Your Money or Your Life Book

For more than 25 years, YOUR MONEY OR YOUR LIFE: 9 Steps to Transforming Your Relationship with Money and Achieving Financial Independence has been the go-to book to take back your life by fundamentally changing your relationship with money.  With over a million copies sold, this 9-step program is proven to help people live more deliberately and meaningfully.

Whether you’re just beginning your financial life or heading towards retirement, this book will show you how to: get out of debt and develop savings; save money through mindfulness and good habits, rather than strict budgeting; declutter your life and live well for less; invest your savings and begin creating wealth; save the planet while saving money, and so much more.

The fourth edition of YOUR MONEY OR YOUR LIFE has been fully revised and updated to ensure that its time-tested wisdom applies to people of all ages in our current age of constant economic insecurity.  The world has changed—“the thought of retirement is a pipe dream for young and old alike,” as Robin notes in her introduction.  The book has been updated particularly to recognize the financial struggles of millennials—and to assert that it is never too early to start thinking responsibly about personal finance.  Robin encourages good habits and a healthy mentality toward money as soon as you begin to earn income.  She also embraces new, digital methods of tracking one’s spending, and considering financial priorities in a modern context, accounting for elements such as the cost of living in cities, of technology, and new ways to save.

Previous editions of YOUR MONEY OR YOUR LIFE emphasize the three FIs: Financial Intelligence, Financial Integrity, and Financial Independence.  This edition adds a fourth category: Financial Interdependence, which focuses on how we can depend on one another for our financial needs.  Interdependence, Robin notes, is how we make our lives truly rich.  It is also a fact of life that we will always depend on services, shared institutions, and loved ones.  While we crave independence from dead-end routines and ways of thinking, we do not need or want such isolation from one another.

What makes YOUR MONEY OR YOUR LIFE the longest-standing tried-and-true method for a better financial future is the way that Robin and Dominguez recognize that your relationship with money is reflected in the sense of satisfaction and fulfillment that you get from your connection to your family, your community and the planet.  As Mr. Money Mustache notes in his foreword, the root of your problem is the habits you create, and your beliefs—the credit card statements and monthly balances are just symptoms.  Regardless of whether you are in debt or have substantial savings, with YOUR MONEY OR YOUR LIFE, anybody can embark on the road to financial independence and finally begin to make a life, rather than just make a living.

About the Authors:

Vicki Robin has lectured widely and appeared on hundreds of radio and television shows, including “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” “Good Morning America” and NPR’s “Weekend Edition” and “Morning Edition.” She has also been featured in People Magazine, The Wall Street Journal,  Woman’s Day, Newsweek, and the New York Times. Vicki has helped launch many sustainability initiatives including: The New Road Map Foundation, The Simplicity Forum, The Turning Tide Coalition, Sustainable Seattle, The Center for a New American Dream, Transition Whidbey and more. In the 1990s she served on the President’s Council on Sustainable Development’s Task Force on Population and Consumption.  Born in Oklahoma in 1945, Vicki grew up on Long Island and graduated cum laude from Brown University in 1967.

Joe Dominguez (1938-1997) was a successful financial analyst before retiring at the age of 31. He and Vicki co-founded the New Road Map Foundation.