Your Money or Your Life Question

[jpschust]

Hey folks,

Starting to take some bigger steps towards our financial future and as recommended in multiple places I'd like to read through and work my way through Your Money or Your Life.  For folks who have read it and done the recommended steps/exercises- how much time did it take you?  I'm trying to schedule in time to work through it and I want to make sure I schedule enough to get it done.

Thanks and welcome to an awesome 2023.

J

[ixtap]

Most of it is ongoing exercises that you will continue repeating. If you are scheduling to get this done in a certain time frame, you may have already missed the point.

[secondcor521]

I skipped the exercise about adding up how much I had earned in my life.  With respect to my hippy-dippy friends, that exercise was too hippy-dippy for me.

I did the wall chart thing, although I changed the income line to be a "4% of FIRE stash" line.  I still keep that chart going, even though I've been FIREd for close to seven years.  Originally it was to let me see when I was going to hit my crossover point (FI); now I try to use it to motivate me to spend more.

[jpschust]

Most of it is ongoing exercises that you will continue repeating. If you are scheduling to get this done in a certain time frame, you may have already missed the point.

I am aiming to work through a first reading and work through of the exercises.  In order to do that I need to budget time.

[bacchi]

Isn't the lifetime earnings as easy as looking at your old age pension earnings? I.e., the SS website for US people.

I also kept a wall chart for many years. It's now on a spreadsheet.

[Freedomin5]

Could you budget an hour a week to read/work through exercises? And it’ll take as many weeks as necessary to get through the book?

I read through the book in a week, did some of the exercises that were relevant/applicable to my situation, and didn’t do some of the exercises that didn’t make sense in our situation.

[secondcor521]

It occurred to me that I didn't actually answer the question.

The book is a bit under 400 pages.  I'm pretty sure I read the whole book in under a week.  You could do it in two weeks reading 30 pages a day.

The wall chart didn't take more than an hour to set up, but that's because I had income, expenses, and net worth already being tracked in Quicken.  Depending on how many accounts you have and how organized you are, it could take a few hours the first time.  If you keep it up with additional data points, you'll probably get faster at it over time.  Nowadays I probably spend five minutes a month updating mine, which lives in Excel.

[ixtap]

Isn't the lifetime earnings as easy as looking at your old age pension earnings? I.e., the SS website for US people.

I also kept a wall chart for many years. It's now on a spreadsheet.

I don't know about other countries, but SS‌ only tracks to the annual limit. It wouldn't account for any year you made more than that. As an academic, most of my grad school funding came from stipends and scholarships that were not considered earned income. Oh, and the years I worked for the state of Ohio and didn't pay into SS ...

[reeshau]

Isn't the lifetime earnings as easy as looking at your old age pension earnings? I.e., the SS website for US people.

I also kept a wall chart for many years. It's now on a spreadsheet.

I don't know about other countries, but SS‌ only tracks to the annual limit. It wouldn't account for any year you made more than that. As an academic, most of my grad school funding came from stipends and scholarships that were not considered earned income. Oh, and the years I worked for the state of Ohio and didn't pay into SS ...

Also, capital gains, dividends, rental income, business income....

[jpschust]

Thanks so much folks, i think this last suggestion is what I'll do- do a thorough reading probably taking some notes along the way and come back to the exercises later if i feel like it's worth it.

Not too worried about the investing stuff, I'll get there quickly, but gotta do some reorientation around values, better spending control, etc.

[Dicey]

I read the book (which was eye opening for me) but didn't do any of the exercises. You might try that first and then go back and do whatever exercises you feel would be useful to you.

Even without the exercises you may find yourself somewhat mentally calculating things in your head like when you look at the real cost of things you buy verses your real income.  Once you realize that it takes you a lot more time (life energy) to earn enough to buy something,  which often costs more then the price tag, you can't unseen that. Same with lots of other little things from that book. I'd just ignore the investment advice - although with interest rates higher maybe it will start to be good advice again.

This is what I did, too. I didn't bother trying to figure out every penny I'd ever met. I got the point he was making and that was enough.

I also agree with @secondcor521. Joe was far too hippy-dippy for me. I didn't want to be a renter living with multiple roommates in a ramshackle old house. As little as I knew about finances then, I also didn't trust his style of investing only in bonds. That would have proven to be disastrous in recent years.

For now, just read the book. You can always do the exercises later. It's worth multiple reads. I also recommend JL Collins' "Simple Path to Wealth."

[mspym]

The biggest eye openers for me were calculating purchases against life energy and the spend same/more/less questions.

[ixtap]

The biggest eye openers for me were calculating purchases against life energy and the spend same/more/less questions.

I was working for just over minimum wage in daycare, and Kmart shoes cost 3 hours of wages, not even accounting for taxes. But I needed shoes for work...That was a real eye opener that I was never going to get ahead unless I was able to increase my income. I am not sure I have ever used this to stop myself from making a purchase, though.

[mspym]

One of the things I liked about the spending questions was that the same and more were options. That you could opt to increase spending categories? For some reason it blew my mind.