Highlights from "Your Money or Your Life"

Endless desire is one of the pitfalls of human nature, and one of the first things you need

To do nothing then but to try to spend money I saved up and to waste my time till my life is over?”

The dreams we had of finding meaning and fulfillment through our jobs have faded into the reality of professional politics, burnout, boredom, and intense competition.

We are working more, but enjoying life less. The result? We have developed a national disease based on how we earn money.

Our levels of debt and our lack of savings make the nine-to-five routine mandatory.

The bottom line is that we think we work to pay the bills—but we spend more than we make on more than we need, which sends us back to work to get the money to spend to get more stuff—that sends us back to work again!

Leisure was not, in fact, an excuse to relax. It was a hole to fill up with more wants (which, in turn, required more work to pay for them).

No shame, no blame. Your lifetime earnings represent just a number, not your value.

Money is something you trade your life energy for. You sell your time for money. It doesn’t matter that Ned over there sells his time for a hundred dollars and you sell yours for twenty dollars an hour. Ned’s money is irrelevant to you. The only real asset you have is your time. The hours of your life.

“Knowing that money is simply your life energy puts you in the driver’s seat of your money life. How much of my life am I willing to sell to have money in my pocket?

Knowing money is life energy allows you to maximize and optimize your most precious resource: your time; your life.

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.

Now that you know that money is something you trade life energy for, you have the opportunity to set new priorities for your use of that valuable commodity. After all, is there any “thing” more vital to you than your life energy?

More is like a mirage. We can never reach it because it isn’t real.

Financial Independence is freedom from the fog, fear, and fanaticism so many of us feel about money.

Being conscious means you become aware of what you are thinking and feeling as you think and feel it. It’s cultivating an inner witness that simply observes what’s going on with warm awareness, not judging, not evaluating, just curious.