--- ## Highlights They told us that not only are most people habitually unhappy, but they can be unhappy no matter how much money they make. Even people who are doing well financially are not necessarily fulfilled. On those same worksheets we asked our seminar participants, “How much money would it take to make you happy?” Can you guess the results? It was always “more than I have now” by 50 to 100 percent. (Location 641) In fact, the new consumerism promoted all the deadly sins (lust, covetousness, gluttony, pride, envy) except perhaps anger and sloth. (Location 781) Psychologists call money the “last taboo.” It is easier to tell our therapist about our sex life than it is to tell our accountant about our finances. Money—not necessarily how much we have, but how we feel about it—governs our lives as much or more than any other factor. More marriages are wrecked by money than any other factor. Why? (Location 838) While we might vigorously maintain that we know that “money can’t buy happiness” and “the best things in life are free,” honesty requires that we look deeper. Our behavior tells a different story. What do we do when we are depressed, when we are lonely, when we feel unloved? More often than not we buy something to make us feel better. (Location 859) When we want to celebrate good fortune, we buy something. (Location 862) When we are bored, we buy something. (Location 863) When we think there must be more to life, we buy something. A workshop. A self-help book. A therapist. A house in the country. A condo in the city. None of this is wrong. It’s just what we do. We have (Location 864) We try to satisfy essentially psychological and spiritual needs with consumption at a physical level. (Location 866) (Location 884) Part of the secret to life, it would seem, comes from identifying for yourself that point of maximum fulfillment. There is a name for this peak of the Fulfillment Curve, and it provides the basis for transforming your relationship with money. It’s a word we use every day, yet we are practically incapable of recognizing it when it’s staring us in the face. The word is “enough.” (Location 893) Once you catch on to what clutter is, you’ll find it everywhere. Isn’t meaningless activity a form of clutter? How many of the power lunches, cocktail parties, social events and long evenings glued to the computer or TV screen have been clutter—activities that add nothing positive to your life? What about disorganized days, full of busyness with no sense of accomplishment? And what about items on your To Do list of tasks that never get done? (Location 936) Instead, there’s the cacophony of cars and buses, television and radio, microwaves and dishwashers, and trivial chatter. All of it is clutter—elements in your environment that don’t serve you yet take up space. (Location 943) we suggest that you read the whole book first, rather than doing each step as it comes up; then come back and get started. (Location 956) Find out how much money you have earned in your lifetime—the sum total of your gross income, from the first penny you (Location 958) B. WHAT HAVE YOU GOT TO SHOW FOR IT? For the years you have been working for wages, a certain amount of money (which you just calculated) has entered your life. The amount that is left in your life now is your net worth. (Location 1016) So much dissatisfaction comes from focusing on what we don’t have that the simple exercise of acknowledging and valuing what we do have can transform our outlook. (Location 1064) the rest is memories and illusions, as far as the reality of balance sheets is concerned. (Location 1073) Financially speaking, you have been like someone driving around without any destination—burning gas, spinning your wheels and getting nowhere. You may have many happy memories and other intangibles, but only a few real souvenirs that could be converted into cash. (Location 1084) 2. The Neighborhood Perspective of Money— The Emotional/Psychological Realm (Location 1204) This neighborhood perspective could represent the first “nonmaterial” level of money, the emotional and mental glue that holds together daily interactions with money. This is the level of our personal thoughts and feelings about money—our money style or personality. Are you impulsive? Cautious? Competitive? (Location 1207) the myth that money is security is just that—a myth. (Location 1236) But if money is power, how do you account for the power of someone like Gandhi? The kind of power that freed India from the British had nothing to do with money, but with what Gandhi labeled satya-graha, or “soul force.” (Location 1243) It becomes dangerous only when we lose sight of the fact that companionship, friendship and intimacy are all available free of charge to people who sincerely extend their love to others. (Location 1258) Take a few minutes now to do a bit of brainstorming and see where you stand with money. What is your money personality? What are your thoughts about money? Your personal belief systems? What are your money quirks and myths? How have your relationships with others been influenced by your economic pride and prejudice? How does money relate to your personal sense of worth? As far as money goes, do you feel “one up” or “one down” as compared with those around you? What does money mean to you? Take a look at your behavior around money. Is it ever irrational? What does that tell you? This is the time to take a deeper look into what you have learned about money and how you relate to it—really. What is your money personality? (Location 1279) The Citywide Perspective of Money—The Cultural Realm (Location 1297) This citywide perspective of money encompasses the assumptions we all share about money, our cultural understanding about money. (Location 1300) The Helicopter Perspective of Money— Personal Responsibility and Transformation (Location 1348) Here is where we will discover the doorway to another realm of money. Up we go in the helicopter to get an even higher perspective on money. Here we recognize that the city itself is not the whole world. Beyond (Location 1350) All our false notions about money thus far have one common flaw—they identify money as something external to ourselves. It is something we all too often don’t have, which we struggle to get, and on which we pin our hopes of power, happiness, security, acceptance, success, fulfillment, achievement and personal worth. Money is the master and we the slaves. Money is the victor and we the vanquished. (Location 1358) Money is something we choose to trade our life energy for. (Location 1362) So, while money has no intrinsic reality, our life energy does—at least to us. It’s tangible, and it’s finite. Life energy is all we have. It is precious because it is limited and irretrievable and because our choices about how we use it express the meaning and purpose of our time here on Earth. (Location 1371) but ultimately you are the one who determines what money is worth to you. It is your life energy. (Location 1385) This idea that Financial Independence means wealth comes out of the first, street-level perspective of money. This is Financial Independence at a material level. (Location 1408) Financial Independence is an experience of freedom at a psychological level. You are free from the slavery to unconsciously held assumptions about money, and free of the guilt, resentment, envy, frustration and despair you may have felt about money issues. (Location 1423) There are two parts to Step 2: A. Establish the actual costs in time and money required to maintain your Job, and compute your real hourly wage. B. Keep track of every cent that comes into or goes out of your life. (Location 1445) if you didn’t need that money-earning Job, what time expenditures and monetary expenses would disappear from your life? (Location 1454) discover for yourself the real trade-offs in time and energy associated with keeping your nine-to-five Job. Not all of the categories will necessarily apply to you, and you may think of other categories relevant to you that are not mentioned here. (Location 1463) At the end of the discussion we will tabulate these calculations and come up with an actual exchange rate of life energy for money—remembering (Location 1466) FIGURE 2-2 Life Energy vs. Earnings: What Is Your Real Hourly Wage? The corollary figure is also interesting. In this example, every dollar you spend represents 15 minutes of your life. (Location 1536) Why Do This Step? Why is this exercise essential to a transformed relationship with money? 1. This exercise puts paid employment into real perspective and points out how much you are actually getting paid, which is the bottom line. 2. It allows you to assess current and future employment realistically, in terms of actual earnings. It is useful to apply the information gathered in this step to prospective Jobs: (Location 1553) (Location 1578) Do you excuse financial unconsciousness with “spiritual” precepts? (Location 1592) people who have achieved a high net worth relative to income know how much they are spending on clothes, travel, housing, transportation, etc., and those who don’t achieve high net worth relative to income have no idea how much they spend. (Location 1635) Remember that the purpose of this procedure is simply to keep track (Location 1645) Because it’s the best way to become conscious of how money actually comes and goes in your life as opposed to how you think it comes and goes. (Location 1646) Does it seem odd to think of money as a socially acceptable addiction? Surely, since everyone wants money, and wants it in abundance, it can’t be an addiction. But what else would you call a substance or activity that we reach for compulsively even though it doesn’t bring fulfillment? What else would you call something that we are convinced we could not live without? Indeed, the very thought of not having it overwhelms us with fear. What else would you call a need that is intense, chronic and seen as essential to our sense of wholeness? What else would you call something that goes beyond a rational concern, that fills our daydreams and our night dreams as well? What else would you call something that becomes more important to us than our relationships with family and friends, the acquiring of which becomes an end in itself? What else would you call something that we hoard, building up unreasonably large supplies in order to feel secure? An addiction is a need that’s gotten out of control, that’s become a cancer, migrating into healthy tissue and eventually consuming its host. (Location 1724) As one wise person said, you can never get enough of what you don’t really want. (Location 1738) You learn to eat when your body is hungry—not because you are bored, at the dinner table, alone in the kitchen, between tasks, wanting a treat for a job well done, blue with depression, green with envy or red with fury. (Location 1758) The two important aspects of being conscious, as opposed to dieting, are:   1. You need to identify and follow internal signals, not external admonishments or habitual desires. 2. You need to change your patterns of eating over (Location 1763) ESTABLISHING CATEGORIES   In establishing your categories you will want to be accurate and precise, without becoming overly fussy. (Location 1805) At the end of the month you will transfer each entry from your Daily Money Log into the appropriate column on your Monthly Tabulation. Add up your income columns to get your total monthly income. Add up the expenditures in each column and enter the total of each subcategory at the bottom of that column. Then add the totals for all expenditure categories—this sum is your total monthly expenses. (Location 1877) Those magazines drain your energy three times over: once in earning the money to buy them, again in staying up late to read them and finally in feeling guilty when you haven’t finished them by the time the next issue arrives (to say nothing of having to store or dispose of them). Could those 14 hours have been better spent? Is it still true that you have no time to spend with your family? (Location 1909) The very process of creating this form provided Rosemary with valuable information about her priorities and gave her a tangible way to track how much of her life energy she was devoting to the things that mattered to her. (Location 1939) The monthly ritual of filling in the numbers has the quality of an exciting game. How did she do in each category? Is it up or down from last month? How does it compare to last year’s average for the same category? Are trends up (Location 1940) fulfillment is that experience of deep satisfaction when you can say, Aaahh … that was a delicious meal, a job well done or a purchase worth the money. To find fulfillment, though, you need to know what you are looking for. (Location 2280) And envision what would be a truly fulfilling life for you. To help you get started on this journey, ask yourself the following questions: ◆What did you want to be when you grew up? ◆What have you always wanted to do that you haven’t yet done? ◆What have you done in your life that you are really proud of? ◆If you knew you were going to die within a year, how would you spend that year? ◆What brings you the most fulfillment—and how is that related to money? ◆If you didn’t have to work for a living, what would you do with your time? (Location 2294) Step 4: Three Questions That Will Transform Your Life In this step you evaluate your spending by asking three questions about the total spent in each of your subcategories:   1. Did I receive fulfillment, satisfaction and value in proportion to life energy spent? 2. Is this expenditure of life energy in alignment with my values and life purpose? 3. How might this expenditure change if I didn’t have to work for a living? (Location 2336) ◆First, to provide necessary and useful goods and services. ◆Second, to enable every one of us to use and thereby perfect our gifts like good stewards. ◆Third, to do so in service to, and in cooperation with, others, so as to liberate ourselves from our inborn (Location 3709) So we see that our concept (as a society) of leisure has changed radically. From being considered a desirable and civilizing component of day-to-day life it has become something to be feared, a reminder of unemployment during the years of the Depression. (Location 3770)