Getting a Life: Real Lives Transformed by Your Money or Your Life Audio, Cassette – Audiobook, 1 October 1997

by Jacqueline Blix (Author), David Heitmiller (Author), Joseph R. Dominguez (Introduction),

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A married couple tells how they used the nine-step program outlined in the book "Your Money or Your Life" to gain more leisure time, reduce their spending, and reassess their values.

Product details

ISBN-10 : 014086668X
ISBN-13 : 978-0140866681
Audio Cassette : 2 pages
Language: : English

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Amazon.com: 5 reviews

Holly

Compliments "Your Money or Your Life"

28 May 2010 - Published on Amazon.com

Verified Purchase

This is actually the second time I have read this book - I read it years ago and didn't remember much so thought I would try it again. With the economy where it has been the past year and a half and getting closer to retirement all the time, it seemed like a good idea.

Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin wrote "Your Money or Your Life" back in 1992 and I believe I have seen where it has been updated lately. It really is an excellent book and I have really noticed a huge shift in the way I think about money, the acquisition of "things", and life energy - also known as time, since I read this in the mid-1990s. That book, along with the simplicity books by Elaine St. James, has been incredibly influential to me. While we didn't run out and get rid of everything, quit our jobs and sell the house, we did make the decision to stay in place and not to buy a bigger home when most of the people around us did. We decided to continue to purchase nice, middle-priced cars rather than luxury cars and to keep them much longer than most of the people at our income level. These are just two examples of many that have helped us save for retirement and to scale back our lifestyle so that we have more time for what is important.

"Getting a Life" is a book written by a couple who read the same book and then wrote about their implementation of the financial program outlined there. Not everyone is going to relate to their story; however, it does provide food for thought and shows how real people applied the principles to their lives and what the results were. They also include information about other people and the choices they have made after reading YMORL and deciding to implement what they learned.

You really need to read "Your Money or Your Life" first or this book won't make much sense. As a follow-up book it was good and provides more food for thought on this topic. I would like to see it updated since it was published 13 years ago and I would like to know where they are now and what things worked for them and what didn't over a longer time horizon. A good read and helpful, but not great --

2 people found this helpful

Sam Sattler

When Less Really Is More

4 September 2007 - Published on Amazon.com

Getting a Life is a companion piece to the better known Your Money or Your Life, a pioneering book of the "voluntary simplicity" movement. Jacqueline Blix and David Heitmiller, a married couple who successfully worked through the nine-step program outlined in Your Money or Your Life, here recount their own experience with the process and discuss the real life experiences of numerous others who have used that book to simplify their own lives.

Not too many years before writing Getting a Life, Blix and Heitmiller were living the good yuppie life to which most Americans still aspire. They were homeowners who drove late-model cars and owned a boat. They took expensive vacations every year. But they had come to realize that "standard of living" and "quality of life" were two different things, and they were searching for alternatives when they discovered Your Money or Your Life (written by Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin) and found in it the inspiration they needed to take charge of their lives.

They decided that they were on a treadmill to nowhere if they continued to chase "the good life" by constantly upgrading all of the toys that surrounded them. The desire to always drive late model cars, to have the latest high-tech electronic gadgets and to vacation in the current hot spots was costing them more than money. Blix and Heitmiller came to the realization that they were trading all of their life energy for "stuff" that they didn't even have the time to enjoy anymore. And they wanted to do something about it.

They decided what was important to them and what was not and, in the process, they realized that they could live on a fraction of the income they were earning by simply cutting out all the frills that they really didn't need or enjoy anyway. Both were able eventually to quit their jobs in corporate America and to substitute part-time work as self-employed writers to supplement the interest earned on their savings. Opting out of the rat race allows them the time to do volunteer work and to spend enough time with friends and family to really get to know them. For Blix and Heitmiller, "less is more" is not just cliché. It's their way of life, and they are happier now than ever before.

Getting a Life is a good starting point for anyone looking for a way out of the fast lane. It offers a concise summary of the nine-steps originally offered in Your Money or Your Life and it provides the encouragement of real life success stories of people who have made those principles work for themselves. The book does tend to get a little repetitive at times and the personal stories all begin to sound too much alike, but the message is a good one.

2 people found this helpful

Gen of North Coast Gardening

Plodded through this clunker - stick with Your Money Or Your Life and skip this one

24 February 2008 - Published on Amazon.com

I loved Your Money Or Your Life and was just beginning to read it for the second time and work even harder on putting the principles into action, when I found this book at the used bookstore. I picked it up, hoping for some additional inspiration on this path.

Unfortunately, I was bored from the get-go by the authors' tales of yuppie excess and idiocy. I have never lived the high roller lifestyle and so cutting out manicures and fancy cars has never been an issue for me. I didn't relate to the people profiled and found the suggestions unhelpful since they don't bear any relevance to my life.

What this book does is it shows profiles of people who have used the program successfully and also paraphrases Your Money Or Your Life and restates the instructions. But reading the book alongside, I found that the original was inspiring, fresh, to the point, and made me feel urgent about continuing, while this book made the whole process feel tiresome and stale. The beauty of YMOYL is its simplicity. Adding loads of explanations and obvious disclaimers took away from the experience rather than added to it.

I'd recommend YMOYL highly, but leave this one behind unless you find the pace of YMOYL too fast for you and wished someone would explain its points slower or give more examples of how that life might look after transitioning from the high life.

5 people found this helpful

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