"The affluence that surrounds us has been called the American Dream, and with good reason: we've been asleep.  We wake up questioning the dream."

From Your Money or Your Life by Robin & Dominguez

"Frugality means we are to enjoy what we have.  If you have ten dresses but still feel you have nothing to wear, you are probably a spendthrift.  But if you have ten dresses and have enjoyed wearing all of them for years, you are frugal.  Waste lies not in the number of possessions but in the failure to enjoy them.  Your success at being frugal is measured not by your penny-pinching but by your degree of enjoyment of the material world."

From Your Money or Your Life by Robin & Dominguez

A house with a thirty-year mortgage will cost--depending on the interest rate--two or even three times the purchase price by the time the final payment is made.

 

 

"Financial Intelligence is knowing that if you spend your life energy on stuff that brings only passing fullfillment and doesn't support your values, you end up with less life."

From Your Money or Your Life by Robin and Dominguez

"Clutter is anything that is excess--for you.  It's whatever you have that doesn't serve you, yet takes up space in your world.  To let go of clutter, then, is not deprivation; it's lightening up and opening up space for something new to happen." 

From Your Money or Your Life by Robin & Dominguez

"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)."

From Your Money or Your Life by Robin & Dominguez

"Our economy depends on growth to survive--and many of us have absorbed that growth ethic into our own aspirations for our lives. If we have one car, we need two. If we have one pair of pants, we need two; if we have two, we need three. We ignore intellectual, emotional and spiritual growth, having gotten stuck trying to continue to grow physically by adding more and more possessions."

From Your Money or Your Life by Robin & Dominguez

"If more is better, then what I have is not enough.  Even when I do get the 'more' I was convinced would make life 'better,' however, I am still operating out of the belief that more is better--so the 'more' I now have still isn't enough....The 'more' that was supposed to make life 'better' can never be enough."

From Your Money or Your Life by Robin & Dominguez

I was hosting our lovely Easter family party and found that non-sliced ham is not only much tastier, but also a ton cheaper. 

Frugality is not a quaint pastime from the pre-credit card era, but it is something of a lost art for some people.

Though frugal living can conjure an image of a Dickensian miser grimly squeezing every penny for all it’s worth, it doesn't have to be like that.

"Being frugal to me is about valuing your life energy," says Mark Zaifman, owner of Spiritus Financial Planning in Windsor, Calif., and a contributor to an updated version of "Your Money or Your Life."

A central tenet of the book is that most people must expend their energy to make money during their finite time on earth. Frivolous purchases waste that time and energy.

That concept is a lynchpin in the voluntary simplicity movement.

For the full article and steps (I personally love Step 4: Clean House) Click Here