Your Money or Your Life

Posted: 22 Jun 2008 09:19 PM CDT

Now more than ever, as I delve deeper into the book “Your Money or Your Life” written by Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin I feel that it is really a worth-while book to read and to be part of your own personal collection of personal finance “classics” that should line your bookshelf. Dominguez and Robin exhorts all of us in step 7 as follows:

Step 7: Valuing Your Life Energy — Maximizing Income

Respect the life energy you are putting into your job. Money is simply something you trade your life energy for. Trade it with purpose and integrity for increased earnings.

The authors make a case that you are NOT your job. A job is something that pays the bills. Some people are able to derive intrinsic satisfaction and alignment to their life goals and values from their jobs. Others do not. The point the authors make is that a job pays the bills. The main thing about paid employment is that it is paid. Given our limited hours in life, we should try to maximise our income from our jobs not because we want MORE money for its sake, but since you are trading your life energy for the hours you work, you should be compensated well enough so that you can have “enough” fulfilment in life doing other stuff that makes you, you.

Key Takeaways by Panzer

The earlier steps in computing our actual hourly wage opens us up to new possibilities. We can now assess employment opportunities based on the trade-offs in your actual wage by taking into consideration the hours you have to spend as well as the additional costs for various job opportunities.

My own career moves have been prompted by partly pay but as well as prospects. However, I only realised the my job <> (not equals) me when I managed to clear my home loan. This effectively made me debt free and I was no working under the pressure of losing the roof over my head should anything happen to my ricebowl. At the same time, it freed me to do my work, leave the office at the end of the day and concentrate on being “there” for my family during evening hours and weekends.

Many young professionals are caught in the high income, high living expenses trap where their high incomes are matched equally with their high expenditures leaving their net worth growing slower than it should. I know of couples whose live for now approach resulted in them owning 2 cars (1 car for each spouse), have a apartment and 2 children. They have little savings despite the 15 years of working full-time in respectable employment in professional jobs.

Don’t get me wrong, a job is still the main source of income that pays for the food we eat and the living expenses but a job is a job is a job. I get some degree of self-fullfilment from doing my job but that is only a job and it pays the bills and helps me move up towards my goal of financial independence before the statutory retirement age. My identity as a father, husband, son, brother, ex-conscript in the Lion City, toastmaster, kidsREAD volunteer are also different facets of who Panzer is. My job is just one facet. 1 facet does not a diamond make. :-)