Thread by @position_trader

Here are my notes and thoughts on the book “Your Money or Your Life”. The original version was published in 1992 and has been acknowledged as a one of the pioneers for the Financial Independence (FI) movement. An updated version of the book has been released recently. (1/n)

If I had to summarize the book in one sentence, the book basically forces you to look into and re-examine your relationship with money. We spend most of our lives chasing it, mights as well look into what it means to us. (2/n)

"Midlife comes and we discover we’ve been living our parents’ agenda. Or worse, we’ve been filling teeth for twenty years because some seventeen-year-old decided that being a dentist would be the best of all possible worlds."

Holds true for most of us. (3/n)

"We Aren’t Making a Living, We’re Making a Dying"

If your work leaves you dead tired by end of the day, it should make you wonder why we actually call it making a "living". Your job comes to dominate ever fibre of your being. (4/n)

"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."

The boiling frog syndrome.

"We Make a Dying at Work so We Can Live It Up on the Weekend"

The early part of the book is quite brutal in this manner. Seems like a slap in the face of our current lifestyles. (6/n)

"If you live for having it all, what you have is never enough."

Desire is a contract that you make with yourself to be unhappy until you get what you want - @naval (7/n)

"Money is something you trade your life energy for. You sell your time for money"

You are never gonna have as much time remaining in your life as THIS MOMENT. Everyday, we exchange our time for money. (8/n)

That doesn't mean you stop spending. But stop spending for the sake of being part of the rat race. Remember, all this stuff is actually costing you your limited time. (9/n)

Calculate your per hour wage from your job. The number of hours should include, apart from the working hours, the time spent in commuting, getting ready, recovering the energy levels after a day's work etc. The final figure might surprise you. (10/n)

"For those opting for Financial Independence, it reinforces the awareness that work is no longer about “another day, another dollar,” but is rather about drawing one day closer to their goal of freedom from financial fears and fiscal failures."

Nothing to add. (11/n)

"Indeed, in terms of sheer hours, we may be more wedded to our jobs than to our partners. The vows for better or worse, richer or poorer, in sickness and in health—and often till death do us part—may be better applied to our jobs than to our wives or husbands"

This hurts! (12/n)

Differentiate between work and something that you do to earn money.

Either do what you love or if you don't have that option, try and get paid a lot for what you do. You are doing something you don't like, might as well get properly paid for it. (13/n)

We have started to associate so much of ourselves with our jobs that we have to take "time off" to do what we like. This implies that "time on" is always doing our jobs and doing something for sake of earning money. (14/n)

If you have already started on your journey towards financial independence, you will learn a few things but not too much from the book. If you are like me, you will find yourself rushing through or skipping the later parts of the book. (15/n)

If you have trouble saving or meeting your expenses or are intrigued by the concept of financial independence, this book will be a good starting point. If nothing else, it will make you have a long hard look at your relationship with money. (16/16)

@investbooks