Your Money or Your Life

I've been on a bit of a values/purpose/personal finance interest kick lately, which led me to check out a book from the library that my mom recommended to me years ago called Your Money or Your Life by Dominguez and Robin.

It's due tomorrow, and I'm a ways from finishing, so here are a few clips before I have to return or renew.

Purpose
I use this word a lot at work.  For educated people working as housekeepers, it's important to always be reevaluating and refocusing on a larger sense of purpose and meaning in the midst of sometimes mundane work.  But it's also a larger tension I've been thinking about lately while trying to sort out my next step.  What do I value?  Why am I here?  What's unique about it?  What are the common threads through my experiences, interests, and skills?  The book suggests looking at three things to start sorting out this notion of purpose:

Passion

The underlying question they pose is "What did you dream about before you stopped dreamining?"        Alongside it is the classic "What would you do if you didn't have to work for money?"  Some people have a very linear concept of this, other people (like me) have more elusive and expansive ideas of it.  Neither is wrong. Nice reminder for me.

Pain

 In looking out into the world, your place of employment, your community, and larger systems in the planet, what breaks your heart?  What makes you sad?  What would you change?  These are the things that may be a part of a larger role you can and do play and taps into different parts of your heart.

What's on hand

This question was the most striking to me.  It's easy to get wrapped up into grandiose ideas of purpose and what an ideal self, career, living situation, etc. might look like.  This brings it to a level that's easier for me to deal with.  I am where I am now.  I live and work with the people I live and work with and have the job and interests I currently have. How am I and how can I live within my own concept of my purpose within that?  What is there in my life right now that makes me feel most alive and thriving?  It opens windows of taking initiative and gratitude for the opportunities today rather than putting pressure and anxiety on searching for a "perfect" situation down the road where I might be best able to live into my "purpose."

For right now, "continually learning, growing, and being a part of positive change while inspiring and encouraging others to do the same" is as close as I have come over the past week to articulating my understanding of my purpose.

Frugal Living
While reading this book, I've gotten into some very interesting conversations with people around mew about personal finance, budgeting, values, and concepts of money.  I grew up in a family that valued living within your means and stewardship, so it's interesting to see how foreign or new some concepts are to some other people.  It's interesting to compare concepts of consumption, value, money, savings, etc. with other people without judgement.

The idea is identifying what is "enough" for you and being content with that.  That consuming beyond that point will not increase personal satisfaction.  That your inner values and outer choices should be aligned.  That it's best to aprovechar every experience, opportunity, and physical possession that you have instead of just accumulating more for the sake of accumulation.

That said, I naturally enjoyed the chapter on frugal living.  Here are some highlights:

One Sure Way to Save Money
"Stop trying to impress other people.  Other people are parobably so busy trying to impress you that they will, at best, not notice your efforts.  At worst, they will resent you for one-upping them."

 Ten Sure Ways to Save Money (a lot of these reminded me of the philosophy behind quilting that I posted about last year while learning to sew...)

• Don't go shopping
• Live within your means
• Take care of what you have 
• Wear it out
• Do it yourself (Can I do this myself?  What would it take to learn how?  Would it be a useful skill to know?)
• Anticipate your needs
• Research value, quality, durability and multiple use ("Don't be a bargain junkie and automatically buy the cheapest item available....Everything that you purchase has its origin in the earth.")
• Get it for less
• Buy it used
• Follow the nine steps of this program (You'll have to check the book out to see if you buy into this step.  Self-promotion always makes me skeptical, but the book has made me think about some good things.)