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The Book That Changed My Relationship With Money

2020-09-23 · Book summary (Book Club) · Ali · recording, 6:40 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Money and investing (also: Work and career) · mode: Explanation and tutorial · tags: Lesson from a book, Sponsor segment present

In a Book Club episode on Vicki Robin's Your Money or Your Life, Ali presents three of its themes: work as "making a dying", the fulfillment curve and the question of enough, and money as life energy, with the book's three questions for judging any purchase.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — Introducing Book Club and Your Money or Your Life

  • ★ This Book Club episode, in Ali's series distilling and discussing highlights from his favourite books, is on Your Money or Your Life by Vicki Robin. — 00:00:00 · Book Club
  • ★★ Ali calls Your Money or Your Life one of the most important books, one that completely changed his relationship with money; its subtitle sounds a bit self-helpy, but he finds it very well put together. — 00:00:00

00:00:29 — Redefining work: making a living or making a dying

  • ★★ Vicki Robin (quoted): Your Money or Your Life says earning a living was once the means to an end, but our relationship with money has taken over most of our lives: most of us spend more than 40 of the week's 168 hours earning money. — 00:00:29
  • ★★ Vicki Robin (quoted): Your Money or Your Life says jobs take time beyond working hours, dressing for them, commuting, thinking about them and decompressing from them at home, and cost money to maintain. — 00:00:29
  • ★★ Vicki Robin (quoted): Your Money or Your Life argues that with so much time and money spent on and around our jobs, we take our identities from them: asked what we do, we say "I am a plumber" rather than "I do plumbing". — 00:00:58

  • ★★★ Vicki Robin (quoted): Your Money or Your Life asks where the life supposedly made at work goes, and says that for many of us work is not making a living but making a dying. — 00:01:27

    “for many of us, we're not making a living. Instead, we are making a dying.”

  • ★★ Ali says we spend most of our life energy on our jobs in the hope of meaning, joy and money, though friends, family and local community are what happiness studies link to a happy, fulfilled life. — 00:01:27

00:01:56 — What is enough: the fulfillment curve and the money-happiness research

  • ★★★ Vicki Robin (quoted): Your Money or Your Life's fulfillment curve: spending on necessities, then niceties and luxuries, raises fulfillment up to a peak of enough; beyond it more possessions become clutter and fulfillment falls. — 00:01:56
  • ★★ With the fulfillment curve in mind, Ali says he thinks all the time about where his own point of enough lies in every aspect of life. — 00:02:55
  • ★★ Ali cites research by Daniel Kahneman, whom he calls a Nobel prize-winning economist: beyond a certain point more money does not bring more happiness, a point some studies put at around $75,000 a year. — 00:02:55

00:03:24 — Money equals life energy

  • ★★★ Vicki Robin (quoted): Your Money or Your Life proposes thinking of money as life energy, our allotted hours on earth: money is what we exchange life energy for, so everything we buy costs the hours given up to earn it. — 00:03:24

    “money is what we exchange our life energy for”

  • ★★ Ali suggests pricing a purchase in life energy: an $800 iPad Air bought on a $10-an-hour job costs 80 hours, two weeks of full-time work, and then asking whether it is really worth it. — 00:03:53 · iPad Air

00:04:15 — Sponsor read for Brilliant

00:05:08 — Three key questions about life energy

  • ★★★ Ali recommends judging any purchase by the book's three questions on life energy, the first being: did I receive fulfillment, satisfaction and value in proportion to the life energy spent? — 00:05:08
  • ★★ The second of the book's purchase questions, Ali says: is this spending of life energy in line with my values and life purpose, with what I want from life and what I morally believe? — 00:05:21
  • ★★ The third of the book's purchase questions, Ali says: how might this spending change if I did not have to work for money, which shows whether we buy something because of our job. — 00:05:21
  • ★★ Ali thinks job-related purchases such as a fancy suit or watch to impress colleagues show that, to keep our jobs and a standard of living for our peers, we spend far more money than we need to. — 00:05:50

00:06:05 — Pointer to his financial-independence playlist; sign-off

  • ★★ Ali says he has applied the principles of Your Money or Your Life to reach financial independence, developing various streams of passive income. — 00:06:15 · work optional, passive income

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Mentioned

Central: fulfillment curve · life energy · Vicki Robin · Your Money or Your Life

Also: Daniel Kahneman · iPad Air · passive income · work optional

Only in the description or credits: Book Club

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