Free Review Essay Sample

Personal finance is the individual initiatives taken by an individual to manage his finances by obtaining, budgeting, spending and saving his or her monetary resources taking into account a variety of financial risks and future life occurrences. There is a variety of books that talk about personal financing in the market but not one as practical and captivating as ‘Your Money or Your Life’ by Joseph Dominguez. In contrast to other books, the book does not offer concrete information about increasing one’s wealth, an approach taken by many authors. Instead of focussing on teaching individuals how to become rich, the book examines deeply the primary values in an individual’s life and how one can realign his money and life to follow and adhere to these values. Its central message is that most people are financially unstable because they work to get money instead of working because it’s what they love doing. This paper tries to provide a critical review of the book to decipher the author’s approach to personal finance (Robin, Joseph and Monique 9).
Most of the book’s content is focussed on the definition of individual’s values and placing them in a practical financial perspective. It goes as far as suggesting that one should quit his or her job as a step towards financial management. Ideally, the book’s objective is to modify an individual’s relationship with money instead of providing tips on how to manage their finances. The author downplays the societal practices where one has to have a full work week to optimise the chances of him or her earning money. The book starts with a string of psychological analyses that changes one perspective of money. The book begins with encouraging individuals to estimate every single dollar or cent they have ever earned then calculating his or her net worth. The results are quite revealing as it exposes so many truths about an individual’s relationship with money (Robin, Joseph and Monique 16).
The second step comes after one figure out the portion of income he or she has wasted and then trying to figure out his or her real hourly wage. Essentially one takes his or her present hourly wage and converts it into a weekly earning. After that, he subtracts what his spends on miscellaneous things e.g. travelling to and from work, or other work-related events. The individual then makes a record of every bit of income he or she earns and every single thing he spends on. The author encourages this to be done for several months. The next step in the process is more about personal analysis. One needs to assess if he or she receives personal fulfilment and value when he compares the income to the life energy spent on earning it. After this, the individual focuses on minimizing spending and maximizing the value of his or her time. The book offers suggestions for that. The book then continues by telling the reader to evaluate his job, and if it does not match up with his values he should quit it. The individual then tries to find out the moment in which the investment income can cover his or her living expenses. This occurs after one switches his or her priorities around. The final step is where the individual reaches the point where his or her investments are growing even after he has removed his living expenses.
The book deserves a read because of its practical approach to finance. Rather than guiding one on what he can or cannot do with his money to make more money, it focusses on guiding the individual to spend his money on things that make sense. This book is critical for anyone who has a relationship with money that is full of guilt and wants to mend this relationship (Robin, Joseph and Monique 21).

Works Cited

Robin, Vicki, Joseph R. Dominguez, and Monique Tilford. Your Money or Your Life: 9 Steps to Transforming Your Relationship with Money and Achieving Financial Independence. New York: Penguin Books, 2008. Internet resource.