One thing about me, I'm passionate about financial literacy, economic empowerment, and wealth creation. When you think about it, money is more important than many of us realize–not for what it can buy in a consumerism sense (more on that later)–but for what it can do and the freedom it provides. This is why I read a lot of books related to money, financial management, investing, and business/entrepreneurship (a major key to building wealth).
For years I've heard about the book Your Money or Your Life, but it wasn't until last month that I got around to reading it.
This book caused me to reflect deeply about my relationship with money and work.
It helped to answer a lot of the "why" questions around what we do to make money (also known as work). It also caused me to think about how I would spend my time, if I truly had control over it. Thankfully as a business owner and entrepreneur, I have a bit more control over my time.
As adults, our jobs dominate the largest portion of our waking hours. Early in my corporate career, I was excited to make money, learn new skills, and build my network. I was simply following the blueprint: do good in school, get a job, raise a family, retire, and try to enjoy life along the way. Working in healthcare marketing was okay, but as a young grasshopper and a newly minted MBA, I never really thought about selling years of my life to an employer, which might result in me forgoing many of my own dreams and goals.
At one job I was in the office every morning at 8 AM. I'd work until 5:55 PM in order to get home by 6 PM to watch Mad Money with Jim Cramer. I'd watch that until 7 PM while eating dinner in front of the TV, chill for a bit, and then go back to the office from 8-10 PM. (Note: When I worked in corporate, I always lived as close as possible to the office. Long commutes are sort of like free labor. You're doing a work-related activity, but don't get paid for it per se. Have you ever divided your salary by your average annual hours worked, including commuting time, to determine your hourly rate? That's one of the exercises in the book. It can be sobering.)
One day I thought to myself, Surely this is just an abnormally heavy workload due to a new product launch, regional sales meetings coming up, and competitive market factors that need a response. Soon we'll prioritize responsibilities and be choiceful, rather than try to do everything, right? They don't expect me to work this much all the time do they?
Once during a meeting, there was a heated debate about marketing the advantages of natural vitamin E vs. synthetic vitamin E in baby formula and I thought to myself, Do I really care about this? Am I passionate about this? Is this how I want to spend my life?
That's the perfect segue into the book review. I'll start with my key takeaways (Part 1) and end with the book's 9 steps to transforming your relationship with money and achieving FI (financial independence) (Part 2).
Are you making a living or making a dying?
Our jobs are often described as making a living. Or, is it more like making a dying since we often return home from work, totally drained, and then wait for the weekend to live it up?
"How many people have you seen who are more alive at the end of the workday than 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 family and friends? 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."
Your job does not have to define you. If you're only making a dying, my challenge for you in 2020 is to find or create something that produces income and makes you feel ALIVE. (It's okay to do it for free initially in order to hone your skills.)
Money is life energy.
I'd like to highlight a passage from the book to emphasize this point:
"Money is something you trade your life energy for. You sell your time for money. The only real asset you have is your time. The hours of your life. You're born. You have maybe 650,000 hours before you die (if you live for 75 years). That is your treasure. This is all you have for everything that matters to you–the love of your family, your contributions to society, your enjoyment of the great outdoors, your rising to challenges, your search for meaning, your legacy, your ecstasies, your life. And you sell some of those previous hours for this [waving the $100 bill]–this has no meaning; your time is where all meaning and value lie. Knowing that money is simply your life energy puts you in the driver's seat of your money life. How much of my life am I willing to sell to have money in my pocket? Looking around at your accumulation of stuff you can ask, 'How many hours of my life did I invest to have this... chair... car... matched set of cookware, diploma on the wall?' See what this does to your next purchase."
Consumerism.
The U.S. economy is driven by consumers and consumption. I searched for a few definitions of consumerism, and they're all pretty ugly.
Here's one from Wikipedia: Consumerism is a social and economic order that encourages an acquisition of goods and services in ever-increasing amounts. With the industrial revolution, mass production led to overproduction—the supply of goods would grow beyond consumer demand, and so manufacturers turned to planned obsolescence and advertising to manipulate consumer spending. Sheesh!
Here's another one from Investopedia: Consumerism is the idea that increasing consumption of goods and services purchased in the market is always a desirable goal and that a person's well-being and happiness depends fundamentally on obtaining consumer goods and material possessions. Yikes!
This book was a good reminder about consumerism and to reflect on what we really need and value in life. Also, as somewhat of an environmentalist, after reading this book, I was reminded of consumerism's impact on the Earth. (It was my 5th grade teacher who first taught me the importance of caring for the environment. She actually reached out to me on Facebook a few months ago. We're supposed to have lunch soon.)
This might be weird, but sometimes when I'm in a clothing store, I feel uneasy at the sight of racks and racks of clothes, sitting there for our viewing pleasure and consumption, knowing it will be replaced with new inventory in a matter of months, or a matter of weeks in the case of fast fashion retailers like Zara, H&M, and Forever21. There is so much excess inventory in the system, that a host of discount retailers have emerged and are thriving, such as TJ Maxx, Marshalls, Nordstrom Rack, Sak's Off 5th, and Macy's Backstage.
All this is good for jobs though, right? But is all the manufacturing, packaging, shipping, and transportation good for the environment? Am I the only one who occasionally thinks like this? This is all while also thinking about the billions of people in poverty. But I digress...
I'm sure many of us have seen the quote (attributed to everyone ranging from Will Smith to the movie Fight Club):
The author asks a profound question to help deal with consumerism:
"Resisting consumerism becomes easy: Is that bathing suit or car really worth my life energy?"
Let's make it a bit more culturally relevant considering the wealth gap:
Are those Louboutins, Ferragamos, or expensive suits really worth your life energy?
Is a luxury car that requires premium gas and high maintenance costs really worth your life energy?
Is a $5 daily Starbucks habit really worth your life energy?
Is buying the latest New York Times Best Seller really worth your life energy, especially considering you won't read the book anyway or the library is free (shout out to the Columbus Library, my go to for the last six years).
I suppose that's for each of us to decide on an individual basis, depending on one's life goals, but this book certainly causes one to ponder.
WHEW! I know that was a lot to read, so I hope you found it helpful. If you want to read Part 2 of this book review with summary points of the 9 step process, click here.
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