Table of Contents
Praise for Your Money or Your Life
Your Money or Your Life offers everyoneregardless of class, background, or historya simple and accessible pathway to economic health, recovery, and resilience. Robin offers up this antidote for our corporate culture in a style that is easy to read, pleasurable, and life-affirming, helping us translate the idea of frugality into a shift to invest in what we truly value. Her prescription offers the payoff of a more meaningful and fulfilling life, while lessening our sense of stress as it relates to money. The time could not be more perfect, nor this book more relevant to the changes were all facing.
Nina Simons, president and cofounder, Bioneers
Your Money or Your Life was a 1990s phenomenon that changed the lives of millions and made voluntary simplicity the fastest-growing movement in America. My friendship with Vicki and her ideas of financial independence and conscious consumption changed my life, liberated me from the money chase, and unleashed my courage and creativity. As the fragility of our casino economy becomes alarmingly evident, this book is now more relevant than ever. It could be the single most important book you will ever read.
David Korten, author of When Corporations Rule the World and The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community, and cofounder and board chair, YES! magazine
Your Money or Your Life has helped millions of Americans lead more frugal, sane, and happier lives. If only all Americansand particularly, the people whose profligacy has gotten us into the current debacle on Wall Streethad read it. They certainly need to read it now! Everyone does.
John de Graaf, coauthor of Affluenza: The All-Consuming Epidemic
For well over a decade, this book has been the blueprint for achieving financial independence. You can always recognize those of us who followed its advice: Were the folks with smiles on our faces and time on our hands, who sleep soundly at night even during troubled economic times. This edition was updated to reflect the financial realities of today, and its message and advice have never been more valuable.
Jeff Yeager, author of The Ultimate Cheapskates Road Map to True Riches
Your Money or Your Life is the rare book that is both map and compass. As we enter hard economic times, this visionary book provides eminently pragmatic and effective maps to reduce the costs of your life and increase your savings net. Of equal importance, its a compass that can guide you to your true valuesnonmonetary values such as community, friendships, and deeper relationships to your place and nature.
Kenny Ausubel, CEO and cofounder, Bioneers
This timely and timeless message liberates us from our self-imposed impoverishment and leads us to a genuinely richer and more rewarding life.
Victoria Castle, author of The Trance of Scarcity
Bless Penguin and Vicki Robin for re-releasing this timeless, exquisite, and classic work on our relationship with money. With clarity, incisiveness, and brilliance, Your Money or Your Life gives every reader, no matter what their circumstances, the keys to living a fulfilling and financially free life. The distinctions in this book are so empowering, so liberating, and so transformative that the book should be a required text for everyone who has a bank account. This is one of the best and most truthful books you will ever read about money.
Lynne Twist, author of The Soul of Money
The need has never been greater than now, in a time of so much financial turbulence and crisis, for this magnificent book. Your Money or Your Life is a personal path to fiscal sanity, stability, and security. If you follow its heed, your life will be richer many times over, whatever the stock market does or does not do.
John Robbins, author of Diet for a New America, Healthy at 100, and The Food Revolution
The best guide for personally navigating the new postWall Street financial world. Tried and true common sense for redefining success on your own terms and refocusing your American Dream.
Hazel Henderson, author of Ethical Markets: Growing the Green Economy
Can you save your life? Yes, and Joe and Vickis approach offers even more. [Those] who use their money carefully generate incredible benefits beyond the obvious gains in and security for themselves. First, their use of natural resources drops, since they consume far more thoughtfully: bonus point for the worlds ecosystems. Second, they may be able to work less: bonus point for other peoples employment opportunities. Third, they spend their money on necessary, worthwhile products: bonus point for the economy of goods, rather than that of bads. Fourth, they are freeing their time and are now able to spend time volunteering with non profits, playing with their own and others children, running for office, or just helping out where people are in need: bonus point for our communities. Fifth, they now have time to bring their dreams alive: bonus point for creativity, vibrancy, and joy. What are you waiting for?
Mathis Wackernagel, executive director, Global Footprint Network
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YOUR MONEY OR YOUR LIFE
Vicki Robin is a renowned innovator, writer, and speaker. In addition to coauthoring the bestselling Your Money or Your Life with Joe Dominguez, Robin has been at the forefront of the sustainable living movement. She has received awards from Co-op America and Sustainable Northwest for her pioneering work while being featured in Utne magazines book Visionaries: People and Ideas to Change Your Life. She was instrumental in creating the Conversation Cafes, Sustainable Seattle, and the New Road Map Foundation as well as serving on the board of Transition US. She lives on Whidbey Island in Washingtons Puget Sound. Her latest book, Blessing the Hands That Feed Us: What Eating Closer to Home Can Teach Us About Food, Community and Our Place on Earth, will be available from Viking in 2014.
Joe Dominguez (19381997) was a successful financial analyst on Wall Street before retiring at the age of thirty-one by following the nine-step program he formulated for himself, taught for many years, and is presented here in Your Money or Your Life. His teaching also lives on through his audio course, Transforming Your Relationship with Money and Achieving Financial Independence (Sounds True). From 1969 on, he was a full-time volunteer and donated all proceeds from his teaching to transformational projects.
Monique Tilford has worked for nearly twenty years on sustainable consumption and related environmental issues. For ten years, she worked with the Center for a New American Dream, a national nonprofit that helps Americans change the way they consume, serving most recently as the organizations deputy director. Prior to joining New Dream, Monique was executive director for Wild Earth and for the Carrying Capacity Network. Monique has been promoting the principles outlined in Your Money or Your Life for over seventeen years, as a public speaker, study guide group leader, and member of the New Road Map Foundations board of directors. She lives outside Washington, DC, with her husband and two young daughters.
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Published by the Penguin Group
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