I just got back from a family party weekend to celebrate my oldest brother’s retirement. One of the parts about his retirement that I admire him a bunch for is that he’s only 50 years young and he and his wife planned for this great day just ten years ago.
I asked my bro what his process was and here’s what he told me:
After reading Your Money or Your Life: Transforming Your Relationship with Money and Achieving Financial Independence by Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin, his wife and he worked through all the exercises in that book and changed their lifestyle in order to achieve the early retirement and financial independence they wanted.
They hooked on to the concept that what they spent their money on was what they valued the most. In other words, what they spent their money on was a reflection of what they truly valued because that’s what they were spending their hard earned dollars on so that’s where their life energy was going.
After, mulling that concept over, they decided to choose where they wanted their life energy to go. After they chose where they wanted to spend their money, then they put a plan together to make it happen and stuck to it.
Now after just a short ten years, they achieved the result that they desired and they are ecstatic for it and I’m ecstatic for them!
Using them as a role model, I wonder for myself (and I invite you to wonder this for yourself too), “Am I spending my money on what I truly value? If not, what do I need to do differently in order to get my spending in alignment with what I truly want?”
Wow! That is some article, Lles.
from Benicia, CA
Thanks, Art! You are truly an inspiration!!
Congratulations to your brother and sister-in-law. I did the taped class of Your Money or Your Life years ago. It’s one of the rare books that truly changed my life. I’ve been semi-retired since 1992—and that’s a secondary benefit. The real prize was YMOL was a quantum leap towards putting money in its place.
from Benicia, CA
Thanks for your comment, Shugaree! That is awesome that you’ve been semi-retired for quite a while and that YMOL made a positive impact on your life too!
That book really opened my eyes to what “enough” is and that “enough” isn’t some kind of bare-bones, make-only-enough-money-to-get-by deal, but it’s really about being conscious to what gives you personal fulfillment along with some luxuries. It’s amazing to see that one doesn’t really need to make a billion dollars in order to live a life of true fulfillment. (Although a billion dollars would be cool so I’m not knockin’ that, but it’s interesting to realize that a life of fulfillment doesn’t really need to have such a huge price tag on it.)








