This is the twenty-fifth part of The Simple Dollar Book Club reading of Your Money or Your Life. Want to know more? When I read this section of Your Money or Your Life, I began to think of two of my high school teachers – incidentally, the two best teachers I ever had. They both

This is the twenty-fourth part of The Simple Dollar Book Club reading of Your Money or Your Life. Want to know more? So, what exactly does that crossover point represent? It’s basically the point of total freedom – the point where you no longer have any association between the requirement to make money and how

This is the twenty-third part of The Simple Dollar Book Club reading of Your Money or Your Life. Want to know more? This concept fascinated me so much that I had to write a post specifically about it when I first read Your Money or Your Life. In a nutshell, the “crossover point” is the

This is the twenty-second part of The Simple Dollar Book Club reading of Your Money or Your Life. Want to know more? Here, the book takes what I at first thought was a very odd jump based on what came before. Instead of implying that a lower-paying, lower-responsibility job is better (because you can reserve

This is the twenty-first part of The Simple Dollar Book Club reading of Your Money or Your Life. Want to know more? This section is filled up with a series of nine implications for disconnecting work from wages. I thought it would be worthwhile to move slowly and examine each of the nine. 1. Redefining

This is the twentieth part of The Simple Dollar Book Club reading of Your Money or Your Life. Want to know more? This chapter of Your Money or Your Life starts off by attempting to define what exactly work is, which isn’t an easy thing to do. I thought their various quoted definitions were quite

This is the nineteenth part of The Simple Dollar Book Club reading of Your Money or Your Life. Want to know more? Prosperity and the Planet Much of this section focuses on the idea that frugality is good for the environment, too. Most frugal ideas boil down to buying less and reducing your costs, and

This is the eighteenth part of The Simple Dollar Book Club reading of Your Money or Your Life. Want to know more? Today, let’s look at the rest of those 101 sure ways to save money, this time focusing on the groupings of tips starting at #50. Shopping I find that the one thing that

This is the seventeenth part of The Simple Dollar Book Club reading of Your Money or Your Life. Want to know more? Instead of focusing on each of the individual 101 ways to save money (and boring people to sleep), I thought I’d comment in general on the groupings of these (each seven or eight

This is the sixteenth part of The Simple Dollar Book Club reading of Your Money or Your Life. Want to know more? Let’s move through these ten items one at a time. 1. Don’t go shopping If you’re not going to a retail outlet in pursuit of a specific item, don’t go. If you do,

This is the fifteenth part of The Simple Dollar Book Club reading of Your Money or Your Life. Want to know more? This chapter is about frugality – there’s really no way around it. In their words: Frugality is enjoying the virtue of getting good value for every minute of your life energy and from

This is the fourteenth part of The Simple Dollar Book Club reading of Your Money or Your Life. Want to know more? Most of the remainder of the fifth chapter spells out the usefulness of keeping an up-to-date chart of your financial situation. The ending of the chapter really drove it home, as it stated

This is the thirteenth part of The Simple Dollar Book Club reading of Your Money or Your Life. Want to know more? The fifth chapter of this book focuses on creating a visual record of one’s income and expenses in the form of a line chart, so that one can keep clear tabs on the

This is the twelfth part of The Simple Dollar Book Club reading of Your Money or Your Life. Want to know more? Yesterday, we took a look at three questions one should use in evaluating one’s spending for the month. What you’ll find, if you genuinely answer those questions, is that it identifies the portions

This is the eleventh part of The Simple Dollar Book Club reading of Your Money or Your Life. Want to know more? This section encourages you to ask three vital questions about each category that you spend money on, but I find it’s much better to actually ask myself these questions about every purchase. Why?

This is the tenth part of The Simple Dollar Book Club reading of Your Money or Your Life. Want to know more? This chapter of Your Money or Your Life starts off with six questions that I thought were well worth reflecting on. So, here are my reflections on these questions. What did you want

This is the ninth part of The Simple Dollar Book Club reading of Your Money or Your Life. Want to know more? If the “real hourly wage” calculation earlier in the book wasn’t tangible enough for you, this portion of the book makes it incredibly tangible. In that earlier example, I used a straw man

This is the eighth part of The Simple Dollar Book Club reading of Your Money or Your Life. Want to know more? Right off the bat in this chapter, Your Money or Your Life makes a bold statement that I strongly agree with: traditional budgeting doesn’t work in the real world. Identifying specific categories and

This is the seventh part of The Simple Dollar Book Club reading of Your Money or Your Life. Want to know more? I found the exercise in this chapter of Your Money or Your Life to be one of the most amazing things I’ve ever done in terms of really reflecting on what my job