Friday, April 03, 2009

Money or Life?

I've been reading about Money! Yes money... 

It seems that the whole world revolves around money:

  • Yesterday the G-20 nations voted for a 1 TRILLION $ stimulus package (mind boggling figure - $1 000 000 000 000 ) . 
  • There's clamour for Kenyan MPs and other senior office bearers to pay taxes on their full allowances.
  • Everyone is looking for a side hustle to make that extra coin, even it means spending 18 hours working a day.
  • The dash in the morning to beat the jam, so as to get to work early, and score brownie points with your boss.. so that maybe when the next appraisal comes round, you might get a pay rise.

I haven't started on hunger and famine in Kenya, and why we can't just blame the unreliable weather patterns.

This book - Your Money or Your Life is quite a thought-provoking book. One of the key elements is that the author doesn't advocate for a lifestyle that revolves around getting more and more and more money. Instead, one's focus should be on how to align money with values and principles. So one of the exercises isn't just tracking every cent you spend, but calculating how much of life energy you use up when spending e.g. 12000/- on a new phone.. Can be very revealing. 

I've also added some new words to my vocabulary: Life Energy and Gazingus Pins


No comments: