It all takes money...

With three kids, a house and a graduate degree its no surprise that money can be tight for me. Having nice things and a full life with out being outrageously in debt is not always easy. Just look at the example our State and Federal governments are setting for us! We live in a capitalistic, consumerist, corporate driven society. Individual success is measured by the kind of stuff we have and the amount of money we spend.
We are conditioned to believe that we must accrue debt to have nice stuff and boost our credit when we are young, then spending the rest of our lives paying for those purchases. People work 80 hours per week at jobs that do not have great meaning for them to pay for homes they are in only to sleep!
In their book Your Money or Your Life, Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin challenge the reader to examine the logic in the consumerist lifestyle. They suggest that by acquiring fewer needs and paying off debt we can break the cycle of dependence on un-fulfilling jobs with long hours and high salaries. Breaking free of the capitalist cycle allows us to consider the true value of our time. We begin to reconsider some of our needs. For example; is the restaurant meal really worth the two (ish) hours you worked to pay for it? Would that time be better spent preparing a meal at home?
Rather than following the suggestions in this book step by step (which can be done with great success), I choose rather to use it as inspiration as I work toward a life outside corporate control. It helps to be reminded that my time, spent earning money, is worth more that the cheap plastic crap we are told we need and encouraged to spend our money on. When you see your money as time spent it becomes too precious to waste.
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