December 8th, 2004 - Getting a Life by Jacqueline Blix and David Heitmiller
Getting a Life is a companion to Your Money or Your Life, a book about how to gain financial independence (having enough income from your investments to cover your living expenses). I read the latter book a few years ago, as it’s popular with Motley Foolers. I didn’t follow the steps in the book, nor do I intend to now. But I do pick up some good tips for it–most recently, on the advice of this newer book, I started charting our income versus expenses. It was a nice surprise to notice just how much we are saving! Unfortunately, in this second month of doing so, our expenses were 3 times our income–but it was for a planned expense that we had savings for! (Also, I had the data for the entire year–however the first two months included great expenses for our trip to Russia, so the whole year is pretty out-of-whack. I’m considering not plotting the adoption-related expenses so that it looks more normal, but that might be considered cheating.) [I definitely want to go read YM/YL again!]
Anyway–about the book. I really enjoyed this book! Jacque and David interviewed a number of folks who are following the YM/YL steps and are gaining or have gained financial independence. The books walks through the 9 steps, and shares how these different folks followed them. The people are all ages and walks of life, so it’s a nicely diverse set of stories. Lots of ideas, and ways to see how “people like you” managed to do this.
Jacque and David also have a website, where you can get more updates on their life!
Find out more about Getting a Life and Amazon.