to have guaranteed income.
Today, you’d be lucky to find guaranteed returns that can keep up with anticipated inflation. In the 2018 revision, low-cost passive index funds are touted as one of several viable options to place in your portfolio. The Bogleheads get a well-deserved shoutout.
She also discusses the benefit of DIY investing and fee-only advisors, spends a few pages on real estate, and touches on socially responsible investing.
Finally, I’ll mention that I liked the real-life examples sprinkled throughout the book. Vicki and Joe touched many thousands of lives, and they’ve clearly got ample stories to use to demonstrate a dilemma or success story from any angle imaginable.
so many great lines tagged
What I Disliked About Your Money or Your Life
While it’s a great book, it’s not perfect, and a review of the book would be incomplete if I didn’t point out what I perceive as a few imperfections.
Both Mr. Money Mustache and Joe from Retire by 40 mentioned that it took them longer than usual to get through YMOYL. I had a similar experience. I imagine that has more to do with the fact that all three of us were reading it from a perspective of understanding the concept of Enough and having it. It might be more of a page-turner to the uninitiated.
I alluded to this earlier, but there were times I swore I could hear “…this is the dawning of the age of Aquarius… the age of Aquarius…” despite the fact that no audio source was powered on anywhere near me. YMOYL was written by two free spirits, and it shows. In general, that’s a good thing, but the talk of gazingus pins, economist-gods, and life energy didn’t resonate with me as well as I’m sure it does with others.
At times, some of the well-intentioned updates seemed like anachronistic add-ons to bring a book from the 1990s with roots in the 1970s up to date as we approach 2020.
Can you tell which one thing was added here? “When we are bored, we buy something. A magazine. A cruise. A mobile app. A bet on the horses.” Or here, when recurrent spending was addressed? “Your phone plan, your Internet plan, your car payments, your insurance, your energy consumption in your car and house, your rent or HOA dues or property taxes, service people to fix your car, clean your house, or soothe your soul, your tickets to concerts and conferences and vacations…”
Even capitalizing the word “Internet” is considered outdated by some, including the New York Times. I appreciate the edits to freshen up the text with modern-day objects, but it felt a bit forced in certain places.
Some of the details in the steps are a bit rigid for my taste. Track spending down to the penny. Add up your belongings and assign a value to absolutely everything you own with a value of a dollar or more. I think you can benefit from the steps without following them as precisely as indicated.
There’s a concept I really like about calculating your “real wage.” It’s how much you earn per hour after accounting for all the time you spend directly at your job and in job-related activities. You also subtract money for taxes, commuting costs, work-related clothing costs, meals, and more.
While I believe it’s valuable to think about all the time that goes into your job and all the money you spend or lose to taxes related to work, the formula offered is skewed to give you a very low real wage. For example, you’re supposed to add time and subtract earnings for categories that include decompression, escape entertainment, and vacation.
I don’t know about you, but I’d be traveling with or without a job, I’ll need to decompress with or without paid work (I’ve got kids!), and I don’t know exactly how I am to distinguish “escape entertainment” from the run-of-the-mill entertainment I’d be enjoying whether or not gainfully employed.
My Review of Your Money or Your Life
I didn’t mean for the negatives to take up as much or more space as the positives. There is truly a lot more to like in YMOYL than I could mention here, and I had to reach a bit to find things I didn’t love. All in all, on a 1 to 5 scale, I’d give it 4 stars. If I had come across it ten years ago, it would have gotten an extra half star, maybe even three quarters of a star.
This book would be an excellent gift for a recent graduate who is just now embarking on the next chapter in life, whether that’s further schooling or a first job. It’s also perfect for someone who is discontented with their current lot in life and is open to making some changes to improve it.
While the book was not a revelation to me at this stage in my life, I can see how it has been life-altering in the most positive ways for many who have discovered it over the last quarter century.
To learn more about the book and it’s author(s), visit vickirobin.com, join the YMOYL Community on Facebook, or get yourself a copy from your local library, neighborhood bookstore, or find it here online. That last link is one of several affiliate links in this post; any purchases via my links will support this site’s charitable mission.
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In other words, the target audience is not me. And if you’re well on your way to financial independence, or you’ve already achieved financial freedom, it’s not you, either.
While this book was first published in 1992, it’s roots are in the 1970s, which helps explain the new-age vibe that survived the more recent update. The co-author, Joe Dominguez, who sadly lost a battle with cancer in 1997 at age 58, actually retired at age 31 from his job as a financial analyst in Manhattan. He was Mr. Money Mustache before Mr. Money Mustache was born. And yes, he had a mustache.
Not long after Joe retired as a young man, he and Vicki Robin teamed up to help others learn to think about money and life in a new way. They put on seminars, recorded cassettes, and eventually published YMOYL after about 20 years of teaching, changing lives, and raising money for their non-profit, the New Road Map Foundation.
The premise of the book is to examine your relationship with money and answer the question of what’s more important: your money or your life? Assuming you choose life, the book goes through the nine steps to help you achieve financial independence for yourself.
I won’t detail the individual steps — that was done well in some of the reviews linked in the introduction, but I will share some of what I learned, what I liked, and what I didn’t like in the newly revised 2018 version of YMOYL.
It’s only fair to point out that when it comes to either your money or your life, the book doesn’t really force you to choose one or the other. In fact, on page 4, you’ll find:
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