Money Lessons from "Your Money or Your Life" by Vicki Robin & Joe Dominguez
AI's response in regular print | Beverly Hills, CFP®, Joe O'Boyle's in italics
OpenAI’s ChatGPT tool responds to an investor question and Certified Financial Planner™ professional, Joe O’Boyle, fine tunes the AI response (in italics). This should be fun!
Money Lessons from “Your Money Or Your Life” by Vicki Robin & Joe Dominguez
"If someone thrust a gun into your ribs and said ‘your money or your life’, 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?”
"Your Money or Your Life" is a comprehensive and practical guide to personal finance that has stood the test of time. Written by Vicki Robin and Joe Dominguez, the book has been helping people improve their financial situation since it was first published in 1992.
Author Vicki Robin revised her original book and published an updated version of “Your Money or Your Life” in 2018. The book offers 9 steps to transform your relationship with money and achieve financial independence:
Step 1: Making Peace with the Past
Step 2: Being in the Present - Tracking Your Life Energy
Step 3: Where Is It All Going? (The Monthly Tabulation)
Step 4: Three Questions That Will Transform Your Life
Step 5: Making Life Energy Visible
Step 6: Valuing Your Life Energy - Minimizing Spending
Step 7: Valuing Your Life Energy - Maximizing Income
Step 8: Capital and the Crossover Point
Step 9: Investing for Financial Independence
The book's central premise is that individuals can take control of their finances by tracking their spending, creating a budget, and setting financial goals. The authors also advocate for reducing expenses, saving money, and investing in experiences rather than material possessions. Additionally, the book encourages readers to examine their relationship with money and to consider the role it plays in their life.
“We Make a Dying at Work so We Can Live It Up on the Weekend… We think we work to pay the bills - but we spend more than we make on more than we need, which sends us back to work to get the money to spend to get more stuff - that sends us back to work again!”
One of the book's strengths is its focus on budgeting and tracking expenses. The authors provide clear and actionable advice on how to create a budget, and the importance of being aware of where your money is going. This is essential for anyone looking to take control of their finances. The book also encourages readers to reduce their expenses and to invest in experiences rather than material possessions.
The book challenges the idea that more is better and focuses on how much money is enough for you to have a life you love, both now and in the future. By converting your dollars spent into “hours of life energy”, you can ask yourself if you’ve received fulfillment and value in proportion to your life energy spent when making a purchase.
Another strength of the book is its emphasis on the psychological aspect of money. The authors encourage readers to examine their relationship with money, and to consider how it impacts their overall well-being. They argue that by changing the way we think about money, we can improve our financial situation and our lives.
“Now that you’ve done the steps, your old habits of spending everything you have - and more - on new stuff and experiences has quieted down. You know that money is your life energy and you’re determined to spend it only on what brings you joy and serves your purpose… You’ve started to feel the freedom of enough.”
The book is well-written, easy to understand, and provides clear steps for achieving financial freedom. The step-by-step guide is practical, and the author's share their personal experience, which makes the book relatable. It is a must-read for anyone looking to take control of their finances and improve their overall well-being.
Because the original was published in 1992, Author Vicki Robin shares the following feedback in the 2018 version about how people’s lives were “enriched by following this program”:
—They finally understand the basics of money.
—At a tangible level, they settle their debts, increase their savings, and are able to live happily within their means.
—With a great sense of freedom and relief, they learn how to distinguish between the essentials and the excess in all areas of their lives and how to unburden themselves.
—On average, people at all income levels reduces expenses by 25 percent - and most feel happier, even if for the sake of their sanity they forsake a bit of income.
—They find their relationships with their partners and their children improve.
—Their new financial integrity resolves many inner conflicts between their values and their lifestyles.
—They stop buying their way out of problems.
—Overall, they heal the split between their money and their life.
In conclusion, "Your Money or Your Life" is a classic personal finance book that continues to be relevant today. It provides a comprehensive and practical guide to managing money, and its focus on budgeting, reducing expenses, and investing in experiences rather than material possessions is still very useful today. Additionally, the book's emphasis on the psychological aspect of money makes it stand out from other personal finance books. Overall, it is a great read for anyone looking to improve their financial situation and achieve financial freedom.
What did you think? How did AI do?
About OpenAI’s ChatGPT tool:
GPT (short for "Generative Pre-training Transformer") is a type of language model developed by OpenAI that is trained to generate human-like text. ChatGPT is specifically designed for generating text in a conversational style. It is a machine learning model and has been trained on large datasets of real-world conversations in order to learn the patterns and styles of human communication.
Joe O'Boyle is the founder and principal of O'Boyle Wealth Management, a full service financial planning and investment management firm, located in Beverly Hills, California. Joe O’Boyle was named to InvestmentNews 40 under 40 class of 2016, and has a catalog of financial planning and investing articles on Money.com & U.S. News. Disclosure information.